The Decline of the Caste Question, Jogendranath Mandal and the Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal 9781108417761, 9781108278348, 2017053974

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The Decline of the Caste Question, Jogendranath Mandal and the Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal
 9781108417761, 9781108278348, 2017053974

Table of contents :
List of Figures page viii
List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-
Century Bengal 1
1 Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste, and Provincial
Autonomy, 1932–1937 23
2 Representation, Education, and Agrarian Reform:
Jogendranath Mandal and the Demands of Dalit Politics,
1937–1943 62
3 A Separate Political Existence: The Making of the Bengal
Scheduled Castes Federation, 1943–1945 94
4 “No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”:
The Scheduled Castes Federation and the Partition of
Bengal, 1945–1947 137
5 Betrayed Expectations: East Pakistan and West Bengal,
1947–1950 183
6 “A Caste Hindu State”: Jogendranath Mandal and the
Forced Removal of Dalit Refugees, 1950–1964 211
7 The Decline of the Caste Question: The Defeat of Dalit
Politics in Bengal, 1952–1968 238
Conclusion: “The Most Casteist Society in India” 265
Bibliography 279
Index 292

Citation preview

The Decline of the Caste Question

This revisionist history of caste politics in twentieth-century Bengal argues that the decline of this form of political mobilization in the region was as much the result of coercion as of consent. It traces this process through the political career of Jogendranath Mandal, the leader of the Dalit movement in eastern India and a figure of prominence in the history of India and Pakistan, over the transition of Partition and Independence. Utilizing Mandal’s private papers, this study reveals both the strength and achievements of his movement for Dalit recognition, as well as the major challenges and constraints he encountered. Departing from analyses that have stressed the role of integration, Dwaipayan Sen demonstrates how a wide range of coercions shaped the eventual defeat of Dalit politics in Bengal. The region’s acclaimed “castelessness” was born of the historical refusal of Mandal’s struggle to pose the caste question. Dwaipayan Sen is Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Amherst College.

The Decline of the Caste Question Jogendranath Mandal and the Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal

Dwaipayan Sen Amherst College, Massachusetts

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108417761 DOI: 10.1017/9781108278348 © Dwaipayan Sen 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sen, Dwaipayan, author. Title: The decline of the caste question : the marginalization of Dalit politics in Bengal / Dwaipayan Sen. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017053974 | ISBN 9781108417761 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Dalits – Political activity – India – Bengal. | Caste – India – Bengal – History. | Bengal (India) – Politics and government – 20th century. | Mandala, Yogendranatha, 1904–1968. Classification: LCC DS422.C3 S39 2018 | DDC 305.5/6880954140904–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053974 ISBN 978-1-108-41776-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Ma and Baba, Meredith, Bodhi, and Isha. And Mr. Mandal.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments

page viii ix x

Introduction: Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-TwentiethCentury Bengal

1

1 Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste, and Provincial Autonomy, 1932–1937

23

2 Representation, Education, and Agrarian Reform: Jogendranath Mandal and the Demands of Dalit Politics, 1937–1943

62

3 A Separate Political Existence: The Making of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 1943–1945

94

4 “No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”: The Scheduled Castes Federation and the Partition of Bengal, 1945–1947

137

5 Betrayed Expectations: East Pakistan and West Bengal, 1947–1950

183

6 “A Caste Hindu State”: Jogendranath Mandal and the Forced Removal of Dalit Refugees, 1950–1964

211

7 The Decline of the Caste Question: The Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal, 1952–1968

238

Conclusion: “The Most Casteist Society in India”

265

Bibliography Index

279 292

vii

Figures

3.1 A poster for the conference in Gopalganj identifying the Federation’s demands in various domains: the state, the center, education, industry, self-government, business, agriculture, anti-untouchability, administration, and medical care. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. page 123 4.1 The working committee of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, Bombay, 20 November 1946. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 153 4.2 A group photograph of the Working Committee of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation. Seen in the picture is Mr. Jogendranath Mandal, law member, interim government. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 158 4.3 “Jogen Mandal’s tour of Bengal successful; all is ablaze with praise.” A sarcastic and humiliating cartoon mocking Mandal’s anti-Partition agitation among the newspaper cuttings Mandal collected. 169 5.1 Mandal addressing the first meeting of the constituent assembly of Pakistan. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 186 5.2 Jogendranath Mandal photographed in Sialkot City, 9 November 1948. A portrait presented to him by Nazar Alam, Egyptian Arts, photographers, and photo goods dealers. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 192 7.1 Jogendranath Mandal with Naranbhai Solanki, N. Shivaraj, B.K. Gaikwad, B.D. Khobragade, and Karshandas Parmar at the national conference of the Republican Party of India in Ahmedabad, January 1964. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 252

viii

Tables

1.1 Caste, Occupation, and Gender in the 1931 Bengal Census page 40

ix

Acknowledgments

The most intellectually rewarding aspect of my doctoral studies – the context in which this book first took shape – was the opportunity to learn from and engage with the members of my dissertation committee. I thank Tanika Sarkar for that memorable first quarter of my program alongside Sumit, and our subsequent meetings in New Delhi, Kolkata, and Chicago. I am grateful to the late Moishe Postone for his exceptional course on Das Kapital, for generosity with his time, and his unstinting support for my studies and teaching. It shall be of lasting regret, that I will never be able to present this book to him. Thomas C. Holt welcomed me into his exhilarating seminar on Race and Racism in American History early on, and I am thankful for his guidance and encouragement ever since. Dipesh Chakrabarty was the anchor of my academic life at The University of Chicago. There is no measure to my deep appreciation and sincere gratitude for his teaching and consideration. I thank him for his support of this historical statement in particular, and for encouraging me to think about what Jogendranath Mandal means for our history. Graduate school is nothing if not for camaraderie, intellectual and otherwise. I consider it my good fortune to have encountered the following individuals during this formative period: Arvind Elangovan, Robin Bates, John F. Acevedo, Spencer Leonard, Sunit Singh, Nusrat Chowdhury, Pinky Hota, James Vaughn, Jose Angel Hernandez, Siddharth Satpathy, Arnab Dey, Rajarshi Ghose, Atiya Khan, Ananya Chakravarti, Christopher Patrick Todd, Katie Turk, Daryll Heller, Gregory Malandrucco, Deepa Das Acevedo, Jesse Ross Knutson, Matthew Rich, Romina Robles Ruvalcaba, Tyson Leuchter, Abhishek Ghosh, Amanda Hamilton, Mona Mehta, and Toussaint Losier. Various faculty members made my time at Chicago all the richer, and it is a pleasure to offer them my thanks as well: Muzaffar Alam, Rochona Majumdar, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Clinton Seely, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Steven Wilkinson, and Velcheru Narayana Rao. I also acknowledge my undergraduate advisors Michael H. Fisher and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, as well as Malavika Kasturi, who nurtured my x

Acknowledgments

xi

aspiration to a career in academia while at Oberlin College, and introduced me to the study of South Asian history and literature. It is my privilege to have discussed aspects of this study with the following friends and colleagues at different points over the past decade or so. Whether via correspondence, or in person, at a conference, workshop, or in passing, I thank them all for their engagement, support, and encouragement: Sumit Sarkar, Joya Chatterji, Andrew Sartori, Uday Chandra, Rupa Viswanath, Nathaniel Roberts, Partha Chatterjee, Anupama Rao, Gautam Bhadra, the late Anjan Ghosh, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, David Ludden, Ravinder Kaur, Mrinalini Sinha, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Ramnarayan S. Rawat, Lisa Mitchell, the late C.A. Bayly, Dilip Menon, Sunil Kumar, Anand Yang, Geraldine Forbes, Neilesh Bose, Subho Basu, Ayesha Jalal, Manas Ray, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Andrew Liu, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Julie Stephens, Johan Mathew, Jnanendranath Haldar, Panchanan Biswas, Dayabati Roy, the late Eleanor Zelliot, Ross Mallick, Karuna Mantena, Rohit De, Arshia Sattar, William H. Sewell Jr., Manoranjan Byapari, Ananta Acharya, Kalyani Thakur, Manohar Mouli Biswas, Amol Boral, Sanjukta Dasgupta Prayer, Binayak Sen, Debjani Bhattacharya, Raj Sekhar Basu, Praskanva Sinharay, A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Kalyan Das, Faisal Devji, David Gilmartin, Suryakant Waghmore, Suraj Yengde, Prakash Kashwan, Sheetal Chhabria, Dickens Leonard, Sumeet Mhaskar, Aditya Nigam, K. Satyanarana, Chinnaiah Jangam, and Aishwary Kumar. As the references to this study bear out, I would be nowhere without the trust and generosity of Jogendranath Mandal’s son, Jagadishchandra Mandal. Mr. Mandal offered me the treasure trove that is his father’s private papers when I arrived in Kolkata for research in 2009, thanks to the introduction of Dilip Halder. I spent several months photographing this truly remarkable collection of materials with Mr. Mandal’s assistance, and passed countless hours discussing various aspects of this history with him. In addition, my research is deeply indebted to the work he personally undertook in compiling a multivolume collection of primary sources on his father’s life (which, tellingly, was refused inclusion at the Kolkata book fair several years ago). I can only hope that this book, a small token of my appreciation, “gets the history right,” and meets his expectations and with his approval. I am very grateful to the staff at the following institutions for their services and assistance: The University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, the National Archives of India, the West Bengal State Archives, the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, the National Library (Kolkata), the West Bengal Central Secretariat Library (Kolkata), the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, the British Library, and the Frost Library at Amherst College. Financial support from the Committee on Southern

xii

Acknowledgments

Asian Studies, the Nicholson Center for British Studies, the Department of History, and the Division of Social Sciences at The University of Chicago enabled my visits to these archives, and along with a Miner D. Crary Fellowship from Amherst College, allowed me to write this book. Translations, unless where indicated, are my own; no doubt objectionably rendered. I thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and thoughtful remarks. Lucy Rhymer has remained supportive and encouraging throughout the publication process, and is the editor every first-time author wishes they had. It is a privilege to have worked with her. I also acknowledge with gratitude the efforts of Anubam Vijayakrishnan, Cassi Roberts, and Lisa Carter, in steering the book through the various stages of production. My thanks to the following two journals for granting me permission to reproduce portions of work initially published with them. I draw on materials contained in D. Sen, “Representation, Education and Agrarian Reform: Jogendranath Mandal and the Nature of Scheduled Caste Politics, 1937–1943,” Modern Asian Studies 48:1, 2014, 77-119; © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission. I have also utilized materials from “No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated: The Scheduled Castes Federation and the Making of Partition in Bengal, 1945–1947,” for this book. The final, definitive version of this paper appeared in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49:3, September 2012, Sage Publishing, all rights reserved. Colleagues in the departments of History and Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College helped make the transition to the professoriate a congenial one. I am especially thankful to Monica Ringer, Trent Maxey, Timothy Van Compernolle, Amrita Basu, Andrew Poe, David Jones, Sheila Jaswal, and Tariq Jaffer, for many conversations and meetings over the years concerning teaching, scholarship, and mentorship. I am also grateful for the presence of the following South Asianist colleagues in the Five College consortium and our various efforts at promoting the study of this region of the world: Svati Shah, Pinky Hota, Nusrat Chowdhury, Maria Heim, Yael Rice, Indira Peterson, Amrita Basu, Ajay Sinha, and Sangeeta Kamat. It has been a pleasure to work in the humane and supportive environment that Amherst College and the Five College consortium fosters. Finally, my thanks to Dipesh, Sumit, Tanika, Andrew, Amrita, Yael, Toussaint, Uday, Rupa, Nate, Arvind, Tariq, Monica and Arshia, for helping me make sense of it all. And necessarily last, yet utmost, my family: Ma, Baba, and Dada; Thammi and Didu; Meredith, Bodhi, and Isha. Mere words are inadequate to the acknowledgment of such relations. I have tried, and the prose fails its task, for their very being constitutes and sustains my own in turn. I dedicate this book to them, with love and appreciation for all that they mean to me.

Introduction: Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

In late 1946, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar turned to Bengal to seek, and ultimately secure, his historic election to the Constituent Assembly of India. Despite being a member of the executive council and the singular spokesman for India’s Dalits over the previous two decades, he was unable to muster support from within his home constituency in the Bombay Presidency and was therefore critically reliant on the work undertaken by activists of his All India Scheduled Castes Federation in eastern India to mobilize the necessary backing.1 Ambedkar’s election from Bengal thus spoke to the considerable power of Dalit political activism in that province at the time, especially since their campaign contended with stiff opposition from a hostile Congress party. Less than two decades later, however, the political terrain presented a stark contrast with the late-colonial moment. Partitioned into West Bengal and East Pakistan, neither territory featured the politics of caste with anywhere near the same degree of prominence. Many have noted this puzzling absence. Writing in 1959, Ram Manohar Lohia, arguably one of the more insightful observers of the intersection of caste and class in modern Indian society, could thus remark on the “somewhat peculiar situation” that obtained in eastern India: “It is commonly supposed that Bengal has no caste politics.”2 The notion that the region transcended such identification found perhaps its most forthright declaration in Communist Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s reply to the Mandal Commission that, as caste was a legacy of feudalism, “viewing the social scene from the casteist angle was no longer relevant for West Bengal.”3 So it was that Kanshi Ram, founder of independent India’s most successful Dalit political party, remarked how its leaders 1 2 3

Dhananjay Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962), 380. D.L. Sheth, “Ram Manohar Lohia on Caste in Indian Politics,” in Ghanshyam Shah (ed.), Caste and Democratic Politics in India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), 114. Government of India, Report of the Backward Classes Commission, First Part, Volumes I and II (New Delhi, 1980), 46.

1

2

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

claim that “there is no casteism in Bengal.”4 Asok Mitra, distinguished civil servant, census commissioner, and secretary to the Government of India, therefore reflected in his memoirs as follows: “There must be something odd about a state which, professedly so secular and antisectarian, has yet not produced a single Jagjivan Ram, Kamaraj, Buta Singh or Rafi Ahmed Kidwai to hold major portfolios.”5 To various commentators, the postcolonial decades seemed to have brought about an uncanny resolution to the caste question in the east. How and why did Dalit political activism go into decline around the Partition of British India and Bengal in 1947, coeval with the resumption of upper-caste domination of society and polity in West Bengal, the Muslim domination of the same in East Pakistan, and the securing of freedom from British colonial rule? This is the question, the historical problem as it were, motivating this book. It presents a problem not only because society in West Bengal was, and remains composed of, one of the largest Dalit populations of any Indian state and yet is subject to enduring perceptions of its alleged castelessness, but also because, as was true elsewhere in late-colonial India, Bengal was indeed home to significant Dalit mobilization, as suggested by Ambedkar’s unlikely route of entry to the constituent assembly. Even as the “silent revolution” unfolded elsewhere in India, what became of Dalit political radicalism in Bengal?6 The principal figure responsible for Ambedkar’s historic election to the constituent assembly of India, Jogendranath Mandal, was born in 1904 to a Namasudra family in Maisterkandi, a village in northern Barisal (or Bakarganj) district in eastern Bengal. He rose to prominence as the most controversial leader of the more politically assertive Scheduled Castes in late colonial Bengal.7 Elected to the first legislative assembly of undivided 4

5 6

7

Kanshi Ram, “Marxists in India: Interview with Illustrated Weekly,” in N. Manohar Prasad (ed.), Views and Interviews of Bahujan Nayak Manyavar Kanshi Ram (Delhi: Gautam Book Centre, 2012), 102. Asok Mitra, Towards Independence, 1940–1947: Memoirs of an Indian Civil Servant (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1991), 87. In using the term “Dalit,” I am, of course, being anachronistic. Yet, I do so not only because this nomenclature is part of contemporary scholarly, activist, and journalistic convention, but because it is the conceptual product of the very struggles about which I write. For various histories of the Namasudras, see Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal, 1872–1937 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi and Company, 1990) and Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947 (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997); A.K. Biswas’ The Namasudras of Bengal; Naresh Chandra Das’ Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh; N.B. Roy’s two-part volume, A People in Distress, Being a Connected Account of the Namas from 1812 A.D. Down to the Present Day Together with a Study of Their Antiquity, Vol. II. (Calcutta: B. Sarkar and Co., 1992), and On the Origin of the Namasudras; and Sumit Sarkar’s Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism, Hindutva, History (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002).

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

3

Bengal following the British colonial grant of provincial autonomy in 1937 as an independent candidate amid noteworthy circumstances, Mandal became the head of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation in Bengal, the political organization founded by Ambedkar, widely acknowledged by then as the preeminent champion of the Dalit cause. In this capacity, he served as a minister in the two Muslim League–controlled governments in undivided Bengal prior to 1947; in the Interim Government of India as a Muslim League nominee; and in the Government of Pakistan till 1950, when he resigned and returned to Calcutta against the backdrop of renewed communal violence. He reemerged as a major, if embattled, figure in the refugee movement of West Bengal, yet he was unable ever to join legislative politics again, despite trying to do so on several occasions before his uncannily timely death in 1968, when he seemed on the verge of mounting a return. A contextualized study of Mandal’s political life and history, straddling as it did both the territorial and temporal divides of Partition and independence, offers a compelling prism through which to examine the seeming abatement of the caste question over the transition from colonial to postcolonial rule. To be sure, I am interested in understanding the reasons for the failure of Mandal’s distinctly Ambedkarite politics as a comment on the specific political-cultural milieu within which it occurred. Although I am by no means seeking to resuscitate a “great man” theory of history, a methodology attuned to the exemplary individual nonetheless contributes meaningful historical insight about the wider contexts in which that life was lived.8 Mandal’s deeper significance surely derives from his leadership within the Scheduled Castes Federation and the Republican Party of India, the foremost attempts at autonomous Dalit political organization in colonial India. Mandal, in short, was Bengal’s response to Ambedkar. There are equally important historiographical reasons for why Mandal is at the center of this account. Histories of caste-subaltern protest have remained fairly limited within the otherwise voluminous scholarship on Bengal of the period, wherein themes of anticolonial nationalism and communalism have received pride of place.9 Accorded a relatively minor role in the pioneering studies of late-nineteenth- to mid8 9

David Nasaw, “AHR Roundtable: Historians and Biography – Introduction,” American Historical Review, 114:3, 577. As Sugata Bose has observed, “In contrast to the literature on other regions of India, subordinate caste critiques of the discourse on unitary Indian nationalism have been seriously addressed by only one historian of Bengal.” Sugata Bose, “Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on the Historiography of Nationalism in Bengal,” in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bengal: Rethinking History; Essays in Historiography (Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 285.

4

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twentieth-century caste politics in Bengal, the depth of historical discussion on Mandal’s place in modern South Asian history pales by comparison to the many volumes of scholarly and activist reflection on his leader and ideological inspiration, Ambedkar, or the innumerable studies of Gandhi. This book thus contributes a case study of the political activities and aspirations of one whom historians seem to have largely ignored in order to understand the curious decline of the caste question over the watershed of Partition and freedom from colonial rule in Bengal. The foregoing effort is directed toward the description and analysis of this historical change using an archive grounded in Mandal’s private papers. Mandal’s historical significance resides in the fact that he gave life to the distinctive and radical strand of Dalit political thought pioneered by Ambedkar, stressing the need for their unity and autonomy from other formations, whether the Indian National Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, or the Muslim League. As founder of the Bengal branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, he galvanized Dalit protest and activism in that region into a more assertive and politicized posture than before, dramatically instantiated by that organization’s mobilization of unprecedented numbers in support of its historic conference in Gopalganj in 1945.10 As the party’s most explicit slogan captured, the Federation demanded the recognition of Scheduled Castes as a “separate political existence” and advocated the formation of a radical Dalit political consciousness. Mandal therefore contradicts the central claim of the extant historical account of caste politics in mid-twentieth-century Bengal: namely, the gradual though unmistakable transition from alienation to integration of Dalit leaders and communities into mainstream Indian nationalism over the course of provincial autonomy. This book undertakes a critical reexamination of this seeming nationalist resolution of the caste question by scrutinizing the processes whereby the ironing out of caste difference was produced and situating Mandal within them. It denaturalizes the self-evidence of Dalit integration by paying attention to how Dalits’ political radicalization was contained. In so doing, it reorients the terms of reference through which Dalit politics in Bengal has been understood, from preoccupations about proximity and integration with Indian nationalism, to an evaluation of the possibilities for and eventual failure of Dalit political power. My concerns are therefore trained at the specific issue of how and why the caste question, 10

See Chapter 3 for an account of this gathering, which drew, by some estimates, in the range of 50,000 people, and was regarded by contemporaries as a landmark event in the history of Dalit movement in the region.

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

5

as formulated by Mandal, eventually found no fertile terrain in the east. Why, could Mandal not speak, or rather, be heard? The historical and contemporary relevance of the matter stems from the fact that wherever such politics has made its presence felt in the legislative institutions of independent India – whether the Republican Party of India or the Bahujan Samaj Party – it has done so under the sign and inspiration of Ambedkar, animated by concerns of Dalit political autonomy.11 An examination of Mandal’s historical trajectory is therefore essential to this endeavor. I thereby share the conceit that it is equally the “spokesman who creates the group” than the other way around.12 As this book will suggest, the eventual failure of his political struggle, following as it did on a remarkably vibrant phase, is an instructive and meaningful one. His exceptionality is precisely what enables this revisionist attempt to tell a crucial chapter in the largely untold story of what Partha Chattopadhyay has called Bengal’s “social counter-revolution.”13 At stake, then, is historical understanding of the occlusion of radical Dalit politics in a region where it seemed to have been far more significant than hitherto believed, and the implications of this occlusion for broader accounts of Dalit politics and postcolonial transition. The study places caste at the center of a regional history in which it has often been seen as marginal, and it places a region generally thought to be of little consequence to the history of caste politics at center stage precisely because of the resounding defeat the Dalit movement eventually experienced there. Such an inquiry, I hope, will be of interest to discussions about the possibilities for such politics both in Bengal and beyond, past and present. 11

12

13

See Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992); Eleanor Zelliot, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Untouchable Movement (New Delhi: Blumoon Books, 2004); Sudha Pai, Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Revolution: The BSP in Uttar Pradesh (New Delhi: Sage, 2002); Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India: From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994); Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Ramnarayan S. Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), for important contributions to the historical study of Dalit politics. “It is because the representative exists, because he represents, that the group that is represented and symbolized exists and that in return it gives existence to its representative as the representative of a group.” Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 204. Partha Chattopadhyay, “Pascimbanglay jati o janajati,” Baromas (saradiya) (Kalakata: publisher not available, 2010), 102.

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The Narrative of Dalit Integration The story of Dalit politics in extant historiography sees their effective merger with Indian nationalist currents over the course of the last decade of colonial rule, following on decades of mutual antagonism. By the late nineteenth century, the Namasudras formed one of the largest caste communities in Bengal, and over the following decades constituted the predominant force of the Dalit movement of the region. Concentrated predominantly within the eastern districts of the province, its members primarily engaged in fishing, boating, and the provision of agrarian labor. Situated within the lower echelons of Bengal’s caste hierarchy and class structure, Namasudras were among the most significant peasant castes of the east, which, although differentiated by subcaste identifications, gradually developed a shared sense of collective identity as land reclamation enabled greater agricultural opportunity and settled community life. Christian missionaries are believed to have established their first contact with Namasudras as early as the seventeenth century, but it was with the Baptist Mission Society of the early nineteenth century that any meaningful engagement emerged. By 1838, their missionaries found reception with Kangali Mahanta, the spiritual leader of the Namasudras in the Barisal locale, who agreed to be baptized, along with 115 of his disciples, to the Christian faith. The trend progressed despite persecution from orthodox Hindus.14 A mid-nineteenth-century Baptist missionary, Rev. J.C. Page, noted that although the chandals (as Namasudras were then known, in customarily derogatory address) were “despised by the brahmin, and oppressed by the Zemindar,” some among them were at the same time “gaining possessions, aspiring to knowledge, and rising to a kind of respectability.”15 Such aspirations toward social mobility likely prompted the first recorded mass agitation by Namasudras in 1872, in a “general strike” resolving not to serve any among the upper classes and castes “unless a better position among the Hindus castes than what they at present occupy was given to them.”16 Over the following decades, the leadership of the Namasudra Matua sect, engagement with Australian Baptist missionaries, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the colonial state all shaped Namasudra subject formation and activism in varying degrees. Although they adopted emulatory practices broadly comparable to what the 14 15 16

J. Reid, “Baptist Missionary Societies’ Work Among the Outcastes of India,” in G.E. Phillips, The Outcastes’ Hope (London: 1912), 139–142. M. Wylie, Bengal as a Field of Missions (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1854), 103. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Volume V (London: Trubner and Co., 1875), 285.

The Narrative of Dalit Integration

7

sociologist M.N. Srinivas once termed sanskritization, these nonetheless coexisted with gravitation toward missionary figures such as the Australian Baptist C.S. Mead, and, through his intercession, an active allegiance toward the British colonial administration. Their self-assertion thus bore a resemblance to features of caste-subaltern movements elsewhere in India: resistance and opposition to the discrimination and exploitation of upper-castes, advocacy of changes in caste nomenclature with a view to self-respect, the production of histories claiming a once exalted but now degraded status, a stress on acquiring cultural and social capital through formal education, the emergence of a caste public through print-capitalist journalism, the rise of associational life through public meetings and conferences, and the efforts of a moderately expanding, though nonetheless slender, tier of legal professionals, government servants, students, and businessmen invested in the opportunities to be had of colonial political and economic institutions.17 Even as a pronounced loyalism toward the colonial order was a marked feature of their politics, this contrasted sharply with Namasudra leaders’ indifference and resentment toward upper-caste nationalist preoccupations for more than the first half-century of their movement. This was true of every major turning point in negotiations with the colonial government, from the Swadeshi movement of the first decade of the century through to the Quit India movement in the early 1940s. Namasudra antipathy to Indian nationalism was rooted in the fundamental oppositions constituting their social and political relations with the upper-castes. Although various observers, foreign, Indian, and Bengali, noted the comparatively relaxed stringency of norms and practices of untouchability in the region, the essential conceptual and practical core of casteism remained untouched and grounded in the social intercourse between Namasudra and upper-castes.18 Nationalist social reformist efforts at the “social uplift” of those they considered their inferiors – ranging from temple entry, to staged demonstration of intercaste commensality, or self-driven philanthropy – were thus prompted by the concern to demonstrate a certain upper-caste liberalism. Indeed, the reformist critique of untouchability undoubtedly posited radical implications from the vantage of Brahminical conservatism. Yet, as meaningful as these symbolic gestures of outreach might have been within limited contexts – which primarily consisted of scripted ceremonies of violating norms of untouchability – they never amounted to more than the lip 17 18

Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh, 31–51. See “Appendix to Chapter XI,” “Caste to-day: Its influence and tendencies towards amalgamation or fusion,” and “Appendix I – The depressed classes,” in the 1931 Bengal census for an overview of the specific nature of caste discrimination in the region.

8

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

service paid by the reform-minded among them. That lip service nevertheless paled in comparison with the kinds of rights and privileges conferred by the colonial state, and did little to undercut the systemic and everyday casteism of Bengali society. Indeed, the Swadeshi movement’s leaders and activists were often “hostile or indifferent to the aspirations of peasants and tenants,” the vast majority of whom were Dalits and Muslims.19 Bhadrolok nationalists’ failure to mobilize them in their cause to reunite their province, torn asunder by British colonial fiat, was unavoidably related to the “vast ocean” that separated them from the majority of the people in the province.20 The editor of the Modern Review could thus flatly remark as late as 1909, when the peak of this first major upsurge against colonial rule had passed: “The Brahmo Samaj has long been pleading theoretically but not much in practice for the elevation of the depressed classes on religious and humanitarian grounds. Swami Vivekananda has also done so theoretically. But in Bengal no indigenous agency has done anything practical to raise their condition.”21 As such lessons registered, the upper-caste bhadrolok gradually came to grasp the problem posed by their prejudices and indeed, expressed great anxiety against the backdrop of census classifications about growing Muslim clout on the one hand, and hints of separatist tendencies among Dalits on the other. U.N. Mukherji’s influential and symptomatic 1909 tract, Hindus – A Dying Race, for instance, illustrated how upper-caste Hindu social reformers and political leaders became increasingly concerned about the caste fissures that marked their imagined Hindu community. As Pradip Kumar Datta has shown, over the first two decades of the century: “. . . prompted by the census and their self-activity, the low castes provided a major source of anxiety for their caste superiors. To a great extent, the antagonism against the Muslims was shaped by the fear that the low castes would sever themselves from the rubric of Hinduism.”22 Such anxieties informed the spate of largely staged measures over the following two decades to endear Dalits to the causes of Indian and Hindu 19

20 22

Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010), xiv. The social category “bhadrolok,” literally translated as “respectable people,” was perhaps at one time closely associated with upper-caste Hindus alone (that is, Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Baidyas). However, it gradually changed in its meaning over the course of the twentieth century to refer to those who had acquired a certain degree of refinement, education, and “culture,” irrespective of social origin, thus including many of the socalled middle castes. It would nonetheless be inaccurate to state that the majority of bhadrolok in the period under study were not of the upper-castes. Ibid., xiv. 21 “The Elevation of Namasudras,” Modern Review 5:2, 1909, 275–76. Pradip Kumar Datta, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 47.

The Narrative of Dalit Integration

9

nationalism, which predominantly showcased upper-caste individuals’ willingness to touch and be touched by those they considered untouchable. Joya Chatterji’s study of Hindu communalism and its role in the making of Partition in Bengal drew these efforts into focus by showing how upper-castes’ concern to secure Hindu unity turned on inducing Dalits into their political movements over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. Undertaken primarily by the Hindu Mahasabha, their rhetoric of shuddhi (purification) and sangathan (consolidation) resonated with Dalit aspirations for higher status within the caste order. In contrast to earlier decades of recalcitrance when faced with bhadrolok overtures, Chatterji did not find “much contemporary evidence to suggest that the Scheduled Castes resisted this drive to bundle them into the ‘Hindu Community’” in the cases she studied.23 This meeting of minds then was certainly a significant shift, even if it remained tethered to the terms of caste hierarchy. As she clarified, “. . . in fact a radical critique of the caste system formed no part of the programme and ideology of the Hindu Sabhas.”24 The increasing responsiveness of Dalits to the Hindu nationalist agenda of the Bengal Congress and Mahasabha and their affiliated social organizations found explicit confirmation in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s studies of the Namasudras. Bandyopadhyay showed how after more than a half-century of what he termed “alienation,” both the masses and leadership of this caste community finally “integrated” into the dominant currents of Indian nationalism, the cumulative result of decades of persuasive nationalist outreach, anticolonial sentiment, and the heightened communal tensions and polarization of the time. This was illustrated most dramatically in his analysis of the results of the 1946 elections, which saw the vast majority of Dalit members of the legislative assembly emerge as supporters of the Congress, an indication of their “merger into the Indian, predominantly Hindu, nation, as represented by the Congress-Mahasabha combine . . .”25 In his view, Ambedkar’s and Mandal’s Federation was marginalized due to its own inadequacies, and their politics supposedly lost meaning on account of Ambedkar’s subsequent collaboration with the Congress. By mid-1947 the “appropriation of the [sic] Scheduled Caste politics by the Congress was now complete . . .”26 The Namasudra leadership therefore “conveniently integrated into the dominant political structure in the country . . .”27 We are given to believe that nationalist hegemony over Dalits was at long last secured largely through means of persuasion, in remarkable 23 24 27

Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 197. Ibid., 198. 25 Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity, 236. 26 Ibid., 208. Ibid., 208.

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Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

testimony to its ideological appeal and accommodative embrace. As Bandyopadhyay described, the Dalit leadership “found it more convenient to merge into the political mainstream and integrate into the nation, which had always been their ultimate goal, the separatist rhetorics [sic] notwithstanding.”28 Such explanations rested, ultimately, on what may be regarded as a theory of Dalit conformism and accommodationism. In this Srinivasian imagination of caste society, “. . . people, even among the most exploited untouchables, would prefer to conform to [sic] dominant cultural ethos of the society and desire to be integrated into it.”29 Protest itself was understood to be couched in terms of existing cultural idioms. “Integration” was born of a seemingly intrinsic Dalit receptivity to nationalist persuasion. This book departs from this narrative of consensual integration to which historiography tends; despite points of convergence, there is much in the forthcoming pages that cannot be reconciled with its central thrust. As an early, discerning reviewer observed: “. . . Bandyopadhyay overestimates the degree of upward caste mobility in Bengal and underestimates the extent of real cleavage, exploitation and caste oppression.”30 G.K. Lieten elaborated that he was “. . . imprudent in his indictment of the British colonial administration . . .” and noted “. . . some tendency to overstate the reach of government policies . . . and a tendency to understate the citadel mentality of the upper-caste Hindus in not granting any of the privileges to the members of the other Indian nation.”31 Lieten’s review suggested that the too-great emphasis on integration and mutuality was insufficiently mindful of some rather significant differences. In a related vein, though a more specific context, Sumit Sarkar’s reading of Mahananda Haldar’s Sri Sri Guruchandcharit, one of the most important Namasudra literary texts of the century, conveyed far too many tensions to indicate “any seamless transition from alienation to integration.”32 Sarkar believed there was far too much anti-upper-castenationalist sentiment in the text, for instance, to justify such an interpretation. Likewise, his pointing to the significance of the continued support that Namasudra members of the legislative assembly extended to the Muslim League ministry in spite of the Bengal famine in 1943 indicated further difficulties with such a formulation.33 In another study of how 28 31 32 33

Ibid., 242. 29 Ibid., 10. 30 Ibid. G.K. Lieten, “Mandalisation under British Rule in Bengal,” Economic and Political Weekly 26:25, 1534. Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames, 75. Ibid., 77. M.A.H. Ispahani thus noted the “record number of Scheduled Caste voting on any side” about the so-called Food Debate in five years of provincial autonomy in a letter to M.A. Jinnah. See Z.H. Zaidi (ed.), M.A. Jinnah Ispahani Correspondence, 1936–1948 (Karachi: Forward Publications Trust, 1976), 361.

Reframing Dalit Politics in Late and Postcolonial Bengal

11

Dalit aspirations were received, Sarkar noted “major difficulties of incorporation,” suggesting “the presence of others histories not neatly encapsulable within the narratives of anti-colonial nationalism or religious communities that have dominated historiography on the whole.”34 Such skepticism about the integrity of Indian and Hindu nationalism, to be sure, informs my own analysis. As we shall see, the relations between Dalits and Indian nationalists remained far more fraught and contested than accounts of their integration appear to suggest. Reframing Dalit Politics in Late and Postcolonial Bengal This book argues that Mandal’s efforts to bring about Dalit political selfdetermination were systematically undermined by the upper-caste bhadrolok political classes. This is an aspect of their relations – the manifold coercions, both subtle and overt, required to regain and sustain uppercaste domination over the transition to postcolonial rule – that has not elicited as much discussion as it deserves and remains veiled in analyses of Dalit integration. In my reading, the upper-caste bhadrolok leaders of Bengal, whether of the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, or the Left, desired the defeat of Mandal’s bid for an independent Dalit voice in politics, mobilized their organizations to that effect at various critical junctures, and prevented his entry to legislative politics in postcolonial West Bengal in spite of his repeated attempts over the first two decades of India’s independence to seek political office. Perhaps most revealing, he died under suspicious circumstances while on the campaign trail, when he seemed on the verge of orchestrating his return to the world of legislative politics; his death regarded an assassination by relatives and acquaintances alike. We must include the considerable evidence of upper-caste resistance to his efforts to seek Dalit political power in historical explanations for the decline of the caste question. Regarding upper-caste Bengal’s hostility to Mandal’s politics thus offers renewed clarity on the purported castelessness of the region’s political discourse. The implication is not that upper-caste bhadrolok nationalists and their communist descendants acted solely out of a lack of empathy, but that theirs were agendas particularly averse to Ambedkarite critique, resting as they did on ultimately supremacist assumptions. It was as though the capacity to recognize the Dalit as a specifically political subject did not, rather, could not, exist. Mandal’s Ambedkarism was thus a possibility quite consciously foreclosed at the dawn of freedom from colonial rule. Bengal’s acclaimed castelessness was 34

Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 360.

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Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

not the consequence of any intrinsic nationalistic unfolding, nor merely contingent circumstance alone, but the result of concerted efforts by upper-caste elites to contain autonomous Dalit political organization. As with historians of caste-subaltern movements elsewhere in India, I believe there is much to be gained from reframing the understanding of Dalit politics, away from being merely instrumentalist identitarianism propped up by a vindictive colonial state, to being demands expressing the struggle for recognition.35 Engaging a wide range of interpersonal and social relationships, theorists of recognition assume the Hegelian trope that self-identity is a process dependent on the responses of others, and society more generally; and that struggles for recognition ensue from the experience of misrecognition, or the violation of the identity of subjects, as in movements against various forms of discrimination and prejudice, whether of race, gender, class, sexuality, or, indeed, caste. Akin to, and anticipating in interesting ways, the political activities of the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and onward, Dalit politics marked interventions in what Axel Honneth has called the recognition order, or the epoch-specific grammar of social justice and injustice of late-colonial and postcolonial Bengal.36 That is to say, far from being the unintended afterthought of colonial governmentality or the product of the colonial state’s pandering to the spoiled children of British imperialism in an effort to encourage fissiparous tendencies, Dalit demands during provincial autonomy and their institutionalization in the constitution were a politics of recognition for the overcoming of social injustices informed by the possibilities and constraints of the midcentury political-economic order. As with other movements against discrimination, Dalit politics connoted struggle over the very grammar of social justice, and articulated demands concerning matters of both political identity and economy. In that sense, these were politics simultaneously of recognition and redistribution. It is in the following sense, then, that I suggest that the decline of the caste question in Bengal was shaped by the upper-caste misrecognition of Dalit politics: it was their historical refusal of the very possibility that the inequalities of Hindu society find specifically political expression and resolution – misrecognition, in that all the upper-caste bhadrolok saw in Dalits was fodder for their own ideologies. Dalits speaking for themselves 35

36

See Dipesh Chakrabarty, “History and the Politics of Recognition,” in Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alun Munslow (eds.), Manifestos for History (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 77–86, for a reflection on how such politics impact the disciplinary norms of historywriting. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003), 250.

Reframing Dalit Politics in Late and Postcolonial Bengal

13

and organizing their own politics, as Mandal advocated, constituted a kind of cognitive dissonance, and got lumped as mere “communalism,” in pale mimicry of the Muslim League. Put in Honneth’s terms, both upper-caste nationalism and communism in Bengal sought to mold the recognition order such that the very claim-making potential, or the expectation of recognition that Mandal sought to inculcate, was warped and undermined.37 I do not intend this statement in any simplistic manner. The implications of Honneth’s recognition theory for the very possibility of moral-political conviction and the formation of social movements is as follows, and helps clarify the conditions of possibility for political mobilization around casteinequality: “. . . the injustice of disrespect does not inevitably have to reveal itself but merely can . . . Empirically, whether the cognitive potential inherent in feeling hurt or ashamed becomes a moral-political conviction depends above all on how the affected subject’s cultural-political environment is constructed: only if the means of articulation of a social movement are available can the experience of disrespect become a source of motivation for acts of political resistance”.38 Seen in this light, Mandal’s was the effort to shape Bengal’s political culture such that Dalit experience of upper-caste disrespect could find expression in a social movement, i.e., he sought to provide a “means of articulation” in an independent Dalit platform. This was precisely what the upper-castes opposed in their reaction to his call for Dalit self-determination. Their misrecognition, ultimately, implied the commitment to an ideology that sought to deny Dalits political subjectivity; as in Nancy Fraser’s influential formulation, to misrecognize is in effect to refuse another the status of a full partner in social interaction, preventing participation as peers in social life due to institutionalized patterns of interpretation in which they are constituted as comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem.39 The foregoing analysis therefore illustrates the role of upper-caste misrecognition in the decline of the caste question by showing how Bengal’s upper-caste political leadership perceived in Dalits a community to be mobilized solely according to their own ideological dictates and yet were simultaneously opposed to those, such as Mandal and the Federation, who sought to consolidate Dalit political unity and 37

38 39

Rupa Viswanath has recently drawn attention to a comparable refusal in the context of Tamil country during dyarchy in The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion and the Social in Modern India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 218–39. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 138–39. My emphases. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3 (2000): http://newleftreview .org/II/3/nancy-fraser-rethinking-recognition

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Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

politicize the social injustices they endured. For Indian and Hindu nationalists, an independent Dalit political movement of the kind envisioned by Mandal and Ambedkar was unthinkable, as the very subject of such mobilizations did not exist within the horizon of their political imagination. The Scheduled Castes, as Sarat Chandra Bose, one of the most prominent leaders of the Bengal and Indian National Congress once disclosed, were an “entity so artificial and unreal that no better label could be attached to it.”40 The position is especially significant if contrasted with Bose’s sympathies for the “forgotten majority,” the Muslims of Bengal. In the upper-caste mind, Muslims attained legitimacy as a political subject while Dalits did not.41 The latter were a fictive entity to be represented, incapable of representing themselves. In such disavowals of Dalit existence, Bose typified an attitude common to both the Bengali right and left, an example more generally of the reluctance of anticolonial elites to acknowledging, much less addressing, the fault lines within their own societies that posed difficulties for their preferred political agendas. The sidelining and managing of caste in political discourse was thus closely bound to the upper-caste bhadrolok project to resecure and consolidate their dominance under the guise of Hindu nationalist unity, which, having come under considerable stress over the course of the 1930s and 1940s due to the democratization of late-colonial government, necessitated the silencing of any opposition from within the Hindu fold.42 For upper-caste votaries of Indian and Hindu nationalism in Bengal, there was an added and peculiar urgency to wringing compliance from the Dalit leadership over the course of provincial autonomy, for this was one of the few means by which Muslim claims to political selfdetermination could be countered. Theirs was a unique predicament when compared with other regions of late-colonial India. Mandal thereby presented an especially irksome problem in such a context. As this book will show, not only was the quest for nationalist hegemony over Dalits critically reliant on various extra-legal and coercive measures, but the emotive appeals to Hindu nationalist unity during the late-colonial period culminated after Partition and independence not in the promised social equality, but in upper-caste dominance, following the late-colonial interlude of “Congress in decline.” In so denaturalizing the self-evidence of 40 41 42

Sarat Chandra Bose, “Letter to A.K. Fazlul Huq, dated June 12, 1939,” Sarat Chandra Bose Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: Sarat Bose Academy, 1982), 270–71. I owe this comparative insight to conversations with Dipesh Chakrabarty. The best introduction to the subject remains John Gallagher, “Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930–39,” in John Gallagher et al. (eds.), Locality Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics, 1870–1940 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

Reframing Dalit Politics in Late and Postcolonial Bengal

15

Bengal’s renowned castelessness, I seek to show how Dalit acquiescence was actively produced and just how considered and “thinking” were the efforts to subdue their radicalization. The partitioning of Bengal and freedom from colonial rule in 1947 – regarded as the accomplishment of Hindu communalism in historiographical common sense – was thus in important respects a peculiarly uppercaste endeavor, as the divide served their material and political interests far more convincingly than it did those of the province’s Dalits. Their numbers were ironically marshaled to bolster claims about an allegedly united Hindu demand for a Hindu homeland within the territory of India; yet such solidarities were conveniently cast aside after Partition as hundreds of thousands of “Hindu brethren” were forcibly removed from the territory of West Bengal on the plea of insufficiency of land; the constitutional rights of Dalits went systematically ignored, and the political process seemed designed to thwart the reemergence of aspirations to Dalit self-determination in West Bengal. Bengal’s upper-caste leaders, in short, achieved the muffling of Dalit politics over the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial periods. They refused the formation of social consensus required to perceive the consequences of bhadrolok casteism as an “historical wound.”43 I substantiate these propositions through the description and analysis of their various activities and attitudes in response to the Dalit assertion that sought to paper over the central fracture in the Hindu body politic, documented at length in this book: their profound discomfort with, and intransigence toward, the very category of exceptional citizenship that “Scheduled Caste” identified, their persistent subversion of the kinds of governmental rationality required for even a nominal observance of constitutional morality with respect to the numerical strength of Dalits in censuses, their fabrications of Dalit support for their own agendas, their sustained opposition to Dalit autonomy – best exemplified in their considered efforts to defeat Mandal and the Federation prior to Partition and the Republican Party of India thereafter – their forced removal of Dalit refugees beyond the state of West Bengal, the deliberate subversion of reservations policies over the first two decades of postcolonial rule, and, of utmost consequence, their role in Mandal’s effective political exile and suspected murder. In each of these cases, Mandal’s and his colleagues’ ambitions to secure political and social justice for Dalits were met with a peculiar refusal that was itself ultimately rooted in a complex failure of perception. The relative quiescence over the caste question in postcolonial West Bengal should pose no surprise if one regards the depth and 43

Chakrabarty, “History and the Politics of Recognition,” 77–80.

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Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

history of upper-caste opposition to Mandal’s bid for Dalit selfdetermination. Far from having rested primarily on the persuasions of Indian nationalism, the depoliticization of caste required negating the Ambedkarite possibility through powerful interventions in a variety of legal, political, electoral, and administrative institutions that effectively preempted the question of Dalit consent. Bengal’s castelessness was thus born of coercions intrinsic to upper-caste misrecognition. I have settled on such an interpretation in part because I share the unease that Sumit Sarkar, among many others, has registered with the tendency to regard the entire colonial era in terms of a simple dichotomy: “imperialism-colonialism on the one hand, and the growing strength of anti-colonial sentiments and aspirations of the Indian people on the other.”44 He adds that such framing occludes from view dimensions of the past “that do not neatly fit this paradigm. Even when we do not ignore the recalcitrant features entirely, we tend to look at them in a particular way: in terms of their contribution or otherwise to anti-colonial nationalism.”45 Elsewhere, Sarkar has remarked on the difficulty of accommodating within the framework of much postcolonial historiography “sympathetic evaluations of many movements for women’s rights and lower-caste protests, for these have often utilized aspects of colonial policies and Western ideologies as resources, and even on occasion presented noticeably ‘loyalist’ or ‘anti-nationalist’ images of themselves.”46 Such observations continue to carry weight. Mandal’s and his colleagues’ criticisms about nationalist interference in the very working of latecolonial and postcolonial government in turn, as well as the deeper logic to their demands, trouble historiographical sensibilities that have organized modern South Asian history between colonizer and colonized. There is much material in the following pages about the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s ability to decisively subvert governmental rationalities with respect to the size of the Dalit population, manipulate the selection of their elected representatives, or limit the proportion of them entitled to government employment, for instance, that sits uneasily with the views of scholars who privilege the impact of British colonial governmental practices on the historical constitution of political identities in modern South Asia, at the expense of consideration of how the actual life of indigenous 44 46

Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, xiv. 45 Ibid., xv. Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 359. The difficulty, one imagines, stems from the tendency to understand the formation of analytical categories in terms of their colonial, European, and thus, for some, suspect provenance. The stress in understanding modern casteism or communalism has thus tended to fall on their gestation in colonial constructs of Indian society, rather than actual contestations between historical actors.

Reframing Dalit Politics in Late and Postcolonial Bengal

17

social wars played as much, if not greater, determining role. The Federation’s effort, as the title of one of its pamphlets announced, was a “freedom struggle” or mukti sangram directed against the very forces that assumed the lead in liberating India from British rule. The irony should not go lost. My concern to attend to the ruptures marking undifferentiated categories, such as the colonized, thus builds on recent historical scholarship on Dalit movements in other parts of India that have significantly nuanced understanding of what colonial rule entailed and enabled.47 Anupama Rao’s study of their mobilizations in colonial and postcolonial western India for instance centered on “caste subalterns . . . who transformed conceptions of nation, citizenship, and political rights by working within, rather than outside, state institutions. Their conceptions of power, like their desire for rights derived from colonial liberalism, yet enabled Dalits to step outside the suffocating embrace of a cultural nationalism dominated by upper-caste elites.”48 In a related vein, Ramnarayan S. Rawat has suggested that the central dichotomy between colonialism and nationalism in modern Indian historiography has “contributed to the failure to acknowledge the role of Chamars and Dalits as historical subjects.”49 Rupa Viswanath’s study of the “pariahs” of Tamil country likewise intimated the interruption indeed, the collapsing of the colonial binary by illuminating how both colonizer and colonized worked to contain the “problem” they identified.50 My own joins these studies in suggesting the analytical difficulties with privileging a rule of colonial difference in the historical analysis of caste in modern India. Yet whereas Rao and Rawat gestured at the continued unfolding, deepening, and becoming of such activism in high political and other domains during the early decades of postcolonial governance in what became Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, one sees quite the opposite in the east. In thus proposing the peculiar significance of upper-caste power to this comparative silence over caste in West Bengal, however, my intention is not to deny agency to Dalit historical actors, as might easily be misconstrued, nor to minimize the force of domination elsewhere in India. As laudable as efforts to recover agency undeniably are, it seems equally necessary to take note of the very many constraints placed on the 47

48 49 50

See the introduction in Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana (eds.), Dalit Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), for an overview of how scholarship concerning Dalits has changed in recent decades. Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 11. Ramnarayan S. Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 190. Viswanath, The Pariah Problem, 240–58.

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Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

same, to acknowledge the staggering array of forces determining the very capacity to act. This is why I argue that the exercise of specifically Dalit political agency was itself circumscribed to begin with due to the unique imperatives of recovering upper-caste dominance. By telling the story of this gradual defeat of Dalit politics, I wish to demonstrate how uppercaste power and coercion conditioned the very possibility of political articulation in Bengal in ways every bit as consequential and determining as colonial power and knowledge. Mandal’s effective containing is powerful testament to this phenomenon. It is the historical objection to his variety of politics in particular that is revealing. In so arguing, I hope this study contributes to what Satish Deshpande has called a “biography of the ‘general category’” through a focus on Mandal’s engagements with them, and invites attention to this dimension of Bengal’s political history – the upper-caste regulation of Dalit political possibility – for wider consideration and comparison.51 This book seeks to dereify the supposed castelessness of Bengal through a study of what happened to Mandal and his politics. Such is the case as I write within a field of historical scholarship long preoccupied with questions of subalternity. Thus far, however, the subalternity of Dalit politics and the caste question in postcolonial West Bengal has not drawn the kind of extended engagement it justly deserves. Elite among subalterns, yet subaltern among elites, Mandal and the Federation seem to belong to that tier of historical subjects whom history has largely passed by. Mine is an attempt to make sense of how and why, in their time, they could not be heard despite making every effort to speak. The Narrative and Argument This history develops both thematically and chronologically and is bookended by the years 1932 and 1968, which, in addition to standing for dramatic upheavals they witnessed in Bengal’s politics, also dovetail fairly neatly with Mandal’s coming of age and his demise. Each chapter covers a fairly distinct phase in his career, and shifts conceptual and thematic focus accordingly. As we shall see, Mandal’s career left posterity an archival trail of engagements that cut across carefully delineated themes of historical scholarship – anti-caste radicalism, communalism, nationalism, Partition, constitutional law, the refugee movement, and the silent revolution – a witness to the complexity of one lived experience between Swadeshi and Naxalbari. 51

Satish Deshpande, “Caste and Castelessness: Towards a Biography of the ‘General Category,’” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No. 15, April 2013, 32–37.

The Narrative and Argument

19

The first, by way of introduction to the historical context of the early 1930s, explores the upper-caste reaction against various reforms concerning Dalit civil and political right, and situates Mandal against this wider background. It explores the congealing of upper-caste misrecognition of the kinds of exceptional measures that Dr. Ambedkar and other Dalit leaders advocated to secure their communities’ political representation and participation in public life through an analysis of debates concerning several of the most prominent reforms of the time: the Communal Award, the Poona Pact, and the Temple Entry Bill. In contrast to the terse polarization in high politics between upper-caste and Dalit representatives, however, the chapter shows how Mandal began his career in the legislative assembly against the grain of such fissures, largely sanguine about the prospects for nationalist unity. The man who would become Bengal’s most committed Ambedkarite thus emerged into provincial politics molded by impeccably nationalist sensibilities. The second chapter focuses on the gradual withering of Mandal’s nationalist sympathies over the first half-decade of provincial autonomy as he came to realize that the leaders of the Bengal Congress and Hindu Mahasabha were unwilling to recognize Dalit demands, which comprised matters of communal representation in government services, educational privileges, and agrarian reform. In contrast to the tendency to evaluate such concerns as limited and narrow identitarianism, I show how they articulated a politics of recognition necessarily sensitive to issues of redistribution. The chapter explores why these were frustrated through a sustained examination of Mandal’s and his colleagues’ interventions in legislative assembly debate and his efforts at public service. As we shall see, his eventual disillusionment with the Congress and Mahasabha was born of his experience with their leaders’ refusal of Dalit demands, prompting his search for a politically autonomous organization. The third chapter charts the emergence and development of Mandal’s Bengal branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, illustrating the challenge it posed to Hindu and Indian nationalist parties through its alliance with the Muslim League, and suggests the organization represented a far more significant force than we have been given to believe. The chapter elaborates on the stakes of the Federation’s emphasis on Dalit political autonomy – the demand for recognition as a “separate political existence” – and what Mandal attempted to accomplish as a minister in the Government of Bengal in this regard. By contrasting two important conferences organized by the Hindu Mahasabha and the Federation, respectively, the chapter draws into view the mounting confrontation between the former’s efforts at Hindu consolidation and the latter’s espousal of Dalit self-determination, thereby clarifying the burden

20

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

of the Federation’s appeal for Dalit support and political autonomy. In squarely challenging Hindu communalism, the Federation exposed the fissures and weaknesses of that project, even as its emergence suggested the growing momentum and radicalization of Dalit politics in the province. The fourth and pivotal chapter documents how the crisis of legitimacy that befell the Federation was shaped by the Congress’ deliberate attempts to marginalize that party in the critically important 1946 election, to determine its outcome with respect to Dalit representatives, as well as a consequence of the unprecedented violence between Hindus and Muslims that overshadowed the last two years of British colonial rule. Through a close consideration of Mandal’s and the Federation’s activities during these two crucial years, the chapter reinterprets Partition and the transfer of power as a moment that spelled a certain defeat of their struggle for recognition, despite their historic accomplishment of Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal. It is here that I examine the fraught processes – ranging from electoral violence and bribery to outright fabrication and the manufacturing of consent – whereby Dalits’ so-called “integration” and their support for Partition was produced, and the implications of this territorial division for Mandal’s and the Federation’s future. The chapter shows how Hindu nationalist hegemony over Dalits relied on a range of coercions during the penultimate years of British colonial rule. The turn to Hindu communalism, the focus of so much regional historiography, thus appears a far more compromised and unstable phenomenon when viewed from the perspective of Mandal’s Federation. The fifth and transitional chapter adopts a dual focus on Mandal’s tenure as the most senior Dalit and Hindu minister in the Government of Pakistan and his attempts to ensure the security of both Dalits and caste Hindus, on the one hand, as well as an examination of how the leaders of the Congress in West Bengal were disposed toward the constitutionality and implementation of Dalit rights on the other. Focused on the immediate aftermath of Partition and independence, it shows how, while Mandal’s vision of Dalit and Muslim cooperation was comprehensively betrayed by his Muslim League counterparts – not only with respect to the legal recognition of Dalits in Pakistan but also in their enabling an atmosphere of complete and utter insecurity for Dalits and upper-caste Hindus alike – in West Bengal the Congress reneged on late-colonial assurances about equity for and inclusion of their communities once national freedom was won. Mandal’s resignation from the Government of Pakistan and subsequent seeking for refuge in Calcutta in 1950 thus confirmed his apprehensions on Partition’s eve of its catastrophic

The Narrative and Argument

21

consequences for Dalits in undivided Bengal, even as public opinion on both sides of the border saw in his resignation vindication of their respective nationalisms. His belief in the possibility of Dalit and Muslim unity was ultimately sorely disappointed by the political leadership of Pakistan and the rising anti-Dalit violence in its eastern wing. The sixth chapter documents the Congress’ equally comprehensive departure from promises extended prior to 1947 that refugees from East Pakistan would be rehabilitated within West Bengal by studying Mandal’s role in the refugee movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his efforts to stall their forced removal of Dalit refugees beyond the boundaries of the state. It attends to Mandal’s seeking their rehabilitation and charts the gradual weakening of his will and ability to prevent their coerced eviction beyond the boundaries of West Bengal. The chapter reflects on the deeper meaning that Mandal and many who struggled alongside him assigned to what was in effect an expulsion, and suggests the consequences of such dispersal for the possibility of reconstituting Dalit politics in that state. From Mandal’s vantage, the effective banishing of Namasudra refugees from the territory of West Bengal to locations throughout the union of India essentially served to diminish the strength of the Dalit population within the state, striking at the very basis of political mobilization: territorial majority. The final chapter centers on Mandal’s attempts to highlight grievances about the Congress’ administration of reservations in government employment and educational institutions in West Bengal, as well as his repeatedly unsuccessful efforts over the last decade and a half of his life to seek election to the legislative bodies of West Bengal and India. While the persistent underrepresentation of Dalits in government suggested pervasive institutionalized discrimination and undermining of constitutional rights, especially when compared with other regions of the country, Mandal’s perplexing incapacitation indicated the depth of opposition to one with staunchly Ambedkarite leanings. Mandal attempted to join his concerns with the concerns of those who, in the decades to come, would define the course of West Bengal’s political history, the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Yet, we shall see how, even with this party, which claimed to have the interests of West Bengal’s agrarian masses at heart, Mandal found its upper-caste leadership to be dishonest and deceptive in its dealings with him. His political subdual, as well as the serendipitous timing and suspicious manner of his death, would prove useful to an ascendant communist political regime that was as hostile to his politics as the Congress before them. The Dalit movement in Bengal, of which Mandal was in certain senses at the helm in the mid-1940s, succumbed at different junctures and for

22

Rethinking Castelessness in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal

a variety of reasons to the religious majoritarianism of both Indian and Pakistani nationalism. While Mandal’s and the Federation’s aspirations for Dalit political autonomy were overwhelmed by the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s opposition to the very idea, his attempt to forge an alliance with the Muslim League failed spectacularly in independent Pakistan following a brief span of success during the last years of undivided Bengal. Yet, over the course of the majority of his adult life and certainly for much of the first two decades of postcolonial rule, Mandal reserved the bulk of his critique for the upper-caste leaders with whose various organizations he sought to accommodate his own political ambitions, only to find them wanting. In considerable measure, Mandal’s wariness about nationalist and communist designs on Dalits has found vindication, as data indicating the prevalence of caste discrimination and its material realities or their continued exclusion from positions of substantial authority in West Bengal amply demonstrate. It is perhaps no surprise that the last time Dalit power had any independent political presence was during the late colonial period. The depoliticization of caste – Bengal’s castelessness – was quite simply the logical consequence of upper-caste political desire, whether of liberal, conservative, or radical tendencies. What is gained by focusing on a figure such as Mandal should not obscure the fact that, set against available narratives of Bengal’s political history, his concerns, and those of many on whose behalf he spoke, were indeed marginal, and certainly inconvenient. But to those actually involved in mounting a challenge to the edifice of upper-caste supremacy and its manifestation in their lives, they were of absolute significance. By inviting scholarly attention to this angle of vision I thus hope to offer an historical account of what, to invoke the analytical spirit of Ambedkar’s famous critique, Bengal and the bhadrolok have done to Mandal. For Mandal represented the foremost possibility and potential for the development of a radical Dalit politics in eastern India. This is one of the fundamental premises on which this book rests, just as surely as it assumes the necessity of reckoning with histories that trouble some of the more cherished sanctimonies of upper-caste nationalism, whether in its liberal, conservative, or more radical manifestations.

1

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste, and Provincial Autonomy, 1932–1937

When the Communal Award of 1932 provided separate electorates for both Muslims and Dalits in the elections to the first legislative assemblies in the provinces of colonial India, the upper-caste leaders of Bengal buried their many significant political differences to unite in protest of a measure that would reduce their representatives to a minority in the contemplated legislative assembly. The Poona Pact later that year, an agreement forced on B.R. Ambedkar and other Dalit leaders by M.K. Gandhi’s “fast unto death” against the separate electorates for those communities, only enraged them further as it increased the number of seats allocated to the Depressed Classes in a joint electorate, thereby further reducing the number for which they were eligible in the “General” category. At the same time, the Congress attempted to win the confidence of Dalits by means of a bill to permit their entry to temples in addition to various token acts aimed at the symbolic removal of untouchability in their attempt to secure Hindu unity, unleashing yet another round of contentious deliberation in Bengal. In throwing uppercaste nationalist aspirations to hegemony over Dalits into crisis, the moment laid bare both the profoundest rifts within the Hindu body politic and the simultaneous, if contested, efforts to bridge them. How this period of political reform played out in Bengal has given rise to a substantial and complex historiography.1 Historians have demonstrated how the province was subordinated to imperatives deemed 1

See, among others, Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932–1947: Contour of Freedom (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); J.H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: TwentiethCentury Bengal (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968); Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947 (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997); Rajat Kanta Ray, Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of Interests in Calcutta City Politics, 1875–1939 (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1979); Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984); John Gallagher, “Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930–39,” in

23

24

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

appropriate by the Congress high command, how Bengal fell victim to the British encouraging separatism, how Muslim political assertions contributed to the communal tensions of the time, and how the Hindu political classes attempted to counter them. While the bulk of scholarly focus has therefore understandably remained concerned with charting the sources and dynamics of conflict between the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal, it has also been noted that Namasudra leaders “remained during this period, alienated from mainstream nationalism, despite renewed efforts to integrate them into the broader Hindu society.”2 While much of this history is well-worn terrain, this chapter invites specific attention to the pronounced dispute between upper-caste and Dalit leaders over the central political reforms of their time, notwithstanding the diverse shades of opinion and interest among them. Taken together, the reactions of Bengal’s upper-caste leaders to the contemplated incursions on their political and social dominance reveal a great deal about how they regarded the measures in which their Dalit counterparts saw a more democratic future. Their specific attitudes toward the political strivings of Dalits have however, hardly received the kind of close scholarly attention they deserve, much less form the basis for historical explanation. Indeed, none of the terse acrimony and bitter contestation featured in legislative and public debate has found its way into the rather sanitized extant historical account of Namasudra politics. As we shall see, the received wisdom that the Bengal Congress meekly went along with circumstances outside its control and that it was principally the “orthodox” who objected to the provisions under the Poona Pact does not ring true.3 On the other hand, despite differences over the precise details, the surprising unanimity among the Dalit political leadership about the overall intent of these reforms has been insufficiently registered as well. Indeed, to describe their positions as mere “alienation” from Indian nationalism seems to undercut their deep resentment

2

3

John Gallagher et al. (eds.), Locality Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics, 1870–1940 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Hasi Banerjee, “Casteism in Bengal: The Communal Award and the Poona Pact, 1932,” in Raj Sekhar Basu and Sanjukta Das Gupta (eds.), Narratives of the Excluded: Caste Issues in Colonial India (Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi and Company, 2008). Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity, 136. Namasudra leaders were generally unenthusiastic about any of the major phases of the nationalist movement in Bengal, whether the Swadeshi movement of the first decade of the century, the Non-Cooperation Movement of the 1920s, or the civil disobedience of the 1930s. Non-Cooperation, the largest movement organized by the Congress in the 1920s, “failed to appeal [sic] the members of the caste groups, especially the Namasudras. They remained antagonistic to the Congress throughout.” Srilata Chatterjee, Congress Politics in Bengal, 1919–1939 (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 102. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity, 159.

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

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and profound critique of that movement, as well as their substantive content as well. This contextualizing chapter – a setting of the scene, as it were – examines how key political representatives in Bengal responded to these unprecedented proposals – the Communal Award, the Poona Pact, and the Temple Entry Bill – through an extended analysis of legislative council debate and public opinion about them. These necessarily elite contestations offer rich illustration of the political-cultural crisis of the moment, and as such constitute an important archive for reconstructing the tensions they reflected. More to the point, they supply important clues for explaining the decline of the caste question in postcolonial Bengal. For it was at this particular juncture that the problem of recognition crystallized with renewed clarity: the upper-caste refusal to countenance political subjectivity in Dalits. Recognition as problem because a fundamental assumption informing Dalit representatives’ political discourse and demands was that the congeries of castes of which they were composed in fact constituted a viable, even meaningful, political subject. This premise the upper-castes could not abide. These reforms were thus in effect a struggle over the norms to be embodied in the recognition order of legislative institutions, as revealed by prolonged debate over who constituted the Depressed Classes in Bengal. Dispute turned on the very relevance of such categories for the constitution of politics. The onset of provincial autonomy provoked renewed sensitivity to challenges facing upper-caste Hindu nationalist hegemony, starkly illustrating, as it did, their disproportionate influence over public affairs. With a salience unlike any other provinces in British India, the acquiescence if not active support of the representatives of those they considered socially inferior would be critical for the caste elites of Bengal to withstand the implications of more meaningful democratic practice in a demographic context where Muslims were a numerical majority and the Depressed Classes outnumbered them as well. The reforms in effect dealt a resounding blow to the kinds of privileged access to social and political power the upper-castes enjoyed over the course of the construction and development of colonial rule.4 To admit Dalits as a distinct political element under such circumstances was inconceivable, for to do so would undo the pretensions of the uppercastes to speak on behalf of “Hindus.” These were years concurrent with Jogendranath Mandal’s early adulthood, just prior to his stunning and exceptional election to the Bengal 4

Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

Legislative Assembly in 1936 in an unreserved seat, buoyed by a wave of Dalit enthusiasm about his candidacy that overwhelmed Saral Kumar Datta, his far more established upper-caste Congress opponent. This survey of public sentiment about Dalit rights thus opens with an examination of his entry into provincial politics amid circumstances that stood quite at odds with the stark polarization featured in council debates and public discourse. Indeed, despite his Namasudra background and the exclusions he endured on that account, Mandal also began his career molded by the influence and goodwill of various upper-caste figures he encountered, seemingly out of joint with the marked divisions reflected in contemporary political discussion and his later more radical posture. It is necessary to register his various proximities with them to establish the accommodative foundations of his political formation, as compared with his later, far more critical attitudes. This framing chapter therefore contrasts Mandal’s rather idealistic origins with the broader political-historical context of upper-caste nationalist leaders’ deep-seated reluctance when confronted with the prospect of sharing power with the representatives of those whom their own were accustomed to exploit and treat with indignity, but in whose name they presumed to speak. Those subsequent will persuade how their antipathy against Dalit political rights formed an enduring limitation against which Mandal and his legislative colleagues struggled in the years to come, once he was sufficiently learned as to the true intentions of upper-caste nationalism and its proponents. A variegated ideological complex, this was a diffused body of primarily upper-caste and “bhadra” opinion and sentiment whose constituents perceived no contradiction in speaking for Dalits while negating their own representatives’ aspirations and strivings. Quite fundamentally, the upper-caste nationalists of Bengal found themselves faced with the implausible task of convincing those they sought to represent in the name of anticolonial nationalism that the right to represent themselves was against their best interest. These were tendencies that took their origins in the Swadeshi era and closely aligned with both the culturalism recently discussed by Andrew Sartori and the anxieties about Hindu death so ably captured by P.K. Dutta, Joya Chatterji, and Sumit Sarkar.5 But the particular urgency of the present conjuncture for Hindu Bengal lay in actually demonstrating cohesion if there was any hope of confronting the “forgotten majority,” the Muslim communities of the province. Bluntly put, as far Bengal’s upper-caste political leadership was concerned, they would rather Dalits 5

See Andrew Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Jogendranath Mandal and His Emergence in Provincial Politics

27

not speak for themselves. They were to be spoken for by them. Ideally, they would cease to exist as a political form. A crucial part of the answer to the question driving this study therefore lies in this moment. In a certain sense, the Depressed Classes and the Scheduled Castes (as they were subsequently renamed) could not be recognized as such if Hindu and Indian nationalist unity stood a chance in Bengal. When confronted with demands for democratization born of developments to which their own political organization was party, Bengal’s upper-caste leaders across the political spectrum responded with unanimous denial. Jogendranath Mandal and His Emergence in Provincial Politics By the time he reached young adulthood, Jogendranath Mandal’s life experiences stood in contrast to the unusually clear-cut fissures along the axes of caste difference characterizing the council and public debates of the time. His entirely exceptional election to the newly instituted legislative assembly as an independent candidate in a general and unreserved seat, for instance, drew on an astonishingly wide base of support that included various Dalit castes, and a not insignificant number of uppercaste Hindus. To a degree, this called into question the notion that reserved seats were required to secure the adequate representation of Dalit political opinion.6 Mandal’s election was nonetheless an unusual development that should discourage any such easy conclusion. He was the sole Dalit leader to join the assembly in this manner; this was definitely not a widespread phenomenon. The vast majority of them were elected as independent candidates in reserved seats. Mandal did not possess the financial means to procure the requisite application papers, and when news of his decision 6

“Scheduled Castes” was the nomenclature settled on to refer to the Depressed Classes during the reforms of the early 1930s. See S.K. Gupta, The Scheduled Castes in Modern Indian Politics: Their Emergence as a Political Power (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publications, 1985), 29–35, for insight into the sensitivities dictating the change. The term was first used in an official resolution of 16 January 1933. The previous designation, “Depressed Classes,” was deemed unsuitable in Bengal, “as the problem differed from that in other provinces.” Sir William Prentice was the first to suggest the replacement in terminology. The report of the Reforms Office of Bengal contained a brief account of its origins. In summary, the criteria used to determine categorization in the 1933 resolution were enlarged from only “untouchability” to “the social, political, economic and educational position of the castes” being the decisive criteria. This enormously widened the scope. R. N. Gilchrist, the Reforms Commissioner, was at pains to indicate that the 1933 resolution had been circulated widely in the province to elicit public opinion, thus issuing the provisional list of Scheduled Castes for criticism and subsequent modification. R.N. Gilchrist, Report of the Reforms Office, Bengal 1932–1937 (Alipore: Bengal Government Press, 1938), 14–17.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

to contest the election was publicized, he received an astounding degree of support from various residents of Barisal, many of whom he did not even know. In addition, the constituency he contested had no provision for reserved seats. His election acquired further significance given that the franchise was still far from universal and based on tax and educational qualifications. Such criteria no doubt favored the upper-castes, despite the overall enhancement under the Government of India Act of 1935. Only slightly over 10 percent of the Scheduled Castes were eligible to vote.7 Years later, Mandal recounted the episode in some detail in an unpublished autobiography he wrote in the mid to late 1960s, one of the richest sources of information and insight into his life and times.8 He stood for election at the encouragement of several friends who were government servants and lawyers. Shibchandra Haldar and Hargobind Bala, in particular, provided him with the funds necessary to file his application. In Mandal’s recollection, they were far more certain of his victory than he. Not only was he merely in his early thirties, but the two other candidates were both upper-caste Hindus of well established and locally influential zamindar families. Moreover, one of the candidates, Sitangshu Raychaudhuri, retracted his candidature, allegedly so the caste Hindu vote would remain intact, leaving Saral Kumar Datta as the only other contestant. Evidently, the prospect of a Namasudra contesting elections made some Barisali upper-caste Hindus nervous. Datta was the district Congress committee’s president and the nephew and legatee of the nationalist leader Aswini Kumar Datta, whose social service organization Mandal joined in his youth – formidable competition to say the least. Also noteworthy were nearly thirty upper-caste lawyers who lent their support to Mandal. Besides their ostensibly genuine interest in seeing him elected, one might also speculate that they were keen that Saral Kumar Datta be defeated. The full extent of their influence on the election is unlikely to have been all that significant. Mandal obtained 12,069 votes against Datta’s 10,653.9 7 8

9

Gilchrist, Report of the Reforms Office, 14. In the final years of his life, Mandal wrote a fairly extensive autobiography as well as a chronicle of Partition in Bengal. These two entirely fascinating and unpublished primary sources offer a unique perspective and source of information on this foundational period of South Asian history. Intriguingly, he chose the third person narrative voice. One of his activists had suggested to him, on several occasions, that he undertake such an autobiographical enterprise. In the mid to late 1960s, Mandal did not even have the financial solvency to purchase the pens and notebooks to do so – he began to write only once his follower bought these materials for him. The inability to buy writing materials speaks volumes of the condition in which he spent his final days. Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 25–32. Gilchrist, Report of the Reforms Office, 340–41.

Jogendranath Mandal and His Emergence in Provincial Politics

29

Perhaps the most notable feature of Mandal’s election was how it galvanized a sense of unity among various Scheduled Castes of his electoral constituency in Barisal.10 This is best captured in his own words: Due to the shortage of funds and time, it was not possible for Jogendranath to visit many locations where the elections were being held. The call for his support had by then spread far and wide. Not only members of his own caste, but fisherman amongst the Scheduled Castes – like the Kaibartas, Jaliya-Kaibartas, Jhola, Dhoba, Patni, Muchi and Rabidas castes – elderly leaders, youth workers and students of all classes, without being asked took it upon themselves to make efforts to ensure Jogendranath’s election. The awakening, excitement and enthusiasm amongst the Scheduled Castes cannot be described in words. They don’t know Jogendranath, haven’t ever seen him, the number of those who spent their own resources and time to work for his election cannot be estimated.11

Mandal recalled a teacher, one Pulinbehari Das of Hijla thana, Kaibarta by caste, who, upon hearing that a Scheduled Caste candidate with his name was running for election to the legislative assembly, enlisted his students in canvassing for votes. They met in person only six months after the election.12 The prospect of Mandal’s electoral victory seemed to have tapped into a current of political enthusiasm among various Dalits in Barisal such that one would be compelled to go to the extent Das had done, even though the candidate in question was an anonymous Namasudra and not a member of one’s immediate caste community. Mandal’s election thus spoke to the inter-caste appeal of his candidacy. The conditions of Mandal’s upbringing, and what he was able to do with them, allow some appreciation of the significance of his precocious electoral success. For, unlike contemporaries such as Mukunda Behari Mullick or Pramath Ranjan Thakur, he was not born into substantial wealth and was thus identified as a leader with humble origins. The Barisal of Mandal’s youth was characterized by a particularly acute form of subinfeudation that organized most agricultural production in India. According to the district’s pioneering settlement officer, not only 10

11

N.B. Roy describes the electioneering campaign in Mandal’s constituency as having reached a “white-hot pitch.” More generally, he remarks: “An ignorant mass of people who formerly languished in utter obscurity and neglect had all of a sudden discovered their political worth during these elections. The discovery this time was of far greater importance than that during the previous elections under the Act of 1919 whereby only one seat was reserved for the Depressed Classes in the Bengal Legislative Council and that seat too was filled up, not by direct vote of the voters, but by nomination by the Governor. These changes brought about in the political outlook of the Scheduled Castes people of Bengal as a result of reservation of 30 seats for them under the Poona Pact, was, therefore really of a revolutionary nature.” Incidentally, and significantly, if true, the victory procession in celebration of Mandal’s election was the “first ever” organized by Namasudras of Barisal town. N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, 183, 192. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 28. 12 Ibid., 28–29.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

were the tenures numerous, but the degree of subinfeudation was exceptionally high.13 This differentiation intersected with social hierarchies in such a complex manner that, even though most proprietors were uppercaste Hindus and most cultivators were Dalits and Muslims, this certainly did not mean that the latter communities did not have land of their own, nor that a significant number among them did not lease out portions of that land to their own tenants. Yet how this communal tripolarity intersected with the various gradations in the extraction of land revenue did not admit of an easy equation. J.C. Jack, author of the district gazetteer, described Bakarganj, as it was known in official parlance, as being “notorious as the home of the most torturous and intricate system of land-tenure in the world.”14 He added that while it was impossible to precisely determine the occupations of Hindu castes, provincial figures formed a rough index to district level conditions. Jack was “certain that amongst the higher caste [sic] only Kayasthas engage in agricultural pursuits, and very few of them.”15 Rather, they “crowd all the professions, own many tenures and are numerous as naibs and muharrirs employed in the management of estates.”16 As elsewhere, Brahmans “crowd into the professions and other clerical employments. They are also large landed proprietors, while those who are uneducated still practice priesthood.”17 The historian Tapan Raychaudhuri once wrote of the district’s zamindars: “generally, one preferred not to earn one’s living, because it was not strictly necessary to do so.”18 By contrast, Namasudras were “almost confined to agriculture, although a considerable proportion own a little land and earn their livelihood as agricultural labourers.”19 With certain exceptions, then, proprietors of land were rarely the cultivators themselves. A significant number of them were absentee landlords, and the remaining constituted the professional classes and tenure-holders. The whole structure and the innumerable illegal exactions it bred were founded on the “bedrock of coercion, including the ever-present threat and frequent use of violence . . .”20 Mandal was born into such a social order on 29 January 1904 in a Namasudra-dominant village called Maistarkandi in northern Barisal district, to Ramdayal and Sandhyadebi. All the families of the village depended on agriculture for their living. The youngest of five children, 13 14 18

19 20

J.C. Jack, Bengal District Gazetteers, Bakarganj (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1918), 94. Ibid., 97. 15 Ibid., 34. 16 Ibid., 35. 17 Ibid., 36. Tapan Raychaudhuri, “Permanent Settlement in Operation: Bakarganj District, East Bengal,” in Robert Eric Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 174. Jack, Bengal District Gazetteers, Bakarganj, 35. Partha Chatterjee, “Introduction,” in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), The Small Voice of History (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2009), 4.

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he was apparently the one most beloved by his parents as well as by members of his extended family. His childless uncle Rajkrishna treated him as he would have his own son. Mandal’s paternal grandfather Nabinchandra seemed to have been an unusual man for his times, partly because of his considerable travels to various pilgrimage sites on foot as well as his efforts to educate his two elder sons, Ramkrishna and Rajkrishna, with the help of a tutor. They pursued their studies until the higher primary stages, not an insignificant accomplishment for the late nineteenth century. Mandal did not display much of an interest in formal schooling in his early years, so much so that his uncles decided to home-school him instead. When he did finally enroll, he failed his first lower-primary test; he had to travel farther afield from Maistarkandi once he did advance, due to the lack of adequate schooling opportunities in the vicinity. Before long his family sent him to relatives in the district of Mymensingh to train in chandshi-chikitsa, a uniquely Namasudra minor medical tradition, perhaps in the hope that their son would find a calling.21 He did not have the stomach for the business and returned home ten months later with a newfound appreciation for formal education. Mandal subsequently joined the Barthi Tara Institution, a school located in a Brahmin-dominant village. It was a mile and a half from his home, and he endured considerable hardship merely getting to and from the school through the unforgiving marshlands and the monsoon season in a small dinghy. Barisal was situated in the middle of deltaic Bengal and mobility was impossible without riverine transport. He studied by the light of a kerosene lamp, and as he grew older, assumed responsibility for herding the cows the family owned. Domestic manual labor added to his commitments. In contrast to earlier tendencies, he distinguished himself academically, and became one of the captains of his school, as well as of the debating team. These were years, then, that shaped his inclination toward authority. Despite being the sole Namasudra student, Mandal recalled the fondness with which his upper-caste teachers and peers alike treated him.22 After passing his matriculation examinations, Mandal’s education came to an abrupt halt. His father lacked the financial wherewithal to 21 22

See Projit Mukharji, “Going Beyond Elite Medical Traditions: The Case of Chandshi,” Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2:2, 2006, 277–91. This stands in contrast to his son’s biography. Mandal was apparently humiliated and treated inhumanely by some of his upper-caste peers, in a manner recounted in innumerable testimonies of the phenomenology of caste discrimination across India: the ejection from signified space. While the episode is entirely plausible, it is interesting that Mandal makes no mention of it in his account. Refracted by the passage of a half-century and in a world transformed, I have tried to read the form, stresses, and silences of Mandal’s narrative with such considerations in mind.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

support boarding and lodging expenses at collegiate level, there were no colleges near Maistarkandi, and at the time the government did not offer stipends to students from underprivileged backgrounds. Stricken by the thought of this barrier to his aspirations to train in Indian administration, Mandal suffered a weeklong bout of fever. This hindrance to higher education found resolution when his uncle Rajkrishna agreed to bear half the expenses for education at Barisal’s noted Brajamohan College. The available evidence on his contemporary activities suggests Mandal’s growing social awareness and gravitation toward public service in the overwhelmingly Congressite milieu of Barisal town. He volunteered, for instance, with the widely revered Congress leader Aswinikumar Dutta’s “Little Brothers of the Poor.” Datta was a leading voice in the Swadeshi movement to reunite the province of Bengal during the first decade of the century, and established his preference for quiet, patient, and unostentatious work in an age when spectacular politics became a possibility. He was among the first to have been imprisoned for the nationalist cause and was regarded “ a son of Barisal and a source of great pride to the people of the district.”23 Mandal was following in the footsteps of Bhegai Haldar, a notable Namasudra leader and activist from the same part of his district who was closely associated with Dutta as well as Chittaranjan Das over the first two decades of the century. Das had attempted to join the Namasudra community to the struggle for Indian freedom.24 Mandal might well have imbibed the nationalist idealism that Haldar before him had tried to propagate among Namasudras. In 1926, at a village called Agailjhara, he volunteered at a praja sammelan that featured the likes of Madan Mohan Malaviya, Padmaraj Jain, Sarala Debi, and Bhupendranath Datta. According to his son, he was also involved in organizing a protest against the mistreatment of a fellow Namasudra student for daring to enter a local temple, and on another occasion protested the segregation of students during Saraswati puja.25 Mandal clearly revolted against the quotidian wounds of casteist practice that was so at odds with the quasi-egalitarian rhetoric of nationalist ideology in the 1920s, in which he was seemingly invested as well. A lifesketch published in the Sind Observer more than two decades later, on the occasion of a day celebrating his achievements, referred to how, during 23 24 25

Tapan Raychaudhuri, The World in Our Time: A Memoir (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2011), 107. Naresh Chandra Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh (Kalikata: B. Sarkar, 1961), 41. Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 12–14.

Jogendranath Mandal and His Emergence in Provincial Politics

33

his early school days as well as during college, he had to “fight tooth and nail against the bigotry of the caste Hindu students of the hostel for not allowing the scheduled caste students to enter either the dining room reserved for caste Hindu students or the worship room.”26 In an electioneering pamphlet produced during the last few years of his life, Mandal recalled his displeasure about the caste-segregation of dining halls and kitchens in his college.27 There is little in his autobiography, however, to suggest explicit misgivings at this point in his life, much less a hostile and overt critique on his part about the upper-castes taken as a whole. They figured much too prominently in his late 1960s memory of his childhood and youth as figures who treated him with affection, eliciting respect, admiration, and gratitude in turn. He certainly seemed to have repressed painful memories of prejudice and excluded them from his narrative of his youth.28 During the third year of his course in Indian administration at Brajamohan College, Mandal played an active role in the election of the first Namasudra member of the Barisal Sadar Local Board, one Jogendranath Sarkar. He accompanied Sarkar on an electoral campaign so successful that Sarkar trumped candidates with connections to zamindari families and the legal profession. Without explicitly referring to what it was he did to ensure success, Mandal recollected that his very presence at one of the election booths rendered futile the efforts of a zamindar candidate to exert influence on his own tenants. This was Mandal’s first significant encounter with the local institutions of government in Barisal, a small role in the gradual dismantling of the structures of caste and communal privilege in subdistrict-level administration that was going on throughout the province – what Joya Chatterji has called the “emergence of the mofussil in Bengal politics.”29 After graduating from Brajamohan College and spending an interval in Mymensingh and Dhaka, Mandal earned admission to the Calcutta Law College for the master’s degree in 1929. His family could no longer afford to support his studies, and he certainly had no finances of his own. He paid his way by tutoring the children of a Dr. Pyarimohan Das, in whose home he resided, and working as a proofreader at a local press. On passing the bar in 1934 (delayed by a year due to pecuniary stringency), Mandal found apprenticeship in the Calcutta small causes court under a noted Brahmin advocate, Chandmohan Chakrabarty; two years later, he 26 27 28 29

“Life Sketch of Mr. Mandal,” Sind Observer, 19 June 1949. Jogendranath Mandal, Amar Du-Carti Katha, 1. Such careful excision of the memory of caste-humiliation was presumably a function of the timing and location of his writing, as well as his imagined audience. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 55–102.

34

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

became a practicing lawyer in the same. Before long, however, he returned to his native Barisal in order to join the district court in the summer of 1936.30 Over the course of the following months, Mandal seems to have enjoyed an unexpected degree of professional success that culminated in his election to Bengal’s first legislative assembly as the only Namasudra candidate elected to a general seat. Within days of his return to the mofussil, he learned of rumors of his selection as vice-chairman of the Local Board during the impending elections. At a meeting of members of the board, Muslim and upper-caste Hindu members alike urged him to agree to the post. He refused, not only because of his lack of prior experience, but also because he didn’t wish to enter public service by means that contravened official policy. Mandal’s declining such an opportunity suggested not only his deference to those more capable than he, but also the kind of reputation he must have established by virtue of receiving such a premature request so soon upon returning from the city. Mandal appeared to have garnered a measure of endorsement from various dignitaries in Barisal, cutting across caste, community, and political affiliation. Durgamohan Sen, servant of the Congress party and editor of the local Hitaishi, for instance, was apparently so struck by one of Mandal’s speeches at the Aswinikumar Town Hall in Barisal that he wrote a praise-filled account in his paper wherein he dubbed Mandal “Bengal’s Megasthenes” in allusion to the quality of his oration. In retrospect, Mandal thought the glowing citation played a role in his subsequent election. This rise to prominence in Barisal did not, however, meet with universal approval. An anecdote that Tapan Raychaudhuri (nephew to one of Barisal’s most famous Congress politicians, Kiran Shankar Ray) recounted in his memoirs of Mandal’s visit to their home after his victory over Saral Kumar Datta suggested the unease with which local Congressmen regarded his election: “There were a number of people present including Indu Gupta. ‘Do come,’ Gupta said in welcome, ‘We are waiting for you in a mandal’ (circle, one literal meaning of Mr. Mandal’s surname). Mandal was not too pleased with this reference to his caste status.”31 Gupta’s sarcasm on an occasion for congratulations expressed his discomfort with coming to terms with a Namasudra representative. The scene itself suggested the conventions of local authority in Barisal. Although he had been elected, it was Mandal paying a visit to the residence of Congress authority in his district, and not the other way 30 31

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 19–20. Raychaudhuri, The World in Our Time, 129.

35

The Communal Award

around. A passing mention in his autobiography, moreover, speaks to how news of his election was received in Calcutta. A crowd of solely Namasudra supporters gathered in the maidan to hail his election during the public announcement of the electoral results. In the city, his election unambiguously connoted Namasudra victory.32 Mandal’s lived experience prior to his entry into provincial politics nonetheless did not entirely square with the uncompromising manner in which social identifications were mobilized and polarized in council debate. No doubt he witnessed and was the object of prejudice. And he was buoyed to victory on the selection of Dalit voters who responded to his appeal as a “praja-bandhu.”33 But he also recalled the great affection many upper-caste teachers displayed toward him during his youth, or the concerted encouragement he received from various upper-caste lawyers for his election at a moment when he doubted his own capacity. His experiences prior to his entry to the world of provincial politics hardly bespoke fundamental alienation from, much less unreserved hostility toward, the core impulses of Indian nationalism. Despite such formative intimacies, however, Mandal gradually modified his stance over the subsequent years, becoming increasingly embittered at the chasm between nationalist theory and practice. The following chapter will trace his disillusionment with the leaders of those who had played a not inconsiderable role in his molding as he became better acquainted with their prejudices. This chapter turns to sketching the broader fault lines within contemporary debates regarding the politics of caste. Mandal’s growing familiarity with high politics in the years to come would heighten his discontent with upper-caste nationalism. The Communal Award The Communal Award of 1932 was the outcome of deadlock at the Round Table Conferences of the previous years about constitutional reform and the gradual devolution of power. The consequences for political representation in Bengal were as follows: of a total of 250 seats in the contemplated legislative assembly, eighty went to the general category (which included up to ten seats set aside for Depressed Class representatives and two women), 119 to Muslims (including two women), two for Indian Christians, four for Anglo-Indians (including one woman), eleven under European, nineteen under commerce and industry, mining and planting, five under landholders, two under 32

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 32.

33

Translated literally, “friend of the tenantry.”

36

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

university, and eight under labor.34 Such was the political representation for a province with a population of 51 million, composed primarily of 22 million Hindus (which included more than 8 million members of the Depressed Classes) and nearly 28 million Muslims in 1931. The three upper-castes, from which the vast majority of the political classes issued, numbered just over 3 million.35 By any measure, their dominance of Bengali society and politics was entirely out of joint with their numerical significance. Strict proportionality on the basis of their strength in numbers would have entitled them to just about 15 seats in the assembly. While it is certainly true that the leadership of the Bengal Congress was muzzled by the high command from publicly agitating against the Communal Award and, later, the Poona Pact, this hardly meant they wholeheartedly welcomed or stood firmly in defense of both measures. Jitendralal Bannerjee, Narendra Kumar Basu, B.C. Chatterjee, and Bhupendra Narayan Sinha all vented their vehement opposition to the Communal Award within days of its publication on the first occasion for discussion in the Bengal Legislative Council. These were men variously accomplished in their respective fields of work. Basu had served in Khudiram Bose’s defense. Bannerjee had been one of Gandhi’s leading men in Bengal during the Non-Cooperation Movement in the 1920s. Sinha, the Raja Bahadur of Nashipur, stood at the helm of one the largest zamindari estates in the district of Murshidabad. And Chatterjee, Surendranath Banerjee’s son-in-law, was a renowned barrister (of subsequent Bhawal sannyasi fame) and champion of Hindu interests. He took the lead in subsequent years in elaborating some of the most thoughtful expositions of upper-caste grievance. In lengthy and exceptionally passionate speeches, these men assailed the Communal Award in no uncertain terms. Basu prefaced his remarks by noting that it was “difficult to speak about this award in those terms of moderation and restraint” appropriate for speech in the Council.36 The Award was “a sentence of banishment, it is a sentence of expatriation from the legislature; this sentence says we are not wanted in the legislature of Bengal.”37 It had been “deliberately made to crush and humiliate the Hindus.”38 Not only was the principle of proportional representation inappropriate, but the percentage to which caste Hindus in particular were reduced was entirely at odds with their sense of entitlement. Many of their leaders felt that the consistency of application of 34 35 36 37

Dilip Banerjee, Election Recorder (Calcutta: Book Front Publication Forum, 1990), 532. A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Volume V, Bengal and Sikkim, Part 1, Report (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1933), 387, 448, 502. “Communal Award,” Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 23 August 1932, in Home/Political 41/4/1932 K.W. to: General Appreciation of the Communal Award, 4. Ibid., 5. 38 Ibid., 7.

The Communal Award

37

principles of population size and political importance to the various communities was faulty. The British premier’s attempt to resolve the fallout of the Round Table Conferences as embodied in the Communal Award, in the case of Bengal, could thus hardly be considered fair and honest. Given this sense of outrage, the nub of debate turned on why Hindus and Muslims in Bengal could not collectively arrive at a more suitable measure. Was the purpose to be served by separate electorates a just one? Maulvi Abul Kasem addressed the issue: “It has been said that it strikes at the root of the growth of nationalism. If that is so, why do you not come to an agreement by which the separate electorate can be abolished? You say that the Hindus are willing to do it, but will the Muhammadans agree? The question is why do not the Muhammadans agree. To be frank to this House, as I ought to be, it is because by their acts, by their conduct in the past they have shown that we cannot trust the Hindus and place our interests in their hands. (Cries of ‘Question, question …’).”39 This was harsh, but nonetheless honest, criticism. Kasem was pointing to the limits of nationalism that, unable to perceive its own communal character, made it impervious to the question of how other communities could send forth candidates who would most genuinely represent the interests of their own. They objected to joint electorates, because “we know that by manipulations and overwhelming force of numbers or other ways, they will be able to send to this legislature as members, creatures of their own.”40 It was only a separate electorate that could ensure the authentic representation and protection of Muslim interests. Kasem was of the generation of Bengali Muslim politicians who left the Indian National Congress after years of their allegiance wore thin in wake of the Khilafat movement. These were conclusions born of the frustrated expectations of nationalist Muslims. The apprehension of “creatures of their own” was precisely the same understanding for the necessity of separate electorates that Amulyadhan Ray, one of the most vocal Dalit members of the legislative council (MLCs) expressed in his response to upper-caste frustration. Ray believed their criticisms suspended from judgment two key issues. Namely, he reminded the house of the fact that Indian communities had failed, on their own, to come up with a solution to the problem of ensuring minority interests. This was certainly true. And furthermore, without the provisions of the Communal Award, “the future administration of the country would have fallen upon the party of a clique, into the hands of an oligarchy.”41 No doubt there were disagreements with the details of the Award. Indeed, in Ray’s view the seats allocated to the Depressed Classes were not in proportion to their population. Nonetheless: 39

Ibid., 27.

40

Ibid., 28.

41

Ibid., 31.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

. . . we must thank Mr. Macdonald, the British Cabinet and His Majesty’s Government for keeping an unbiased mind in giving the communal decision from the undue influence of the Congress and of those who wanted to resist our legitimate claims at the cost of their lives and who fondly claimed to represent the depressed classes although the people concerned with regard to whom the claims were made invariably and emphatically denied the representative character of those gentlemen. Anglo-Indians, Europeans, Moslems and the depressed classes practically 90 percent of the people of Bengal – all claimed for separate electorate and they have got it.42

Both Ray and A.K. Fazlul Huq, who would head the first provincial government of Bengal after the grant of autonomy, thus agreed that it was unfair to blame the British given the preceding circumstances of communal deadlock.43 Notwithstanding the fact that a minority of Muslim leaders would have preferred joint electorates because of the primacy they assigned to a united front against British colonial rule, the Award confirmed the predominant stance among Muslim and Dalit MLCs that the election of representatives on the basis of separate electorates was in fact the best way to ensure the functioning of responsible government. This was not simply British doing. The Communal Award was not mere dispensation from above, but the product of the call for the democratization of late colonial government by Muslim and Dalit representatives which, having reached an impasse, found a resolution with the colonial power. The mode may have been undemocratic in procedure, as the government seemed to be aware, but it was only this procedural exception that could adequately respond to the pressures the Indian demos placed on extant democratic theory. Separate electorates in the 1930s were thus the product of Indian politics, not, primarily, of imperial machination. Written up variously as the British “communalization” of politics, a pernicious colonial ploy to stagger the devolution of power, or the cunning of colonial governmental reason, such interpretations scant the overwhelming sense of accomplishment with which Muslim and Dalit politicians of Bengal greeted the Award, and the fact that representatives of India had failed to reach agreement among themselves. Tenancy Reform Alongside the Communal Award, and powerfully expressing its significance, was the other major issue of public import exercising legislative 42

Ibid.

43

Ibid., 29.

Tenancy Reform

39

debate in Bengal during the latter months of 1932: the reform of tenancy laws. Within weeks of the debate about the award, Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan sought amendment of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1928 by repeal of the provisions for the landlord’s transfer fee, preemption, and enhancement of rent. In these discussions, hinging on the question of the rights to land ownership, the fault lines were similarly drawn between the upper-castes on the one hand and Muslims and Dalits on the other. Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan, another disillusioned veteran of the attempt at Hindu-Muslim unity of the 1920s, introduced his resolution as a “question of vital importance to the country in general and the agriculturist classes in particular.”44 It would test the consistency of those who simultaneously kept agriculturalists in a “state of serfdom” even while proclaiming patriotism and professing love of their land of birth. Khan reprised how the 1928 amendments to the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 had raised high hopes, but they were ultimately quashed by “the excellent combination of hypocrisy and selfishness” resulting in additional “halters round the neck of the already gasping Bengal raiyat.”45 The present amendments sought to remove these constraints. Following depositions by various members of the assembly – their respective arguments for or against the amendments invariably replicating the pattern of upper-caste MLCs ranged against their Muslim and Dalit colleagues – Amulyadhan Ray addressed the assembly, expressing his thanks to Khan and noting by preface how he had pressed for this very same motion every year since he had entered the council. Rehearsing how the 1928 amendments were forced through by an “unholy combination of the so-called self-styled proprietors of the soil” and the “swarajist gentlemen under the banner of the Congress who at the time of election overflowed the land with the tears of their eyes for the people” leading to the “slaughter of the tenants,” Ray asserted that if “80 percent of the people, generally the Moslems and Depressed Classes, had understood their real position, the whole country after the passing of the amending act would have been electrified and the gentlemen who betrayed the confidence of the tenants to fill up the pockets of the landed aristocracy would have been crucified.”46 Ray ridiculed the notion undergirding opposition to the amendments that zamindars were the proprietors of the soil. Addressing the claim that the amending acts were the outcome of compromise, Ray delineated the link between questions of 44 45

Council Proceedings Office Report – Bengal Legislative Council, 21 November 1932 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1933), 51. Ibid., 51–52. 46 Ibid., 69–70.

40

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

tenancy reform and widened representation of Dalits and Muslims.47 In his reading, far from having acquired the consent of the tenants, Ray found that the 1928 act had been pushed through in a council where their representation – as Depressed Classes and Muslims – was inadequate. Due to the merging of landlords’ and the Congress’ interests, the 1928 act imposed on tenants laws to which their representatives had not been party. The inadequacy of their representation thus held deep consequences. What the Communal Award brought to the fore, and what this debate about tenancy reform illustrated, was how the prospect of the enhanced Dalit and Muslim representation bore radical potential for reworking the entire range of possibilities available to freeing Bengali society from its historically and regionally specific complex of cultural prejudice and social inequality. Increased political representation would hardly leave economic relationships untouched. A glance at the 1931 census figures on caste and occupation conveys some sense of the social context in which these contestations emerged (Table 1.1).48

Table 1.1 Caste, Occupation, and Gender in the 1931 Bengal Census Population Dealt With

Male earners

Female earners

Male work- Female Noning depen- working working dents dependents dependents Total

Brahman

388,504

28,653

14,435

53,384

971,204

Kayastha

381,059

30,598

17,660

56,093

1,073,032

1,558,442

Baidya

24,310

1,982

1,423

4,192

78,832

110,739

Namasudra 515,133

37,663

27,138

80,598

1,434,404

2,094,936

Bagdi

288,172

82,283

8,663

49,915

562,282

992,315

Mahishya

617,436

65,402

30,507

13,6617

1,526,340

2,376,302

47 48

1,456,180

Ibid., 70–71. A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Volume V, Bengal and Sikkim, Part II, Tables (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1932), 156–57. I have compiled the available data to include the three upper-castes, Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Baidyas; the Mahishyas, the largest intermediate or middle caste; and Namasudras and Bagdis, both considered Depressed Classes during the 1931 census, and after 1936, Scheduled Castes.

41

Tenancy Reform

Table 1.1 (cont.) Recorded principal occupation of earners, other than the traditional occupation of their caste, by subclasses

Brahman Kayastha Baidya Namasudra Bagdi Mahishya

Brahman Kayastha Baidya Namasudra Bagdi Mahishya

Income from land rent (males)

Income from land rent (females)

Cultivation Cultivation (males) (females)

Agents and managers of landed estates, planters, forest officers and their clerks, rent collectors, etc. (males)

54,022 48,618 3,018 21,732 2,901 24,350

9,398 8,807 694 6,006 857 7,764

52,830 64,496 1,269 294,824 N/A N/A

11,007 12,391 1,195 927 1,099 4,161

6,501 3,966 191 8,758 N/A N/A

Agents and managers of landed estates, planters, forest officers and their clerks, rent collectors, etc. (females) 106 100 5 171 42 30

Owners, managers, Field laborers, clerks, etc. in wood-cutters, industries etc. (females) (males)

Owners, managers, clerks, etc. in industries (females)

Public Force commissioned and gazetted officers (males)

Public Force, others (males)

Public Force, others (females)

624 434 14 1,871 5,383 2,429

40 367 5 84 89 199

630 890 134 2 17 302

5,414 4,457 422 893 1,579 882

7 44 1 9 6 2

Public Administration Gazetted Officers (males) Brahman 1,200 Kayastha 1,118 Baidya 338 Namasudra 17 Bagdi 9 Mahishya 79

10,614 8,661 1,224 1,125 117 1,802

Public Administration Gazetted Officers (females)

Public Administration, Others (males)

Public Administration, Others (females)

Law, Medicine and Teaching (males)

Law, Medicine and Teaching (females)

1 19 15 0 1 0

10,321 15,423 1,863 765 450 1,669

27 15 11 2 35 10

26,381 25,117 2,886 4,197 2,851 6,554

491 742 220 66 26 69

Although the precision of these figures is suspect on account of the opposition to caste returns whipped up by bodies such as the Hindu Mission and Hindu Sabha (affiliated with members of both the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha) during the 1931 census enumeration,

42

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

they clearly illustrate the predominance of the three upper-castes, Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Baidyas, in Bengal’s industries, professions, public administration, and land administration compared with to the relatively few Namasudras in those lines of work; the hardly inconsiderable number of Namasudra rent-receivers and upper-caste cultivators (both often overlooked features); and Namasudra preponderance in cultivation.49 Greater representation of Muslims and Dalits quite simply held out the very real prospect of challenging upper-caste dominance in Bengali society from the modest foothold they then held. It was therefore to buffer this possibility that S.M. Bose, barrister-atlaw and advocate of the High Court of Calcutta, rose to move a special motion for establishing an upper chamber for Bengal. The recently proposed expansion of the electorate was a welcome sign but needed “careful watching.” Bose warned that the lower the franchise was extended, “the greater is the chance of voters being carried away by great gusts of emotion. They are likely to be swept off their feet; they are prone to fits of sentiment which temporarily cloud their vision . . . Now an Upper House is likely to form a check – a breakwater – against these sudden storms, sudden tidal waves.”50 This upper house would be constituted on “truly national lines with representations of various interests in the State – education, commerce, industry, labour, capital, etc., and not of communal interests.”51 Presumably, these were mutually exclusive categories. Likewise, J.N. Gupta, R.C. Dutt’s son-in-law, held that the constitution of the lower house was agreed upon on an “unashamedly communal basis” and thus it was now necessary to counter the move with an upper chamber constituted on “a more national and, if I may say so, on a more rational basis.”52 These were among the earliest attempts to push back against the assault on the institutional privileges that upper-caste bhadrolok had historically enjoyed. How oblivious they were to their own particularity was evident from B.C. Chatterjee’s statement, as well as just how clearly they apprehended the impending threat to their extant privilege. Chatterjee began by qualifying himself: a poor man, no rich relatives, with no relations to any zamindari family. He was driven to speak in favor of the said motion because of the “situation that has arisen in Bengal,” which he glossed as follows: “The real political situation today is this. Our Muhammadan friends of this House have made a remarkable contribution with our friends who represent the so-called depressed classes of Bengal. It has been a wonderful sight to see our depressed class friends 49 50 52

See Census of 1931, Bengal, 423–24. Bengal Legislative Council, 25 November 1932, 199. Ibid., 207–8.

51

Ibid., 201.

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Tenancy Reform

following our Muhammadan friends into the lobby on resolution after resolution . . .” Chatterjee underscored: “Ever since the offer of self government by Great Britain, our Muhammadan friends – and in their wake our depressed class representatives – have not formulated a single demand which is not solely and wholly for the benefit of their community, but might be said to be for the benefit of the whole nation.”53 The reasons for a second chamber were as follows: “We have a got a clear majority consisting of Muhammadans and depressed classes, and these gentlemen cannot shake off their communalism. As long as they remain communal in their outlook, so long shall we want a Second Chamber.”54 Chatterjee made it clear that their aspirations were very well understood by their opponents. “You have already betrayed a keen anxiety to pluck the money-lenders and zamindars”; their legislative enactments amounted to the plunder of the “haves” by the “have-nots.”55 His exposition expressed the depth of upper-caste anxieties about the impending diminution of their influence in no uncertain terms. Such demands for a second chamber betrayed the vacuity of the claim made by upper-caste leaders to speak on behalf of the nation. Chatterjee was unable to perceive that the “communal outlook” of Muslims and Dalit representatives was necessarily consonant with national interest nor how national interest could be spoken of without conceding the validity of the principles underlying communally based representation. The inability to perceive the upper-caste particularity of their politics, coupled with the claim of their authentic representativeness, thus marked the nationalist mentality. As one might imagine, Muslim and Dalit council members stood vehemently against upper-caste pleas. Amulyadhan Ray therefore objected that the mere passage of the resolution, should it occur, ought not to indicate that the entirety of Bengal was unanimous in the decision. Government should understand instead “that a handful of landed aristocrats and moneyed interests followed by a few so-called caste Hindus apprehending . . . the political influence with which they have played uptil [sic] now to their advantage, being about to pass out of their hands into the hands of the people, are anxious to have a dilatory chamber to play their political game with the object of nullifying the activities of the future provincial legislature.”56 Ray then proceeded with evident and biting sarcasm to address the proposed reform: “Nice idea! But that nice idea will not apply to this nice country until a section of our countrymen, not more than 10 per cent of the entire population who make a show of non-communalism, can really shake off this communalism from their mind by their action. 53

Ibid., 216.

54

Ibid., 217.

55

Ibid.

56

Ibid., 218.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

Nationalism is the cry and communalism is the mind of those whose sole idea is to keep the political power concentrated in the hands of a clique and a group of people.”57 From where did such stark and passionate contestations arise? The memorandum that Mukunda Behari Mullick, MLC, among the most senior and prominent Namasudra leaders of the Bengal Depressed Classes, had submitted to the Indian Franchise Committee several months earlier is of special interest in this regard. Mullick reflected on the previous decade of dyarchy to show how, despite their provincial numerical significance and, in some cases, majorities in particular constituencies, “they have not only been unable to send their true representatives but have absolutely failed to secure any representation at all in most of them.”58 He recounted how all those he considered the most fitting representatives had been systematically outmaneuvered by the Congress and upper-caste Hindus in every single election to the legislative council since 1920 under the joint-electorate and restricted franchise, and how they had deliberately sent individuals unworthy of the position instead. Mullick noted that an “illiterate member of the ‘chamar’ community,” who was a sweeper by occupation and did not know how to sign his own name, was sent to the council “as a sort of ridicule by the political party, that is, the Congress” during the by-elections of 1930.59 Another Congress-supported Depressed Classes council member had no English education and did not speak the language. There was in any case the problem of the influence exercised by landlords and money-lenders, “religious interference,” alongside the illiteracy of large segments of Dalits. Mullick’s analysis of elections to the council over the previous decade and his own experience suggested without a doubt that they would “. . . not be able to secure representatives of their own choice in the general electorates under a Joint System of Elections.”60 This was also why both the Bengal Depressed Classes Association and the All-Bengal Namasudra Association agreed in demanding both adult franchise and separate electorates with a proportionate number of seats reserved on the numerical strength of their population from the Indian Statutory Commission.61 Amulyadhan Ray, MLC and president of the Jessore District Namasudra Association, and Sarat Chandra Bal, MLC and 57 58

59 61

Ibid., 219. Indian Franchise Committee 1932, Vol. 2, Memoranda Submitted by the Local Governments and the Provincial Franchise Committees (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932), 254. Ibid. 60 Ibid., 256. Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, U.S.A., The Depressed Classes of India, 1943, 33.

Tenancy Reform

45

representative of the Gopalganj Namasudra Unnati Bedhayini Association, concurred on similar grounds in their memoranda to the Franchise Committee.62 Bal proclaimed the “noble mission of British rule to save these classes will ever remain unachieved and it will in the long run prove a great blunder if the depressed class problem is not settled to the advantage of the loyal millions.”63 Several years earlier, in 1924, Nirode Behari Mullick, who testified on their behalf to the royal commission investigating the public services, would categorically state: “The interests of the depressed classes are not safe in the hands of socalled high-caste officers.”64 In his view, the further Indianization of the services would lead to the concentration of power with the upper-castes and those “antagonistic to the aspirations of the depressed classes.”65 As far as Namasudra leaders were concerned, then, there were entirely sound precedents to the provision of separate electorates in Bengal. As Mullick described the working of the reformed constitution since 1921 a decade later: “with the best of attempts we have not been able to have even a fraction of all that we should have . . .”66 The previous years offered ample evidence of upper-caste efforts to undermine Dalits’ own ambitions to secure political representatives of their choosing. The world outside the corridors of political power left much to be desired as well. Mullick acknowledged the variability in defining the Depressed Classes across the provinces, yet the common indication for him lay in “the external expression of an internal feeling of odium” whereby they were “precluded from having anything in common with others in social matters and as a result of which, they are also debarred from the enjoyment of their political rights.”67 The everyday life of public institutions in Bengal bore out the observation and belied the contemporary refrain of the relative insignificance of caste consciousness. Segregation by caste seems to have been the norm in the dining hall of Lewis Jubilee Sanitarium in Darjeeling, where Dalits were refused entry.68 The government Hindu High English School in Calcutta denied them admission. They were prevented from access to government-funded tols and the Vidyasagar College in Calcutta as well, and on the rare occasion one of their students was admitted, he would not be allowed 62 63 64 65 67 68

Indian Franchise Committee 1932, Vol. 4, Selections from Memoranda Submitted by Individuals and Oral Evidence (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932), 586–88. Ibid., 588. “Services’ Needs; The European Element; Fears of Depressed Classes,” Times of India, 23 January 1924, 12. Ibid. 66 “Scheduled Castes,” Morning News, 13 June 1943. Indian Franchise Committee 1932, Vol. 2, Memoranda Submitted by the Local Governments and the Provincial Franchise Committees, 252. Ibid., 251.

46

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

into the hostel. Schools in both Calcutta and the moffusil persisted in making Dalit students sit outside the actual classrooms. There remained many semi-public temples at which they were denied entry and worship. Namasudras and members of other Depressed Classes were not allowed to take water from public tanks or the ghats frequented by upper-caste Hindus on account of their perceived pollution. The practice of separate water pitchers for the use of Namasudra, Dhobi, and other Dalit pleaders in mofussil bar association libraries was quite widespread and a source of considerable discontent.69 None of this implied that there were no exceptions to the strictures of untouchability, nor that class stratification among Dalit was absent. Yet the exceedingly modest and hard-won progress only amplified the effect of discrimination and sense of humiliation. Rasik Lal Biswas of the All-Bengal Namasudra Association adduced the distinction during oral evidence to the Indian Franchise Committee: “There are social bars. That is our difficulty. Wealth and education we can have, but we cannot have social status. You will never allow your daughters and nieces to be married to Namasudras.”70 “Revolutionary Changes” As is well known, the Poona Pact emerged from B.R. Ambedkar’s reluctant acceptance of M.K. Gandhi’s insistence that “harijans,” as he called them, vote in joint electorates with caste Hindus as opposed to separate ones as provided by the Communal Award.71 Gandhi famously undertook his “fast unto death” in protest of the Award and its alleged vivisection of Hinduism, placing enormous public pressure on Ambedkar, as the spokesperson for Dalits, to reach an alternative agreement. The reformulated proposal resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of seats marked for Depressed Classes in Bengal, from ten to thirty. From the seventy-odd seats in the future assembly under the Communal Award for which they were eligible, the upper-castes were whittled to approximately fifty under the Pact. It was the Pact, even more than the Award, that sharpened upper-caste and Dalit antagonism. Congressman Jitendralal Bannerjee took the floor in the council once again to resist the implementation of the Poona Pact in Bengal in 69

70 71

See the response by an anonymous Brahmin to the questionnaire for eliciting Hindu public opinion on present-day social problems in A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Bengal and Sikkim, Part 1, Report (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1933), 415. Indian Franchise Committee 1932, Vol. 4, Selections from Memoranda Submitted by Individuals and Oral Evidence (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932), 584. “Harijan,” literally meaning “children of God,” was the term Gandhi used to refer to the so-called untouchables. Ambedkar and other leaders found this patronizing and insulting.

“Revolutionary Changes”

47

particular. It was “inapplicable in the peculiar circumstances of Bengal . . . injurious to the interests of the Hindu community . . . subversive of their solidarity . . . [It] does not fulfil the conditions for a substituted agreement laid down in paragraph 4 of the Prime Minister’s Award.”72 Bannerjee alleged that the Pact was not binding on Bengal as no Bengali Hindus were present at the proceedings, which contravened the clause of the Communal Award making contingent any modification on the support of all affected parties. The reasons he mobilized for its inapplicability offer insight into the nationalist construal of the Depressed Classes. Bannerjee asked rhetorically, “Is there any depressed class problem in Bengal in any real sense of the term?”73 The Depressed Classes, he added, could not be confused with backward classes, as there were Brahmins who were educationally and economically disadvantaged as well. “Also, the mere fact that certain castes suffer from certain social disabilities as compared with others is not sufficient to mark them out as depressed classes. Such social inequalities are part and parcel of the Hindu social system, and they do not connote any political or civil disability.”74 While particular classes and castes suffered political and civil disabilities – as in Madras, in the United Provinces, and the Bombay presidency – in Bengal, this was not the case. The circumstances in Bengal did not fulfill the three tests of untouchability set down by the Lothian Committee, and where they did, the total population of these castes was hardly significant – thus their proportional representation hardly deserved thirty seats out of eighty. Bannerjee next called into question the assumed homogeneity of thinking about Depressed Classes and caste Hindus as two hermetically sealed units.75 Castes within the Depressed Classes observed caste rituals and barriers as rigid as those that set Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Baidyas apart from the Depressed Classes. “Such being the case, how is a Namasudra or a Rajbangshi better qualified to speak, say, for a Pod or a Bagdi than a Brahman or Kayastha would be?”76 Given this state of affairs, Bannerjee concluded that there was no Depressed Classes problem in Bengal to speak of. Finally came his lament that Gandhi, “first and chief martyr of nationalism . . . should himself be the instrument of subverting the cause of national solidarity in Bengal.”77 In Bannerjee’s reckoning, the “evil” of separate voting now extended from ten to thirty seats, and whereas under the Communal Award the provisions were restricted to specific regions of Bengal, under the Poona Pact “the whole fair face of the province is plastered with the poison.”78 72 75

Bengal Legislative Council, 14 March 1933, 92. Ibid., 97. 76 Ibid., 98. 77 Ibid., 98. 78 Ibid.

73

Ibid., 96.

74

Ibid.

48

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

This move to repeal the Poona Pact in Bengal through sheer disavowal of “the problem of the Depressed Classes” epitomized the upper-caste bhadrolok’s attitude toward demands for the increased democratization of society and politics, in short, their misrecognition. This was indeed about the upper-caste cognitive capacity, for the category itself appeared artificial and meaningless to them. Despite the Congress high command’s official stance in support of the development, Advance and Liberty, publications representing divergent shades of opinion within the Bengal Congress, took “pains to establish that the problem of the depressed classes hardly existed in Bengal.”79 Many of the leading public figures of Bengal committed their signatures to a draft by the Bengal AntiCommunal Award Movement, itself headed by senior Congress leaders such as Tulsi Charan Goswami, which rather more frankly proclaimed the anxiety that such reforms “will inevitably reduce the caste Hindus of Bengal to a position of absolute political impotence.”80 B.C. Chatterjee took the view that the future implementation of the Award and Pact would spell the “political subordination of the Caste Hindus who occupied deservedly an important position in the social, economic and political life of Bengal.”81 N.N. Sircar, advocate-general of Bengal, delegate to the third Round Table Conference and overseer of the largest law practice in India, neatly summarized the problem: the Pact introduced political division “where none hitherto existed.”82 Twenty-five members of the Bengal Legislative Council, a significant portion of upper-caste MLCs, addressed a telegram to the prime minister protesting the measure.83 At a meeting of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha in Calcutta, speakers urged Hindus to organize themselves to protect “Hindu culture and rights” and described the Poona Pact as yet another “Himalayan 79 80

81 82

83

Bhola Chatterji, Aspects of Bengal Politics in the Early Nineteen Thirties (Calcutta: The World Press Private Limited, 1969), 48. “The Communal Decision and the Poona Pact: A Manifesto,” in Bengal Anti-Communal Award Movement – A Report (Calcutta, Bengal Anti-Communal Award Committee, 1939), 49. Signatories included Hirendranath Datta (President, Bengal Provincial Hindu Sabha), Ramananda Chatterjee (editor, Modern Review, and ex-president, All India Hindu Mahasabha), B.C. Chatterjee (barrister-at-law, MLC, and Nationalist Party leader), Radha Kumud Mookerjee (M.A., P.R.S., professor, Lucknow University, and vice-president, All India Hindu Mahasabha) and other noted personalities. “India To-morrow Club,” India Tomorrow 3:22, Dacca, Sushil Chandra Nag, 774. N.N. Sircar, Bengal Under Communal Award and Poona Pact (Calcutta: The Book Company Ltd., 1933), Appendix A. Interestingly, Ambedkar had suggested a plan for the modification of the Poona Pact to “relieve the caste Hindus of Bengal” that suggested reducing the thirty reserved seats to twenty, and redistributing them in other provinces (IOR/L/PO/6/89A). “Bengal not for Poona Pact; Cable to Premier; Blow at Hindu Society,” Times of India, 26 November 1932, 13.

“Revolutionary Changes”

49

blunder” creating artificial division.84 Sircar, for his part, took the initiative to circulate a pamphlet at the instance of the Hindu Sabha, British Indian Association, and Indian Association of Calcutta (suggestively titled Who are the Depressed Classes in Bengal?), which sought to establish that the Namasudras and Rajbangshis, two of the most populous castes in Bengal, could hardly be considered part of the Depressed Classes according to the strict criteria of untouchability alone, and therefore ought to be excluded from consideration under the Pact.85 When it came to the issue of Dalit representation, the innumerable factions and ideological differences among the upper-caste politicians of Bengal, Congress and otherwise, dissipated in joint chorus against the idea. Ambedkar had refuted this upper-caste outcry from Bengal in a littleknown interview that systematically undid the very premises of their argument. Not only were Bengali Hindus present at Poona, but they took “a most prominent part in negotiating with him.” Mukunda Behari Mullick confirmed to him that figures such as Haridas Majumdar, Pramathnath Banerjee, Swami Satyananda, and Satish Chandra Dasgupta attended the conference in Bombay about the Poona Pact. They were present at the meeting held at the India Merchant’s Chamber in Bombay, and several had a long private conversation with him at his office in Parel. Representatives from Bengal were “not merely silent spectators” to ongoing discussions but “active participants.” Besides, the argument about their absence (which in any case was untrue) would not stand scrutiny, for in that case the Poona Pact was liable to rejection by Dalits of other provinces, as none of their representatives were present when it was settled. In addition, Ambedkar had actually allotted fewer seats than claimed by their Bengali spokesmen. They had claimed fifty, and ended up receiving only thirty, on account of having to distribute the 148 Depressed Classes seats in the various provincial assemblies through British India. They expressed their “dissatisfaction at him having let them down, and went away in a temper.” Indeed, since the Pact had been concluded, “I have forced the terms down the throats of the depressed classes in Bengal.”86 Ambedkar’s rebuttal received no reply. 84 85

86

“Effect of ‘Poona Pact’ in Bengal: Split Among Hindus,” Times of India, 11 March 1933, 6. The precise definition at the time was as follows: “A depressed class is one whose social, economic and other circumstances are such that it will be unable to secure adequate representation of its political view or adequate protection of its interests without some form of special franchise concession.” Untouchability was not the definitive criterion. See Porter, Census of India, 1931, Volume 5: Census of Bengal and Sikkim, 498–99, for the rationale behind this wording. Ibid.

50

Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

The profound depth of upper-caste sentiment against the Pact found resonance in academic circles as well. Naresh Chandra Roy, professor of history and political science and lecturer at the University of Calcutta, gave sober and reasoned articulation to these discontents in a study of the constitutional system of India.87 In his view, thirty out of eighty members of the general (Hindu) constituencies now regrettably regarded themselves as the “mouthpiece of sectional interests.”88 As galling was that those “who by education, tradition, upbringing and sacrifice are the best fitted to represent the Hindu constituencies” were effectively debarred. Instead, they would be occupied by those “only slowly emerging from obscurity.”89 The Pact “appears only to proscribe political talent and experience and put a premium upon ignorance and inexperience.”90 Roy’s was a carefully worded exclamation of upper-caste loathing cloaked in the defense of meritocratic eligibility on the hoary grounds of tradition.91 The “waiting-room of history,” in this sense, had sound indigenous precedents. Unlike their rather more nuanced reception of the Communal Award, then, the upper-caste politicians and intelligentsia of Bengal were wholly in agreement about the undesirability of the Pact. Not a single one of their major representatives came to its defense. Arguably the most revealing indictment came from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi himself, who in a letter to Bidhan Chandra Roy asked pointedly: “What is this agitation against the Yeravada Pact?” He continued, “Are they not also Hindus? Was there not always the cry on our part that the Harijans could take as many seats as they liked, even cent per cent? This opposition, if it is popular, is likely to estrange Harijans and to justify the fears often expressed on their behalf as to the attitude of caste Hindus.”92 Gandhi’s manner of thinking obviously found little sympathy in Bengal. Even Rabindranath Tagore moved to retract his initial support following the intervention of N.N. Sircar. In a letter to Gandhi, he confessed that, if accepted without modification, the Pact would remain a “source of 87

88 89 91

92

Despite his better known and celebrated rightward leanings of later years, Mookerjee was a staunch advocate of the Congress in the early 1930s, and even on the verge of Partition confessed that he had “always wanted the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha to work together . . .” Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1993), 111. Naresh Chandra Roy, The Constitutional System of India: A Critical and Comparative Analysis (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1937), 271. Ibid., 272. 90 Ibid. Also see Jatindra Mohan Datta’s “The Depressed Classes” and “Scheduled Caste Representation in the Bengal Assembly” in The Modern Review, which parroted these upper-caste assumptions. K.P. Thomas (ed.), Dr. B.C. Roy (Calcutta: West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, 1955), 172.

“Revolutionary Changes”

51

perpetual communal jealousy leading to constant disturbance of peace and a fatal break in the spirit of mutual cooperation in our province.”93 The utter failure of upper-caste Hindus, of whatever political-ideological tendency, to recognize Dalit demands for democratization or to misrecognize them as mere “communalism” was the signal feature of their responses. Theirs was refusal of the very norms and principles enshrined in the Poona Pact; the Depressed Classes, in the upper-caste view, could and did not constitute a legitimate political subject. Dalits were inadmissible within their preferred recognition order. In council, it was Amulyadhan Ray who rose once more to respond to demands for repeal and the upper-caste delegitimizing the salience of untouchability in Bengal. Ray began by emphasizing that the Poona Pact was not a measure that they desired: “It is your own creation thrust upon them which they have accepted not by choice but necessity.”94 It was true that they were unsatisfied with their apportionment under the award, but by virtue of the separate electorate and the recognition it conferred on their community, it was a “Magna Charta of the depressed classes unprecedented and unparalleled in the constitutional history of India.”95 Gandhi’s extreme decision and the reasoning behind it – the feared destruction of Hinduism – were misplaced. Twenty years of separate electorates in limited form could not possibly have that effect. And now, Mr. Bannerjee claimed that the Pact would result in the same. “We heard the other day that Mr. Macdonald’s Award would disrupt the Hindu society and we are to hear to-day that the Poona Pact will destroy the same. Mr. Bannerjee will take from me that we do understand all this Brahmanical fraud.”96 Ray argued that neither subverted the Hindu community, as they were designed precisely to serve the interests of a significant number of them. Moreover, the Pact was based on the principle of a joint electorate, which the Congress considered integral to national unity. In fact, the Pact “is wholly and solely based on joint electorate and the primary election is absolutely trash and meaningless.”97 Turning to Bannerjee’s assertion that the absence of untouchability in Bengal did not merit their political representation as 93

94 97

Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (eds.), Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), 430. Also see “Dr. Tagore Deplores Poona Pact: Injustice to Bengal,” Times of India, 25 July 1933, 9. Bengal Legislative Council, 14 March 1933, 99. 95 Ibid., 99. 96 Ibid., 100. Ibid., 100. Ray’s skepticism was echoed in debates about the Pact in the House of Commons several years later. With considerable foresight, a number of British parliamentarians felt that the Depressed Classes would in effect be under the control of the Congress or the caste Hindus under the terms of the Pact. Their representatives would be under the “permanent bondage of the Congress leadership”; and the elected would be “those who could be relied on not to make themselves too troublesome to the caste Hindus” and “those approved by the Brahmins and other castes.” “Commons Accept Poona Pact,” Times of India, 11 May 1935, 13.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

envisioned in the Award and Pact, an evidently exasperated Ray exclaimed: I do not know how a class of people can think one way, say another and do a third. Shame indeed to create anti-untouchability league in Bengal, to start temple entry satyagraha at Munshiganj and Kapilmuni, to establish separate Hindu hostels and boardings maintained at the cost of public revenue for the caste Hindus and the depressed classes, to keep the Government Hindu High English School at Calcutta open for the boys of the high caste Hindus and to allow them only to the dining hall of Lewis Jubilee Sanatorium at Darjeeling on the one hand and to say that there is no untouchability in Bengal. The untouchability in Bengal may not be so acute or so inhuman as in the south, but it is so wide in Bengal as it cannot be found anywhere in India except the United Provinces.98

Because of their numerical strength, the upper-castes were “trying to minimize the number of the depressed classes as much as possible and are making show that there is no untouchability and no disability in Bengal.”99 Ray finally addressed the last of Bannerjee’s objections. How did it matter if Bengali leaders were not present – which was not true, in any case – when meetings all over Bengal had passed resolutions accepting the agreement? The Pact was an agreement reached by all parties concerned, and merely passing a motion in the provincial council was immaterial. The upper-castes’ anxiety was thus not for the Hindu community writ large, but “for the political power and privileges passing out of their hands to the hands of the depressed classes.”100 Mukunda Behary Mullick similarly registered his protest against the proposed repeal. While Ray anticipated several of his objections, Mullick touched on certain issues that merit particular attention. Reversing the strategy of pointing out the artificiality of the category “Depressed classes” Mullick observed that neither did Hindus constitute a “homogenous race.”101 There was hardly any commonality that bound the various castes together, besides their respectively unique profession of Hindu religion and government by the Hindu laws of succession. Despite such multiplicity, there were political and social privileges that formed the central cleavage: “this main line of distinction between the caste Hindus on the one side and the depressed classes of the Hindus on the other.”102 Given that the latter accounted for little more than half of all the Hindus in Bengal whose leaders agreed with the premier’s acceptance of the Pact, to claim the Pact undermined Hindu unity was to imagine solidarity where none existed. Mullick next reminded why such demands arose in the first place by pointing to their substantive precedents: “We have had very bitter experience in the past and we have felt it very keenly in these twelve years 98

Ibid., 100–1.

99

Ibid., 101.

100

Ibid., 104.

101

Ibid., 110.

102

Ibid., 110.

“Revolutionary Changes”

53

since the Reforms were inaugurated. We know the basis on which the last four elections and the bye-elections were fought in Bengal. It is needless to recapitulate our experiences. We can only say this that our candidates had been practically nowhere.”103 In the very council in which they debated, “Whenever any little voice was raised, it was always thwarted or even gagged.”104 For Ray and Mullick, repealing the Pact was inconceivable. The attitudes of Muslim MLCs in this regard are as revealing as those of their upper-caste counterparts. Consider the opinion of Maulvi Abul Kasem, who was responding to an objection that the Pact did not provide means to address the fundamental axis of social exploitation. Kasem agreed, and although the exploiters were not entirely confined to the caste Hindus, “if truth must be told, it must be said that the bulk of them belong to that community, and it is because of this exploitation that the Muhammadans and the depressed classes whom he has mentioned have been moved to demand special representation.”105 Kasem then turned to Bannerjee’s implicit assumption that Gandhi’s real object was to bring about solidarity among the Hindus. To the contrary: “Mr. Gandhi really wanted to see that the Muhammadans and the depressed classes did not join hands, and he wanted to bring the depressed classes under some sort of control of the caste Hindus, and the only way he could do it, was to place them at the mercy of the Hindus.”106 With some justice, he observed, as Ray had done, that the method of electing Depressed Classes was hardly a perpetuation of separate electorates, as under the Pact, caste Hindus would elect the man “least popular among the depressed classes.”107 Genuine national solidarity would thus require the caste Hindus renouncing their communalism. “If the depressed classes and other communities ask for separate representation, it is because they have been goaded to it by the treatment, the unjust and unfair treatment they have received at the hands of the caste Hindus.”108 Kasem had no difficulty with comprehending the specific rationale behind the Dalit claim to recognition. The results of voting on the resolution to repeal the Poona Pact are a revealing index on how political sentiments were arrayed at this critical juncture: not a single Dalit or Muslim MLC, barring one solitary figure among the latter, voted to renegotiate the pact. In stark contrast, those who did were almost exclusively upper-caste Hindus. It is significant then that a “largely attended meeting” presided over by B.N. Sasmal, the Mahishya lawyer who played such a critical role in the Congress’ campaigns in the 1920s, reasserted its support for the Pact and condemned 103

Ibid., 112.

104

Ibid.

105

Ibid., 119.

106

Ibid., 120.

107

Ibid.

108

Ibid.

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Jogendranath Mandal, the Politics of Caste

the council’s denunciation.109 A press statement by P.R. Thakur, then vice president of the All-Bengal Depressed Classes Federation, likewise confirmed opposition to any revision.110 There was little disagreement among them when it came to countering upper-caste objections to their political representation. This meeting of minds between Muslim and Dalit politicians, however, was by no means an altogether unexpected or inexplicable phenomenon. Indeed, as suggested by various historians, collective agitation by Muslims and Dalits was as important a feature of contemporary social life as their more publicized instances of violent encounter.111 There were other precedents as well. Perhaps most important was the indifference, if not resistance, by the predominantly Namasudra and Muslim peasantry to the demands articulated by the upper-caste Hindu leaders of the Swadeshi movement several decades earlier, the Non-Cooperation Movement, or, more recently, during the civil disobedience movement. Such solidarities found reflection in literary imagination as well. A poem by the Namasudra poet Rai Charan Biswas, “Musolman,” exhorted Namasudras and Muslims to unite.112 The acclaimed Muslim litterateur Jasim Uddin composed some of his most famous verses about the efforts of an upper-caste naib to foment tensions between Namasudra and Muslim tenants in his Sojan Badiar Ghat, itself a love story between a Muslim man and Namasudra woman, initially published in 1933.113 Despite the well-known recurrence of agrarian and 109 110 111

112

113

“Bengal Hindus and Poona Pact: Meeting supports its provisions,” The Times of India, 24 April 1933, 10. “Poona Pact: Bengal Depressed Classes opposed to revision,” The Times of India, 7 July 1933, 9. Tanika Sarkar, Bengal, 1928–1934: The Politics of Protest (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987); John Gallagher, “Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930–39,” 278–80; Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947, 243–44. Humaira Momen, in a study of the Krishak Praja Party, observed: “Although such movements in Bengal had been on a secular basis, the new organization was to cater mainly to the demands of the Muslim and Scheduled Caste peasants as they were the most oppressed and depressed classes.” Elsewhere, providing further evidence of Dalit and Muslim cooperation: “In the elections held in 1927 and 1931, the Muslims were able to capture power in most of the District Boards in Bengal under a system of joint electorate with the support of the Scheduled Castes.” See Humaira Momen, Muslim Politics in Bengal: A Study of the Krishak Praja Party and the Elections of 1937 (Dacca: Sunny House, 1972), 41,72 n5. Sadananda Biswas, “Mahaprana Yogendranatha: Svakala, svajati o rajniti” in Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajnitir Svatantra Adhyaya (Kalakata: Caturtha Duniya, 2003), 49–50. Rai Charan Biswas’ book Jatiya Jagaran, written in verse form, became immensely popular among Namasudras. He “sang glories of the Namasudras and deprecated the superior and exclusive mentality of the caste Hindus.” See N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, Being a Connected Account of the Namas from 1812 A.D. Down to the Present Day Together with a Study of Their Antiquity, Vol. II (Calcutta: B. Sarkar and Co., 1992), 256. Jasim Uddin, Sojan Badiar Ghat (Dhaka: Phiroj Anoar, 1960).

The Attempt at Religious Reform

55

communal violence between their communities, the lives of Namasudras and Muslims were intertwined in ways that confounded the binary logic of communal antagonism between unmarked Hindu and Muslim. The incidence of rioting between them, stemming from both economic and religious disputes, seemingly coexisted with their leaders’ acknowledgment of the structural identity of their social and political interests. Legislative council and public debate on the Communal Award and the Poona Pact thus mirrored the wider patterns in social solidarity and conflict in Bengali society. In both cases, when upper-caste nationalists rose to condemn the proposed measures and to seek their undoing, nearly all Muslim and Dalit representatives stood together. There was, however, an important difference. While a minority of Muslim leaders remained uncertain about the separate electorate provided by the Communal Award, this was simply not the case with Dalit council members as regards the Poona Pact: they were unanimously agreed. On the other hand, while upper-caste members of the council grudgingly conceded the principles behind separate electorates for Muslims, they unanimously found even a jointelectorate with seats reserved for the Depressed Classes beyond reason. The Attempt at Religious Reform If debates over the Award and Pact featured differences over the very means of political representation, contemporary discussions about the Temple-Entry Bill offer a window into attitudes about the reform of religious practices. The bill was significant for offering a site wherein upper-caste liberalism was to demonstrate egalitarianism and thereby entice Dalits into the Hindu and national fold. This was a privileged domain for a Gandhi and a Savarkar alike, for, as with representation, there was much in common in spite of genuine differences. Where they concurred was in privileging the meaningfulness of “untouchable” temple entry, the underlying assumption being that the appropriate resolution to caste discrimination lay in communally sovereign acts of atonement. This move to allow “untouchables” into temples was designed to demonstrate the Congress’ willingness to “remove untouchability” among a host of similar efforts designed to facilitate social interactions between upper-castes and the Depressed Classes in the cause of nationalist unity.114 Gandhi was 114

It is interesting to note that intermarriage across the poles of Bengal’s caste society was never seriously considered among the Congress’ various efforts to address untouchability. These included inter-dining, desegregated religious festivals, ceremonial acts of receiving water, and temple entry. In this connection, I have seen a reference for a 1919 report by the “Hindu Inter Caste Marriages Bill Protest Committee of Bengal,” but unfortunately have not been able to consult it as yet.

56

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initially in favor of the various bills that proposed to negotiate the rights of the Depressed Classes to enter temples, and encouraged Ambedkar to support the same. Indeed, they were, at his behest, a response to the crisis in wake of the Award and Pact, an attempt, as N.N. Sircar, advocate-general of Bengal, later candidly remarked, “to capture Harijan votes by pushing the Bills on a temporary wave of enthusiasm . . .”115 Temple entry was a typically Gandhian response to the Poona Pact, and a key element in what Rupa Viswanath has called the spiritualization and socialization of Dalit life.116 The bills put to test the spiritual egalitarianism that Gandhi so idealized in his defense of varnashrama, that “rational, scientific fact” and “healthy division of work based on birth” as he put it, in uncanny echo of the views of his more orthodox compatriots.117 This was occasion to demonstrate the theory that untouchability could be best dealt with among Hindus themselves. Following the brief rapprochement between Gandhi and Ambedkar, the latter resigned from Gandhi’s Anti-Untouchability League in disappointment over the “complete departure from the original aims of the organization.”118 Gandhi would not countenance any alteration to the Pact as desired by Bengal’s upper-caste Hindus, so this was yet another instance when his policies had undesirable effect. B.L. Mitter, law member from Bengal, in two confidential notes on the Temple Entry and Untouchability bills (as they came to be known), began with the bald assertion: “The Bills are designed to confer certain rights on ‘untouchables’ which they do not possess.”119 In Mitter’s estimation, they were “expropriatory in character,” a “direct attack on the Hindu religion,” and would “desecrate temples, destroy rights with a religious sanction, create rights against positive religious injunctions and generally reduce Hindu temples into secular institutions.”120 Their passage would contradict established colonial policy of religious 115

116 117 118

119

120

N.N. Sircar, Note (dated 2/8/34) – The Temple Entry Bill and Anti-Touchability Bill, Executive Council Meeting on August 3rd, in Appendix to Notes, Home/Political 50/ 16/33-Poll, 31: Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill. Rupa Viswanath, The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 248–58. M.K. Gandhi, The Removal of Untouchability (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1954), 39. B.R. Ambedkar, “An Anti-Untouchability Agenda,” in Valerian Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 366. See also Christophe Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2004), 63–73. “Untouchability Bills,” 19 December 1932, in Appendix II – Confidential, Home/ Political 50/II/1933: Procedure in Regards to the Untouchability Bills in the Central Legislature. Ibid.

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neutrality. Mitter did not object to the right of the legislature to destroy religious institutions by converting them into secular ones. But he did object to the governor-general granting sanction to the same. If “untouchables” were to enter temples, this could be accomplished “without outraging the Hindu religion, by the uplift of the ‘untouchables,’ improvement of their habits of life and other similar means. Legislation far in advance of public opinion is wrong method.”121 Mitter wrote these notes in late 1932. His assessment that Dalit temple entry would overwhelmingly be perceived within the grammar of ritual pollution gave lie to Bengali claims of exceptionalism regarding untouchability. Mitter’s successor N.N. Sircar elaborated on this stand two years later, adding several important caveats. Sircar claimed for himself a certain moral standing in this connection. He clarified he was “not an orthodox Hindu,” had been president of the Society for Backward Classes in Bengal for many years, and “spared neither time nor money for improving their social conditions and improving their lot.”122 He personally contributed monies, along with those received from friends and English firms, for their schools. Sircar thus established his altruistic credentials, and while any movement for “Depressed Classes improvement” had his “genuine sympathy,” he was “altogether opposed to the proposed legislation.”123 Sircar reproduced much of the reasoning presaged by Mitter. Passage of the bills “would lead to rioting, disorder and dissension. I have no hesitation in asserting that the same will be in the case of Bengal.”124 If the government consented, they were “not only guilty of helping in causing disorder and rioting, but they will bitterly antagonize millions of Hindus and not merely what is described as the extreme orthodox section of which I have not the honour of being a member.”125 Sircar was keen to stress this latter point in a subsequent note for an executive council meeting. The impression that opposition was confined mainly to the orthodox Hindus was thus mistaken. Orthodox and liberal converged on demanding that government abide by its standing policy of religious noninterference. A closer look at the range of public opinion on the subject in the responses to a government circular eliciting opinion on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill from various legal and religious authorities and other notable institutions indicated a slightly wider acceptance of the measure in Bengal in contrast to Mitter’s and Sircar’s 121 122 123 125

Ibid. N.N. Sircar, Note dated 20–7-34, Home/Political 50/16/33-Poll: Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 24. Emphasis mine. Ibid. 124 N.N. Sircar, Note dated 21–7-34, Home/Political 50/16/33-Poll, 25. Ibid.

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misgivings. The Secretary to the Government of Bengal thus wrote in summary: “there is neither unanimity nor preponderance of opinion amongst officials or among un-official bodies or individuals.”126 The responses as a whole reveal sharp divergences in how the various concerned parties interpreted the proposals. In contrast to the unambiguous objections to the Poona Pact, there were a considerable number who found no reason to reject the bill. Mr. A.N. Sen, district judge of Dacca, was of the opinion that there could be no “reasonable objection” to the provisions of the bill.127 Mr. S. Sen, district judge of Birbhum, found himself “in general agreement with the provisions of the Bill and its objects and reasons.”128 Raja Janaki Nath Ray supported the provisions and principle underlying the proposal.129 Mr. B.K. Basu, district judge of Pabna and Bogra, held in favor as well.130 Significantly, so did Mr. A.M. Ahmad, district judge of Nadia.131 Among upper-castes as a whole, however, this affirmative response was overwhelmed by the sheer number of dissenting petitions, many of which delved deep and at length into shastric and vedic literature to argue against the proposal. A list of representations received in Delhi from all over India against the measure, for instance, contained nearly forty from Bengal, in contrast to one solitary indication of support.132 Much of the orthodox response was characterized by the refusal to countenance legislative interference in the religious domain, a question considered logically prior to the suggested proposals. Mahamahopadhyaya Haridas Siddhantabagisha responded categorically in a single sentence: “I strongly hold that there should be no legislation in the matter of religious affairs.”133 Digambar Chatterji, retired judge of the Calcutta High Court, 126

127 128 129 130 131 132

133

“Government of Bengal” in Government of India, Legislative Assembly Department, Paper No. VI: Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill (Introduced by Mr. C.S. Ranga Iyer, M.L.A.), Opinions Nos. 16–17, Home/Political 50/16/33-Poll: Subject: Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 483. “Mr. A.N. Sen, District Judge of Dacca,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 486. “Mr. S. Sen, District Judge of Birbhum,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 508. “Raja Janaki Nath Ray,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 483. “Mr. B.K. Basu, District Judge of Pabna and Bogra,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 483. “Mr. A.M. Ahmad, District Judge of Nadia,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 484. Home/Political 22/18/1934: List of resolutions, memorials, telegrams, letters, etc. protesting against the Temple Entry Bill received and placed in the library of the legislative assembly. “Mahamahopadhyaya Haridas Siddhantabagisha,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 489.

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offered a more elaborate explanation. The bill was inapplicable in Bengal as the “untouchables” had never laid claim to enter the temples of caste Hindus, for they had their own. Mr. Gandhi’s intentions were thus misplaced. Chatterji heard “that the Pandas and the Mahants of the temples here are prepared to fight to death for preserving the sanctity of their temples, which they think will be defiled by the entry of these people.”134 There was no argument over the right to worship, but that was to be carried out separately, not in the precincts of temples intended solely for uppercastes. To worship with “untouchables” was unthinkable. The inadmissibility of subordinating religious practice to the law – the tremendous reluctance to abide by Gandhi’s effort to demonstrate Hindu liberalism – points to the stubborn limits of this attempt at persuasion in Bengal. At the heart of the matter lay resistance to the idea that legislation alien to the principles of Hindu law would be brought to bear on the latter, thus enabling an utter misnomer: the lawful entry of Dalits into the most sacred spaces of Hindu temples. Such views therefore retained the apprehension of such subjects as agents of pollution and desecration, capable of defiling the worshipper, the worshipped, and the space of worship. The principles on which the bill was based cut to the very foundations of Hindu thought, a “subversion of the basic principles of Hindu religion” as Rai Rakhal Raj Biswas Bahadur of Krishnagar averred.135 By contrast, representation from the All-Bengal Namasudra Association, Dacca, far from being indifferent to the proposed legislation, as a number of upper-caste figures alleged, accorded its full support. Various other Namasudra bodies adopted an identical stance. The association went even further, disagreeing with C.S. Ranga Iyer’s proposal that local votes would determine temple entry, as such a provision “will create local unrest and dissension and frustrate the very purpose of the Bill.”136 Instead, they argued that the actual passage of the act could set the entire matter at rest. Finally, the association condemned orthodox resistance to the bill as represented by Pandit Satyendranath Sen “and other members of his school of thought.”137 Sen, considered an eminent authority on Hindu law and a member of the central legislature, led the charge in the central legislative assembly by emphasizing the inviolability of the principles of untouchability with regard to temple entry.138 134 135 136 137

“Mr. Digambar Chatterji, Retired Judge of the Calcutta High Court, Benares,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 494. “Rai Rakhal Raj Biswas Bahadur, Krishnagar, Nadia,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 483. “All-Bengal Namasudra Association, Dacca,” Opinions on the Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 514. Ibid. 138 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 40.

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At this juncture, however, those progressive upper-caste Hindus whom the orthodox accused of fomenting disunity among Hindus by propagating such a bill did not eventually have a suitably powerful response to subdue the wave of anti-temple-entry agitation. What they did not do, in the face of conservative discontent and outrage, was to explicitly reject the affirmation and commitment of their compatriots to Hindu doctrinal injunctions on untouchability, and push through their legislation. Instead, the bill, however ill-conceived, ill-defined, and instrumental, was retracted from the legislative agenda on Gandhi’s word, an admission of defeat. Gandhi had threatened another fast if this attempt to demonstrate spiritual equality failed.139 Unlike his fast over the Poona Pact, however, this time around he did not threaten the country with his death. How one proposed to win the confidence of Dalits when every single reform that vested them with an enhanced bill of rights met with a wall of denial was the problem that required redress if nationalist claims to representativeness were to have any substantial meaning in the years to come. What the debates over these reforms revealed was the explicit opposition between upper-caste and Dalit politicians with respect to every single measure – the Communal Award, tenancy reform, the Poona Pact, or the proposal to enable Dalit temple entry. Such stark disjuncture constituted the basic dynamic between the groups’ political representatives at the onset of provincial autonomy. Conclusion The polarization of debate preceding the foundation of Bengal’s legislative assembly in 1937 between upper-caste Hindus on the one hand, and Muslim and Depressed Classes representatives on the other, bore an uncanny resemblance to contradictions underlying the social and economic structures of the province. The fractures in Hindu political opinion stood blatantly exposed whether with regard to the Communal Award, tenancy reform, the Poona Pact, or temple entry. Where Dalit and Muslim leaders saw potential for the deepening of democracy, the uppercaste nationalist leadership saw tyranny. Gandhi forced Ambedkar into giving up separate electorates and the bhadrolok, both within the Congress and without, were still dissatisfied; rather, they were even further provoked. Even when the Congress attempted to bring Dalits into its fold through efforts to enable Dalits’ entry to temples, they floundered against the firm opposition of their more conservative compatriots. These 139

Srimohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Satishchandra Dasgupta (trans.), Hindu dharma o asprisyata (Kalikata: Khadi Pratisthan, 1932), preface.

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debates over what provincial autonomy would look like thus suggest the utter fragility of anticolonial nationalism’s bid for hegemony over the Dalits. At the start of the last decade of colonial rule, then, the politics of caste in Bengal were far from being resolved, and were central to Bengal’s political discourse. The preceding years of contestation about constitutional reforms found upper-caste nationalists scrambling to simultaneously defend their social and political dominance even as they sought to diminish the arguments mobilized by Dalit leaders. Faced with a clear Muslim majority, their problem of how to win the confidence of the representatives of those they deemed inferior assumed a renewed and urgent significance, especially in light of their near-univocal condemnation of the Poona Pact. Yet, alongside these sharp differences in high politics, Bengal also gave rise to a man such as Jogendranath Mandal, one who seemed on the face of it to have transcended the burden of caste. The conditions of his noteworthy election to the assembly, however, suggest his exceptionality in a world where one’s social origins and identifications were increasingly coming to define the horizon of political convictions and loyalties. It is true that the Congress secured seven of the thirty seats reserved for Dalits in the legislative assembly, yet few if any other Namasudra leaders could claim to have acquired the support of both Dalits and the upper-castes in an unreserved seat. As we shall see, Mandal’s ability to appreciate such accommodation gradually withered as his own experiences with uppercaste intentions disabused him of the actual content of their claims to inclusiveness over the first handful of years of provincial autonomy.

2

Representation, Education, and Agrarian Reform Jogendranath Mandal and the Demands of Dalit Politics, 1937–1943

Extant scholarship on the first generation of Dalit members of the legislative assembly in Bengal has stressed their dubious commitment to those they were called upon to represent. They were gradually becoming “more interested in concessions that could hardly benefit the masses” which contributed to a “growing disjuncture” between their aspirations.1 When the leaders discussed “peasant issues,” their “high-sounding radical demands . . . appeared more to be playing to the gallery than expressing any real concern for the toiling poor.”2 Namasudra leaders apparently displayed a “total amnesia regarding the peasants.” These are characterizations of a leadership, seemingly oblivious to the concerns of those they sought to represent, that dovetail with latter-day criticisms of Dalit politics as being overly preoccupied with bourgeois concerns and “identity politics” to the neglect of matters of presumably greater substance. Alongside such narrowly conceived political interests, provincial autonomy is nonetheless believed to have prompted the gradual drift of Dalit leaders and their communities from alienation to integration into “mainstream Indian nationalism,” their politics falling increasingly in line with those of upper-caste politicians.3 By conceptualizing their politics in terms of the leadership’s distance from or identification with the varying currents of “mainstream Indian nationalism,” the opportunity to grasp the underlying logic of their demands, as well as what actually came of them, is lost. Indifferent to the masses, integrating into the parties of those communities with which their own conflicted, and in search of concessions, the Dalit leaders of Bengal appear to have been motivated by little except thinly veiled self-aggrandizement. 1 2 3

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Politics, and the Raj (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1990), 182–84. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997), 194. Ibid., 8.

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63

This chapter revisits the political concerns of this first generation of Dalit members of the legislative assembly of Bengal and, in interpreting their significance, offers a more empathetic and nuanced reading. I examine the various demands they raised during the first six years of provincial autonomy and how they were met, and weave this account with a focus on Jogendranath Mandal’s trajectory over this period. Mandal’s initial optimism about upper-caste commitment to Dalit welfare waned over this first half-decade of provincial autonomy, and he dissociated himself from that party in favor of B.R. Ambedkar’s All India Scheduled Castes Federation by 1942. What brought about this change in one nurtured in no small measure by the ethos of Congressite political ideology, a movement away from, rather than toward, the spokesmen for Indian and Hindu nationalism? Closer inspection suggests that Mandal and several among his legislative colleagues were keenly attuned to matters of agrarian distress, alongside, no doubt, their demands for representation and education. Their politics were thus addressed to questions of both recognition and redistribution, and melded these interlinked dimensions of the justice they sought. Dalit politicians drew attention to questions both of cultural disrespect and economic disadvantage. Properly understood, their struggles for the recognition of Dalit right in the legal domain could hardly afford to ignore the situation of their communities within the political economy of Bengal. Yet this latter dimension of their demands has tended to recede in conventional understandings that construe their politics as premised on mere identitarianism and assign to communists the domain of redistributive politics; an imagination that grasps politics in terms of a split between “concessions” and “peasant issues.”4 That theirs was in fact a politics born of the agrarian masses is somehow lost. The impression Mandal and his colleagues convey is that theirs were demands for the overcoming of caste inequality and injustice within the possibilities enabled by the late colonial political-economic order. Taken seriously, they called for reform not only in governing institutions and administration, but also the economy. Understanding this might go some way toward grasping why those who stood to lose the most in consequence of their potential implementation – the upper-caste politicians of Bengal – remained, as we shall see below, steadfast in their refusal of the very premise of Dalit politics: the legitimacy of the “Scheduled Caste” subject. For provincial autonomy posed the question of how upper-caste 4

Note the parallels between such formulations and those which, in the context of U.S. history, mistakenly grasp African-American politics as one-sidedly “identitarian” or concerned with political correctness and affirmative action to the detriment of economic or class-based demands.

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leaders would seek the confidence of representatives whose very existence, as we saw in the previous chapter, they fundamentally resented, and put to test their willingness to abide by the measures advocated in the fine print of the Poona Pact. This was especially germane in light of the fact that provincial autonomy enabled an electorate for the first time, thus considerably enlarging the significance and reach of politics itself. As matters stood, there was little by way of their public pronouncements and conduct against the reforms of the early 1930s to inspire great confidence. As Mandal gradually realized that none of the organizations led by the upper-castes were willing to accommodate their concerns, he turned his back on them to chart out possibilities that were critically reliant on the possibility of Dalit political autonomy. By the early 1940s, their impassioned rhetoric in defense of Hindu Bengal translated rather poorly in practice. Dalit Demands The 1937 budget was a surplus year, and during its discussion, Pulin Behari Mullick, brother of Mukunda Behari, one of the two Dalit ministers in the government led by the Krishak Praja Party (KPP) and the Muslim League, struck an optimistic note while presenting his ideas about how Dalit development ought to be undertaken. They were an “important section of the people, viz., the Scheduled Castes of Bengal, numbering about 10 millions . . . that is, one-fifth of the total population of the Province.” Mullick addressed the speaker of the House: We therefore demand that an adequate percentage should be set apart in the services under the State for our qualified men. We also demand an adequate representation on the Local Bodies. Our local needs can be tackled through these bodies and they will also provide ample opportunities for training in the art of selfgovernment. We also demand an adequate representation in the constitution of the universities and employment of our qualified men in the services under their control. Sufficient stipends and scholarship should also be provided for our deserving boys for education in the Province and also abroad.

In addition, Mullick was mindful to note: “Last but not the least, Sir, the landlaws of Bengal are causing great anxiety to our people. We, as raiyats, have been hard hit by their application. Sir, a drastic revision of the reactionary portions of the laws is long overdue.”5 Mullick identified here the various domains Dalit leaders would have transformed in hope of a more participatory and just rule. The statement was an abbreviated 5

Bengal Legislative Assembly, Proceedings, 5 August 1937 (Alipore: Bengal Government Press, 1937), 209.

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summary of their political concerns; consider, however, its full implications. How would one reform administrative procedures such that their demands were met? What criteria, mechanisms, and what percentage would be deemed adequate? These were questions that did not as yet have any satisfactory or easy answers. Like Mullick, Rasik Lal Biswas (one of the few Dalit MLAs returned on a Congress ticket, and the sole Bengali Hindu present at the signing of the Poona Pact) also emphasized the role education ought to play in advancing their communities’ interests. Biswas argued that it was not the case that there were no schools, or that there hadn’t been “earnest efforts amongst our people to get our boys and girls educated,” but they had not as yet received government patronage worthy of note. “We are doing our best to elevate ourselves but how can the scheduled caste people rise up without the help of the Government but the Government patronage has been kept reserved for the big people.”6 Government’s patronage of communities under provincial autonomy had come to be considered a matter of peculiar importance during the late-colonial period. It was peculiar, because government was no longer perceived as overwhelmingly a matter of colonial domination alone. In notionally autonomous provinces, government was increasingly preoccupied with the politics between different Indian communities in envisioning a shared future, rather than a sole emphasis on anticolonialism. Employment in the public services, associated not only with prestige but also with a steady flow of income in a province where prospects for entrepreneurship were far from generally available in a context of unemployment, industrial stagnation, and agrarian crisis, was a highly prized source of economic stability. The democratization of public institutions was therefore a significant concern during provincial autonomy and in the years before 1947, and as such, central to the politics of the late-colonial order. An ubiquitous mode of questioning thus emerged in legislative debate in motions tabled almost exclusively by Dalit and Muslim representatives. The central thrust of this form was to inquire into the communal ratios of public employment in various government departments.7 Dalit MLAs focused the bulk of their legislative interventions on this matter, belying concerns about the true significance or adequacy of such policies to the Dalit population. Collectively, the knowledge their questioning generated revealed a great deal about the extent of communal representation, not just at the senior levels of government offices in Calcutta, but about the entire, dense network of administration erected by British colonial rule 6

Proceedings, 26 August 1937, 627.

7

Proceedings, 11 September 1937, 1299–1300.

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throughout the province. If satisfied with the answer, the MLA who had asked the question responded with additional queries regarding, more often than not, the underrepresentation of Muslims and Dalits and what government proposed to do to attain an as yet unspecified degree of parity. No questions about the underrepresentation of caste Hindus were ever tabled. Such inquiries over the course of the first year of the legislative body made plainly evident that Dalits were drastically underrepresented in the government services.8 The ambiguities thrown up by how to equitably represent communities in administration thus required address and clarification. The budget discussion of February 1938 (as in every subsequent year) proved to be a suitable occasion. In the first move of its kind, which Dalit MLAs admittedly considered welcome, the government allocated Rs. 30,000 for special stipends and scholarships for Scheduled Caste students, an amount Upendra Nath Edbar nonetheless characterized as “very insufficient in consideration of their numerical strength.”9 Monmohan Das likewise found it “quite inadequate.”10 While agreeing with his colleagues, yet conceding that “an earnest endeavour has been made in the right direction,” Pulin Behari Mullick went further, connecting the question of education to representation: “education must be supplemented by a due share in the administration of the land.” Referring to the Scheduled Castes’ underrepresentation, he continued: “I submit, Sir, that this is really deplorable. Then again, we have pressed our claims times without number for an adequate percentage of appointments in the services and we would like to hear the policy of Government in this respect.”11 These were problems that evidently had considerable precedent. The budget discussion, while partially assuaging Dalit legislators’ concerns with regard to education, left unresolved the problem of communal representation.12 When Tamizuddin Khan, a Krishak Praja Party member of the opposition, tried to definitively press the government on the matter, on behalf of both Muslims and Dalits, a rather exceptional occurrence illustrated just why this might be the case. Even as Khan rose to speak in criticism of the KPP-League government, Congress MLAs (who sat in the opposition) began to depart the House. Abdur Rahman Siddiqi cast Khan’s diplomacy in not naming the party in question to the side by addressing what occurred head on. Khan stated: “Mr. Speaker, Sir. It is 8

9 11 12

Proceedings, 11 September 1937, 1300; 11 September 1937, 1317; 13 September 1937, 1363; 14 September 1937, 1449; 21 September 1937, 1700; 30 September 1937, 2251; 30 September 1937, 2252; 21 February, 1938, 60. Proceedings, 21 February 1938, 86 10 Proceedings, 22 February 1938, 140. Proceedings, 24 February 1938, 237. Proceedings, 2 March 1938, 91; 10 March 1938, 78.

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a pity that our friends of the Indian National Congress have walked out of this House at a very convenient moment. (Laughter from the Treasury Benches).” Siddiqi lambasted the Congress for their strategy of denial. “The Muslim demands his rights, not out of generosity – they do not possess any – but because he wants justice to be done to him even at this late hour.” The said motion proposed a resolution to “this problem of all problems: . . . how the minorities in India are going to exist.”13 Consider, then, the anomaly: a critique of government leads the Congress opposition to walk out in protest. The scene underscored the extent of the Congress’ hold over the administrative institutions of the province despite not being in power. Negotiating this crisis in representation in the administration of Bengal was a source of major disagreement during early years of the legislative assembly. Walking out of the House in silent protest was hardly a routine affair, and made perfectly clear in performance what did not need to be communicated in words. It was increasingly apparent to the Congress that there was precious little they could legitimately do in face of the tide of Dalit and Muslim political representatives’ aspirations. To be sure, there were good reasons why the upper-caste bhadrolok who composed the Bengal Congress felt so very beleaguered. With the erosion of landlordism as a source of income, “it now contained a very large proportion whose only sources of livelihood, real or prospective, were entirely urban – in administration, small trade and commerce, education or the professions.”14 Largesse was a difficult proposition in response to Muslim and Dalit demands for a greater share of control over precisely those three resources on which their social dominance historically rested: government employment, education, and the land. Arthur J. Dash, chairman of the Public Service Commission from 1942 to 1947, reflected thus in his memoirs about their response to communally based representation: “Few Hindu Officers probably can accept the policy as administered and perhaps many would not accept the impartial administration of any effective communal reservation policy.”15 This was a world with which they were utterly unfamiliar and deeply uncomfortable. The often-overlooked irony, of course, was that the growing chorus of voices calling for Dalit inclusion could take recourse in the provisions of 13 14

15

Proceedings, 10 March, 1938, 129–30. Partha Chatterjee, Bengal, 1920–1947: The Land Question (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi and Company, 1984), 179. By no means, however, did this mean that upper-caste ties to the land were nonexistent, as data collated from the 1931 census in the previous chapter indicate. As Chatterji suggests, their dissociation from landed property was a fairly recent phenomenon. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 109. Arthur J. Dash, A Bengal Diary, Volume IX, MSS Eur C188/6, 83.

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the Poona Pact. The agreement established that every endeavor was to be made to secure a fair representation of Dalits, subject to such educational qualifications as may be laid down for appointment to the public services. Additionally, in every province out of the educational grant an adequate sum was to be earmarked for providing educational facilities to Dalits. These were hardly insignificant changes, as suggested by the Congress’ silent dissent. Mandal’s Early Legislative Years Jogendranath Mandal was undoubtedly alive to the obstacles to Dalit representation and education, but these were hardly his only concerns. Indeed, some of his first questions in the assembly involved matters of an economic nature. In one of his earliest submissions, Mandal proposed several amendments during discussions on the Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Bill.16 He was closely acquainted with the contradictions of tenancy law in Barisal, given his legal background and past practice among the tenants of his district, and brought such familiarity to bear on his proposals. Several days later, he posed a question to the Judicial and Legislative Department regarding the number of suits for the enhancement of rent in different courts of the Sadar Subdivision of Bakarganj since the first of January 1937, additionally inquiring into the number of suits where enhancement had been granted, not granted, and was pending.17 Matters of rent and tenancy law were thus his initial legislative concerns. Mandal’s subsequent questions joined together the two seemingly distinct domains of economy and representation, inquiring about the appointment of Scheduled Caste candidates for the posts of inspectors and auditors in the Co-operative Department from Barisal, and later the number, qualifications, and so on of debt settlement officers appointed in the same department after November 1937.18 Such inquiries assumed that the work of inspecting, auditing, and settling debt were issues hardly immune from the adequate representation of Dalits in these bodies. The implicit understanding was that, by their very presence in these jobs, Dalit employees would confer a degree of confidence on these bodies that was presently wanting in the minds of those whose lives depended on seeking lines of agrarian credit. Identities presumably mediated debt settlement. 16 17 18

Proceedings, 28 September 1937, 2110–111. Proceedings, 30 September 1937, 2271. Proceedings, 11 March 1938, 154; 17 March 1938, 351.

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Outside the assembly, one of the first initiatives in which Mandal engaged following his election was the expansion of the Bhegai Halder Public Academy in Agailjhara, which was a secondary school at the time, into a higher-secondary one.19 Due to the lack of funding and students the school had remained at the secondary level. Agailjhara was a subdivision of northern Barisal, relatively close to Mandal’s own Maisterkandi. As recounted in the previous chapter, Halder was a noted Namasudra leader of the locale associated with Aswinikumar Datta, the Congressite whose welfare organization Mandal had joined in his youth. Mandal’s activism with regard to this school thus carried a certain weight of the past; moreover, it suggested the emphasis he placed on education. In November 1937, along with the lawyer Khan Bahadur Hashem Ali Khan, Mandal convened a meeting with the dual purposes of collecting funds and arousing interest in formal schooling in the predominantly Muslim and Namasudra locality. Because of the Rs. 2,700 collected, enrollment in the school increased from 93 students to nearly 300 students by February of the following year. Eventually, the school received official approval from the government, an accomplishment that Mandal steered through the avenues of district administrative fiat. Indeed, due to the intentionally delayed submission of an educational survey report by an assistant school inspector, one J.G. Sen, Mandal turned to Nalini Ranjan Sarkar (then the ex-Congress minister of revenue) and Syama Prasad Mukherjee, both prominent figures in Bengali public life, in appeal. This strategy presumably worked, because within a matter of days Mukherjee informed Mandal that even without the report the Bhegai Halder Public Academy had received a three-year period of sanction for government assistance. Mandal also ensured that the lease for the land on which the school was located was in fact renewed. Members of the Barisal district board had resisted the renewal “for the same reasons that the Departmental School inspector had delayed submitting his report.” Mandal did not specify their reasoning, but it seems safe to assume that he was referring obliquely to the peculiar capacity to withhold assistance despite not requiring any oneself. Mandal intervened by directly approaching the Barisal district magistrate on the matter, ensuring that the lease renewal was included in the agenda of the district board meetings. His authority within Barisal’s district-level institutions appeared considerably enhanced following his entry to the provincial assembly. As with Mandal’s election, then, there remained a disconnect between the critique of a pervasive upper-caste prejudice and the kind of goodwill 19

The following paragraphs draw on Jogendranath Mandal’s unpublished autobiography. Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 50–54.

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some of their leaders extended to Mandal during the early years of his political career. Indeed, not just figures such as Sarkar and Mukherjee, who appeared in this instance to be sympathetic to his attempt to revive the school, offered Mandal support; as indicated in the last chapter, he also received the support of various other upper-caste individuals in the course of his unprecedented election to a general seat. Presumably other Dalit MLAs experienced similar gestures of goodwill. Such instances of personal favor did little, however, to assuage their sense of urgency to increase capital expenditures on Dalit education, nor the particular reasoning they deployed to justify their specific demands. Justifying Dalit Education Jogesh Chandra Gupta, on behalf of Rasik Lal Biswas, initiated a cut motion to discuss the education policy of the government as it concerned Dalits in particular. The Rs. 30,000 provided for scholarships was a negligible sum that would only benefit those capable of competing in an examination. Educational expenditures had to help in “leveling up,” and if this were to be done, a substantial grant was needed to enable the spread of primary education among the Scheduled Castes.20 Monmohan Das put a figure on the desired amount: a capital grant of Rs. 5 lakhs and the appointment of a special officer for the said purpose. Das justified this demand by an exposition of the “condition of the Scheduled Castes of Bengal.”21 Mobilizing a compressed history of untouchability, he argued that the reason for their “hopelessly abject condition today” was not only upper-caste neglect but also exploitation, “so that our so-called friends may enjoy the fruits of our labour.” In his district, although primary education had made a start, the people of his community could not even buy dhotis and clothes for their children, not to speak of books. The primary requirement was thus scholarships and stipends; establishing schools alone would not do. Das underscored his point: “In the face of the appalling backwardness of our people in education, the only thing that is required is money . . .”22 Upper-caste exploitation of Dalit labor, in this instance, formed the deep structure of Das’s rationale for the allocation of capital. It is noteworthy that no Congress MLAs rose in support of a motion submitted by a member of their own party. Instead, Abul Hashim and Tamizuddin Khan, both veterans of an agrarian politics, expressed their 20

21

Biswas was a Congressite at the time; at a crucial juncture in the future he would defect from this association and subsequently join Mandal’s Federation. Proceedings, 17 March 1938, 393–94. A lakh is Rupees 100,000. 22 Proceedings, 17 March 1938, 394–96.

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support for the 5-lakh grant. Hashim even went so far as to state that “not only the Moslems on this side of the House but also the Moslems opposite have the same sympathy as I have for the principle underlying this cut motion.”23 And Khan, for his part, prefaced his remarks with the observation that he had “always been a wholehearted supporter of all reasonable claims of the scheduled castes men, not only because the Muslim masses and the scheduled castes masses stand on the same footing, but also in the interests of nation-building.”24 Finally, Chief Minister Fazlul Huq detailed all his government had attempted to do in this regard, yet nonetheless admitted insufficiency. Huq recommitted the government to do its most for the education of Muslims and Dalits “in order to bring them on a line with other advanced communities in this country.”25 He entirely welcomed Das’s proposal for a special officer and the grant of 5 lakhs. Huq knew very well, from personal experience, the disabilities and disadvantages that Scheduled Caste students endured: “They are exactly in the same position as the students of the Muslim community. After all the provincial revenues do not belong to any particular caste or community. They belong to all and they must be spent judiciously for the betterment of the condition of all the component units of the population of the province.”26 Unlike representation in government employment, the demand for educational capital grants was not premised on strict proportionality. Rather, fulfilling these demands was contingent on and reducible to the provision of financial resources: consider Das’s emphatic statement above that the “only thing required is money.” Legislative discourse was thoroughly imbued with the sensitivity that the allocation of provincial revenues was an entirely politicized matter; thus Huq’s reminder that they “do not belong to any particular caste or community,” that they must be spent “judiciously.” The logic of legislative demands assumed that the allocation of revenues appropriated from an economy structured by agrarian capitalism necessarily serve political interests. Das therefore justified the expenditure of revenue by recourse, not only to caste Hindu neglect, but also to their exploitation of Dalit labor. Dalit MLAs grounded their responses to the history of relations of caste inequality and untouchability in a view of commensuration that hinged fundamentally on material instantiation, and not forms of ritualistic demonstration that marked efforts by various Congress-affiliated organizations and the Hindu sabhas to “remove untouchability.” That is to say, within the logic of their demands, equality could only be demonstrated through 23 25

Ibid., 18 March, 1938, 27. 24 Ibid., 18 March 1938, 29. Ibid., 18 March 1938, 31–38. 26 Ibid, 18 March 1938, 37–38.

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transformations in budgetary allocations and employment opportunities.27 Revenue fundamentally mediated the logic of equivalence that Anupama Rao, following Ernesto Laclau, identified as the presupposition of commensuration.28 Such demands thus articulated a peculiar kind of claim on social and cultural capital, whereby the very sources of caste Hindu privilege were sought to be appropriated in service of parity. A Want of Confidence If representation and education formed the core of Dalit demands over the first year or so of provincial autonomy, it became increasingly apparent that they were not being met.29 A growing frustration with government administration and the mechanisms of recruitment set in among the twenty-three Dalit supporters of the KPP-League government. This threw into question their continued allegiance to the ministry and raised the prospect of alliance with the Congress in the legislative opposition. Given past experience, however, the possibility was hardly a promising one. In March 1938, M.K. Gandhi visited Calcutta, where he stayed as a guest of the Bose brothers. Subhas Chandra was president of the Indian National Congress at the time, and Sarat Chandra invited several Dalit MLAs to meet with Gandhi; among them were Mandal and Upendranath Barman. The meeting appeared to have been convened with the intent of wooing them into the Congress’ fold. Judging by his part in the conversation, however, Mandal seemed far from convinced of that party’s commitments. On this, the sole occasion on which the two actually met, he allegedly asked Gandhi: “Congress is an association of caste Hindus. How can we repose complete faith in it?”30 As an independent, Mandal seemed wary of the Congress even if willing to entertain discussions with them. Mandal and his colleagues nonetheless placed a premium on their autonomy, and the increasing if cautious willingness to align with the 27

28 29

30

There is no doubt that a range of differing opinions, at times conflicting, regarding the details of how communal representation and the provision of educational capital grants be implemented existed among the Dalit leadership. These differences were determined by party loyalties, commitment to one’s own district constituencies, and rapidly shifting alliances. Nevertheless, despite such differences, what is notable is the near unanimity about the desirability of these two provisions. Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 131–32. Proceedings, 15 March 1938, 286; 17 March 1938, 358; 18 March 1938, 10; 18 March 1938, 10–11; 25 March 1938, 371–72; 25 March 1938, 384–85; 1 April 1938, 117–18; 7 April 1938, 193. Sri Upendranath Barman, Uttar-banglar sekal o amar jiban-smrti, 73–75, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda (Kalakata: Caturtha Duniya, 2003), 50–51.

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Congress cannot be chalked up to political opportunism alone.31 A joint meeting of the All-Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation and the Calcutta Scheduled Caste League in July the same year, for instance, did not include any of the senior leaders of the provincial Congress. The meeting proposed a reorganization of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly party (of which Mandal was the secretary), and “discussed ways and means of achieving unity among the Scheduled Caste members of the Bengal legislature . . .”32 These were hardly objectives likely to meet with Congress’ approval. Jogendranath Mandal, Tamizuddin Khan, M. Shamsuddin Ahmed, Promatha Ranjan Thakur, Abdul Hakeem, and others withdrew their support for the KPP-Muslim League government in a series of noconfidence motions on 2 August 1938. Although the motion was ultimately defeated due to the support extended to the ministry by the European group of legislators, the debate articulated a fuller sense of what was at stake at this juncture.33 The reasons for resentment were hardly contained by the questions of representation and education alone, although these were certainly focal points of the overall critique. Jogendranath Mandal’s no-confidence address was perhaps the most rhetorically charged of those delivered.34 He confessed to his “mixed feeling” about registering his lack of confidence, as because they were from the same district, Barisal, Mandal looked upon Chief Minister Fazlul Huq with a special sense of hope and promise. Huq had aroused great expectations, given his pronounced and “virtuous intention of liquidating an iniquitous and unjust land system waging relentless crusades against the landlords and zamindars.” But, Mandal submitted, “today, I stand disillusioned.”35 Invoking the Marxist categories of “class struggle,” “the proletariat,” and “exploitation” during the course 31 32

33

34 35

Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India, 185. The meeting was held at the residence of Guruprasad Das, a former member of the Legislative Council, and was attended by the following MLAs: Hem Chandra Naskar, Rasiklal Biswas, Kshetra Mohan Singha, Pushpajit Barman, and Jogendranath Mandal, among others. “Scheduled Castes Federation dissatisfied with work of present ministry,” Hindusthan Standard, 27 July 1938, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda, 48–49. “No-confidence motions completely at the mercy of Europeans – How Huq cabinet escapes a defeat,” Hindusthan Standard, 9 August 1938, in Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda, 54–55. Ibid., 10 August 1938, 121–23. He continued: “If the history of the human society is the history of class struggle, the class to which the Ministers belong can only be interest in eliminating the toiling proletariat and the peasant poor. Is it not against common sense, reason and sanity that these Ministers, in these days of intensification of the class struggle, can be loyal to the true interest of the millions of the town and the countryside? If we imagine such a contingency even in our fondest dreams, we are living in a dust storm of delusions!” Ibid., 122.

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of his address, Mandal charged that the ministry had no significant legislative enactment to its name: neither total nor partial prohibition had been introduced; tenancy legislation had been “relegated to a paper measure” and the appointment of the Land Revenue Commission had put the process on hold; the “[i]ntroduction of free primary education is further off than ever”; the pressing problem of the supply of rural credit, which required immediate redress, had not engaged the Cabinet as yet; last, the cost of administration had not been reduced. Mandal deplored the nepotism and favoritism under the Huq regime, noting Mukunda Behari Mullick, in particular, whose actions had alienated the majority of Scheduled Caste MLAs from the ministry. Finally, the Labor minister had done precious little to solve the problem of labor unrest. Mandal’s concerns thus far exceeded those of representation and education alone. Indeed, Mandal clarified his position, as secretary of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party, in a statement to the Hindusthan Standard in mid-September 1938, which, significantly, contained no mention of joining the Congress. A general critique of the ministry’s yearand-a-half-long record, Mandal began by foregrounding his singular purpose to work in the service of the Bengali praja: “I shall always fight for interest of the Prajas. My election pledge was to the effect that I shall always try to further the cause of the Prajas in all spheres and also the higher interest of the country at large . . . My primary object had always been never to do anything or to vote against the interest of the Prajas.” Mandal initially did not join any party, “lest I should have to sacrifice my personal liberty to vote at the behest of the party,” but later supported the Nationalist party “though it comprises Zeminders, and Maharajas, on the clear understanding that my liberty to vote according to my wish, will not be curtailed in any way.” Mandal underscored the independence of his voting record, noting how he had consistently voted in favor of praja interests against the ministry in power and the decisions of the Nationalist party. He voted for fixing the minimum price of jute, for reducing the rent of the prajas, and for abolishing the tax on tobacco. Disillusionment set in upon the ministry’s stalling over the Tenancy Amendment Bill and their disregard for Dalit education, welfare, and inclusion in government service. It was in this context that nineteen Dalit MLAs formed the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party, an indication of aspirations for their political unity and autonomy. Dependent on and at the mercy of support from Europeans, maharajas and zamindars, in Mandal’s view, the Huq ministry could not possibly sincerely serve the interests of the prajas of Bengal. “Born with a silver spoon in their mouth and brought up in luxury, in palatial buildings and sweetening their palates with all the

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dainties, how can they, these absentee landlords, be expected to feel the poignancy of the pitiable tales of woeful miseries of the peasants who can hardly make their both ends meet?” The ministry’s delay in securing the assent of the governor on the Tenancy Amendment Bill and a host of unfulfilled pledges to Dalits led to the tabling of the no-confidence motions. Moreover, Mandal added, it was unfair for the Coalition Party to take all the credit for the Tenancy Amendment Bill, given that the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party had whole-heartedly supported the Bill. Recounting all the reasons he gave in his assembly speech – the price of jute, agriculturalists debt, primary education, Scheduled Caste education, prohibition, and Scheduled Caste representation – he concluded that his party could therefore “never support a reactionary Ministry, as led by Mr. Fazlul Huq.”36 Retracting support and switching to the opposition did not however immediately translate into a newly found confidence in the Congress.37 During yet another debate about communal representation in the services, the Congress opposition leader Sarat Chandra Bose conceded to competitive examinations being conducted among communities, the most accomplished candidates from which would be selected for the services. But he was careful not to state his recommendations about the exact proportion of the total appointments to which each community would be entitled, the very matter at hand.38 It was not entirely clear, then, precisely how the Congress expected to earn the trust of Dalit MLAs. If Mandal retracted his support because of a want of confidence in the KPP-led ministry, what future he envisioned with the opposition, and they with him, remains to be discerned. Mandal and the Congress Mandal recalled his familiarity and close friendship with the leader of the opposition, Sarat Chandra Bose, which developed fairly early on following the beginning of the provincial assembly.39 Although initially associated with the Nationalist Party, on several occasions Sarat Chandra 36 37 38

39

“Promises Galore But Pledges Broken,” Hindustan Standard, 16 September 1938, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda, 58–61. Proceedings, 16 August 1938, 92–104. As Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, the Finance Minister, remarked in his response to Bose: “Sir, if the percentage is not fixed, how is it possible to merely fill the posts by holding examinations among the different communities?” Proceedings, 25 August 1938, 287. Mandal also nurtured a relationship with the oscillating Congressman, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. Due to constraints of space, I do not elaborate on their association here. Suffice it to say that Mandal’s willingness to engage with Congress leaders in the late 1930s stands in marked contrast to his distinctly anti-Congress stance of the mid and late 1940s.

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commended Mandal’s accomplishments to his brother. Subhas Chandra was evidently taken in by his “honeyed behavior, unwavering determination, and his singular devotion to service,” and embraced him as a brother.40 One imagines they saw in him a bridge between the politics they espoused and those they would have mobilized to their cause. In early May 1939, shortly after his impasse with the Gandhian faction of the Congress, Bose announced the formation of a new grouping within that party called the Forward Bloc. The purpose of this body was to provide a platform to radicals of various shades of opinion, and to strike out from the constraints imposed by the Congress high command.41 Mandal accompanied Subhas Chandra when the latter traveled to Barisal with the intention of garnering support for the recently established body. Bose presumably wished to capitalize on Mandal’s mass appeal within the district. During his welcome procession, for example, they sat alongside each other in the phaeton carriage that carried them around town. Mandal accompanied him on his various public appearances. It was of no small significance that Mandal and Bose shared the same stage. Indeed, Mandal felt that even the distinguished personalities of Barisal, irrespective of caste, began to perceive him with admiration as a result of Bose’s highly public affirmation.42 Their physical proximity seemingly endeared the upper-caste Hindu mind to him. It is not difficult to discern who, in the interactions between the two, decided on the terms of engagement. Bose was older, though only by seven years, and was one of the most widely recognized leaders on the national scene at the highest echelons of the largest political party in British India. In Mandal’s autobiography, it is Bose who commands and Mandal who obeys. The brothers appeared to be rather enamored of him, referring to him as khati shona, or “sterling gold,” presumably in reference to his personality and ethic.43 Their appeals to Mandal must be seen in the context of Sarat Chandra Bose’s attempts at the time to widen the social base of the provincial Congress beyond its upper-caste, landed, and urban moorings, which certainly enjoyed modest success.44 Despite such overtures, however, and their active support for his election to the Calcutta Corporation (a development I will discuss in due course), it was the same Sarat Chandra who, while he and his brother were reaching out to Mandal, 40 41 42 44

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 35. Also see Jogendranath Mandal, Amar Du-Carti Katha, 4–5. Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1990), 390–91. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 35–40. 43 Ibid. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 124–35.

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in a series of heated private exchanges with Chief Minister Fazlul Huq about the pressing problem of communal percentages in the services, no less, angrily referred to the category caste Hindu as “a stupid and misleading classification,” and Scheduled Caste as “an entity so artificial and unreal that no better label could be attached to it.”45 Even as Bose inveighed against Huq’s “bare-faced communalism,” his angry and unguarded disavowal of the very political community Mandal represented and his rejection of the category that identified his own social background leaves little doubt about his private dispositions, even as the Congress publicly sought to garner Dalit MLAs’ confidence. For the leader of the Bengal Congress, the question of Dalit recognition did not even arise. Thinking about society in terms of caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes was fundamentally misguided. Even to this key representative of the Congress’ radical wing, the Scheduled Castes were the figment of a perverse political imagination. Although it appeared to be an understanding of mutual convenience, Mandal’s relationship with the Bose brothers thus contained several contradictions, even if it is considered only in terms of the class analysis that he increasingly seemed to adopt. During the Budget Discussion in early 1939 he excoriated the finance minister, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, for “defending the interests of the class of expropriators.”46 Mandal’s mobilizing discourse from The Communist Manifesto in the context of late 1930s Bengal – “naked, shameless, direct and brutal exploitation” – suggested that he saw in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels insights eminently applicable to his own world and concerns. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that the Bose brothers introduced Mandal to that historic piece of writing. The irony should not be lost; they were unavoidably representative of what Mandal termed the “possessing classes” in his addresses, despite their advocacy of politics ostensibly opposing the interests of their own. Mandal’s association with the Congress, even if a contradiction in terms of both class and caste, indicated his as yet optimistic and 45 46

Sarat Chandra Bose, “Letter to A.K. Fazlul Huq, dated June 12, 1939,” Sarat Chandra Bose Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: Sarat Bose Academy, 1982), 270–71. “Mr. Speaker, Sir, if fishing for a budget in the pool of bottomless deficits the financial wizard of Bengal has neglected the most obvious expedient of throwing wider the net of taxation upon the possessing classes, both feudal and bourgeoisie. That the Hon’ble Finance Minister has constituted himself the most assiduous defender of the status quo has not come upon me as a surprise, but he should have been frank enough and outspoken enough in defending the interests of the class of expropriators. For exploitation, veiled by pious platitudes and political illusions, I for one, wanted, in order to rouse the slumbering masses of the country – naked, shameless, direct and brutal exploitation.” Proceedings, 22 February 1939, 276.

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accommodative stance on matters of difference internal to the Hindu community, as well as his receptivity to the progressive class politics espoused by the Bose brothers. He was opposed, for instance, to the construction of separate hostels for Dalit students; this “vivisection of the Hindu community which will promote the invidious distinction between the Scheduled Castes and the Caste Hindus instead of placing them on the footing of complete equality of treatment.”47 Nevertheless, he qualified that such an assertion of difference would be “indispensable and necessary, if and when the caste Hindu students refuse to live jointly with those of the Scheduled Castes.”48 Likewise, he expressed a measured resistance to the principle of separatism about the Calcutta Municipal Bill. This was legislation proposing the introduction of separate electorates within the Calcutta Corporation. It is entirely plausible that he perceived the potential for his own election to the municipal council with the support of the Bose brothers through the joint electorate. In contrast to Birat Chandra Mandal, who asserted that separate electorates were necessary so that “Bengal caste Hindus may learn a lesson,”49 he argued that they were antithetical to democracy and hindered the “creation and development of a healthy atmosphere that is most congenial to the growth of national advancement.” Mandal was willing to forgive past injustices and to look beyond exacting revenge.50 Yet he clearly had more in mind. The day was not far, he warned, when Dalits and Muslims would in combination: fight tooth and nail for democratic Government, where no communal consideration will vitiate the political atmosphere . . . I do declare and declare without any fear of contradiction that democracy is essentially necessary for the prosperity and advancement of Muhammadans and scheduled castes that mostly constitute the peasantry and the proletariat of Bengal.51

For Mandal, democratic government equated to the prosperity and advancement of the “Muhammadans and scheduled castes,” the “peasantry and the proletariat of Bengal.” This is what his political experience had taught him. Frustrated Demands If Dalit MLAs long maintained that upper-caste discrimination lay behind their communities’ socioeconomic backwardness, they increasingly also sought other explanations for their continued underrepresentation.52 The no-confidence motions raised the question of why an avowedly 47 50

Ibid., 277. Ibid., 50–51.

48

Ibid., 277. 49 Proceedings, 27 February 1939, 49–50. Ibid. 52 Proceedings, 13 March 1939, 249; 14 March 1939, 305.

51

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sympathetic KPP-Muslim League government could not ensure Dalit representation in the services despite their majority. Curiously enough, however, neither did Muslim MLAs believe they were receiving their fair share. Maulvi MD. Mozammel Huq, for instance, complained of what he called an “under-Government . . . If the Government order [sic] something to be done in a particular way, the under-Government do not comply and have their own way with it. This is why the Government above cannot do anything. It is for the same reason that the claims of the Moslems with regard to appointments are being trampled underfoot.”53 The problem presumably lay with the upper-caste bureaucracy. Indeed, Mandal recalled that when the question of reservations for Muslims came up in legislative debate, he decided to discuss the matter of similar reservations for their own with the governor, along with other Dalit MLAs. Mandal noted in his autobiography that it was in fact those he termed “caste Hindu MLAs” who desired that their demand for Dalit reservations in government employment should be entirely excluded from consideration.54 He apprised his colleagues in the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party regarding their opposition and they collectively drafted a memorandum addressed to the governor and the chief minister demanding that reservations be implemented for their communities as well. Even if Dalit MLAs turned critical of the coalition’s promises, the conclusion that any better could be expected of the Congress did not follow. Another explanation became increasingly prominent in responses to questions about the ineffectiveness of the communal ratio rules. This was the plea that a sufficient number of qualified or “suitable candidates” were not found among Dalits. Based on the entirely subjective value judgments of recruiting authorities, invoking this clause and the discourse of suitability would be heatedly debated in the months to come and in effect served as a convenient mechanism of exclusion.55 Set against an ongoing debate about the decline in administrative efficiency since provincial autonomy, there is considerable evidence that prominent officials, including the governor, took the view that the communal ratio seriously compromised the efficacy of the administration’s function; this was in part because of the unavailability of “suitably qualified” candidates for the posts reserved for Muslims and Dalits. Muslim and Dalit politicians countered with the claim that the candidate most academically 53 55

Ibid., 313. 54 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 67. See Ajanta Subramanian, “Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57:2, 2015, 291–322, for a penetrating analysis of how seemingly “value-neutral” concepts of merit encode caste filiation. The discourse of suitability, in this case, performed a similar role.

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accomplished (and most likely to be upper-caste) did not necessarily inspire the greatest confidence and trust from the majority of the people, and thus lacked a certain communal sympathy in the execution of public service. The debate thus turned on the so-called “theory of maximum qualification” and those who denied that any such theory obtained in reality.56 The 1940 budget discussion therefore elicited the same litany of complaints as in years past. Dalit MLAs were particularly stung by the absence of any separate allocation of funds for education in a general education budget of more than 1.5 crores.57 Queries regarding the communal ratio in public services, however, brought forth encouraging, if conflicting evidence.58 The much-maligned H.S. Suhrawardy, Muslim League minister of the Commerce and Labour Department, for instance, showed that Dalit appointments since 1937 in his department nearly amounted to the stipulated 15 percent. But this was an exception. Several MLAs therefore pushed Nazimuddin on whether the phrase “provided suitable candidates are not available from the Scheduled Castes community” issued in a government circular to recruiting authorities was being used as a loophole to deliberately deprive their candidates of appointments. This evidently was the case, as Nazimuddin replied that government was considering the potential interpretations given to the phrase over the course of the coming month.59 A certain alignment of Dalit and Muslim MLAs’ opinions thus marked the course of legislative debate during these years, as in prior years. Khwaja Shahabuddin, then the minister of Commerce, Labour, and Industry, for instance, assured Governor R.G. Casey several years later that the communal ratio “was not a political stunt but goes very deeply down into the life of the community . . . it is a fundamental question which raises great depths of feeling – on which . . . the Muslims and the Scheduled Castes are equally keen.”60 As with the ratio, this was the case in connection with two of the most controversial and contested legislations of this period: the Land Revenue Commission and the Secondary Education Bill. Several years prior, at a meeting composed, significantly, of “members of the coalition and Scheduled Caste parties,” the suggestion was first mooted to appoint a commission in order to investigate the 56 57 58 59 60

“Bengal Controversy Over the Service Ratio,” Times of India, 17 May 1939, 15. Proceedings, 24 February 1940. 403. One crore is 100 lakhs, or Rupees 10,000,000. Ibid., 22 February 1940, 283; 23 February 1940, 333; 26 February 1940, 5; 4 March 1940, 306. Proceedings, 8 March 1940, 173–74. R.G. Casey, Personal Diary, 26 January 1944, Photo Eur 48/1, 50.

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land laws of the province.61 The Floud Commission’s eventual recommendations sought to vest land rights with the cultivators themselves, thereby replacing the extant structure of permanent settlement-bolstered landlordism that had propped up upper-caste social dominance in years past. The education bill proposed to transfer decision-making powers about secondary education from Calcutta University to a board that had proportional representation of Muslims and Dalits. In both instances, barring few exceptions, Dalit and Muslim MLAs predominantly pitted themselves against the protestations of their upper-caste colleagues.62 Even as legislative debate brought forth irrefutable evidence of the staid reluctance to recruit Dalit candidates up to mandated levels, Mandal’s own political fortunes grew considerably as a result of his election to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation with the support of the Bose brothers and the Congress in 1940. This constituted the apogee of his relationship with that party, as they nominated him for one of the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes. His appeal for votes to the municipality residents described his ongoing work and his life’s sole purpose as the “removal of distinctions and inequality between Caste Hindus and Scheduled Caste Hindus and the construction of a powerful indivisible Hindu society.”63 It was primarily due to his efforts, he explained, that the Independent Scheduled Castes group had been formed, and they now worked along with the opposition in the assembly. He was singular among those who had moved no-confidence motions against the Huq ministry, and he opposed separate electorates in the municipality elections. Once elected, however, Mandal’s strategic cooperation with the Congress and the importance of his being able to retain autonomy from party dictates found meaning when, because of his support of the demand for the reservation of 5 percent of appointments in the Calcutta Corporation, he voted against the stand taken by the Congress Municipal Association.64 Mandal had nonetheless developed a reputation of being an exceptionally committed public servant, even in nationalist circles. A remarkable and gushing article about him in Prabartak, for instance, hailed his countless efforts to aid the residents of the ward that he represented.65 61 62

63 64 65

“Bengal Land Laws,” Times of India, 24 November 1937, 13. Anukul Chandra Das, a veteran Namasudra leader and MLA who would support Mandal’s Federation in subsequent years, was the only Dalit member among the personnel of the Land Revenue Commission. Tin nambar pallibasir prati sabinay nibedan, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda, 65. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 44. Amarcandra Ghosh, “Mananiya Mantribara Srjukta Jogendranath Mandal MLA,” Prabartak 2:1, 1943, 61–62.

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Assembly debates over the course of 1940 and 1941continued to reflect the contradiction of a political class avowedly sympathetic to Dalit demands and the expression of just the opposite in data presented in the assembly.66 While education was typically discussed with reference to students, Dhananjoy Roy’s question about the education department revealed some startling evidence about the educational personnel of the province: there were only three Dalit individuals in a staff of more than 400 employees.67 Despite such stark discrepancies, however, in the preceding years a pattern had gradually emerged. The observation that “it was beyond the ability of individual ministers to make any effective intervention” does not stand scrutiny.68 As an exception to the general tendency, Mukunda Behari Mullick submitted a statement showing that of 232 vacancies in his department over the past three years, Dalit applicants had secured 36, a figure exceeding the mandated 15 percent.69 Mullick must have gone out of his way to ensure such a development. Similarly, the Jute Regulation Department under Tamizuddin Khan reported figures that in some cases were in excess of the designated ratio.70 Fazlul Huq likewise provided evidence of increased recruitment of Dalit police constables and subinspectors in the Dacca Range.71 It was not exactly true, then, that if indeed political will existed to make good on promises, it could not be exercised with the desired results. In such cases, departments invariably under Muslim or Dalit ministers (never from the upper-castes) observed the communal ratio. In contrast, when pressed by Kshetra Nath Singha as to why Dalits were almost entirely excluded from serving in the Court of Wards estates, Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy, one of Bengal’s wealthiest upper-caste 66

67

68 69 70

71

It is worthwhile bearing in mind that these were the returns emerging from the very stronghold of Scheduled Caste politics in East Bengal, the location of Mandal’s own political constituency. Proceedings, 27 March 1940, 70; 29 March 1940, 173; 3 April 1940, 299; 3 April 1940, 305; 15 July 1940, 5; 15 July 1940, 30; 17 July 1940, 194; 23 July 1940, 81. A year prior, Roy’s question about the scholarships disbursed in both science and arts classes of the Presidency College – the very paragon of educational institutions in Bengal – revealed that in 1938, of 70 part-free scholarships, 63 were received by caste Hindu students and seven by Muslims. Scheduled Caste students had received none. When in 1938 and 1939, three and two Scheduled Caste students, respectively, applied, none of them received the said concession. Proceedings, 6 August 1940, 139–40. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India, 177. Proceedings, 15 July 1940, 6. For the entire province, for instance, of 120 inspectors recruited since October 1940, 20 were members of Scheduled Castes. Of the 592 in-service assistant inspectors, 80 were members of Scheduled Castes. Khan had evidently gone out of his way to produce the results desired by the Scheduled Caste leadership. Proceedings, 10 September 1941, 133. Proceedings, 9 April 1941, 180.

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landowners and minister of revenue, responded tartly: “My friend Mr. Kshetra Nath Singha has said that I, as Revenue Minister, look to the interests of my community. There is no such thing as my community and his community, because I have always thought that he belongs to my community and I belong to his community. He wants to raise a barrier, but I refuse to recognize that barrier.”72 Roy’s refusal to recognize the barrier to community typified the upper-caste politician’s response to his Dalit colleague’s demands. It was rarely the case that Muslim ministers refused the desired recognition in quite the same manner. Singha’s query was not unwarranted; Sir Bijoy’s revenue department had not recruited a single Dalit candidate over the first four years of provincial autonomy.73 The 1941 Census Arguably the starkest illustration of upper-caste leaders’ misrecognition was the manner in which the 1941 census was conducted. This is an aspect of the enumerative exercise that has not received sufficient attention with respect to understanding the nature of the dynamics between upper-caste Hindu and Dalit.74 Responding to Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy’s motion about the Census Expenses Contribution Bill, Kshetra Nath Singha complained that “enumerators and supervisors are being taken from the caste Hindus but none from the Scheduled Castes, although there is no scarcity of that in our community.”75 Despite paying taxes, Singha alleged, Dalits were not being appointed among the ranks of enumerators: again, the assumption that taxation implied adequate representation. A letter by Mullick and a statement by Mandal (allies and opponents at various points in their careers), both reflecting on the 1941 census, suggest that the Congress and Mahasabha were ensuring that the numerical strength of Dalits was depleted, even as they sought the confidence of their representatives. 72 73

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Proceedings, 18 March 1940, 224. Roy also showed that of 100 managers, tahsildars, and muhuries in the Courts of Wards Estates of Bakarganj, only one, and that one a muhurir, was of the Scheduled Castes. Proceedings, 27 August 1941, 6–8. It is well known that the 1941 census was not thoroughly executed because of financial constraints and the diversion of administrative attention to the war effort. Bandyopadhyay largely views the widespread manipulation that accompanied this enumeration from the perspective of the Hindu Mahasabha’s attempt to “inflate the number of Hindus in Bengal vis-à-vis the Muslims . . . .” That said, he also adds rather understatedly that the “dalit population . . . was not as yet very enthusiastic in their response to such appeals.” See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004), 201–7. As should be clear from the evidence presented below, not only were they not “very enthusiastic” but several of the most prominent Dalit leaders were extremely critical of what had come to pass. Proceedings, 3 December 1940, 324.

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These parties appear to have exerted a most active influence in manipulating the enumeration of the Dalit population. Among a host of other grievances against the caste Hindus that Mullick detailed in a letter to Stafford Cripps, the Labour politician tasked with securing Indian cooperation in the war effort, he registered one that was quite remarkable if the full implications of his allegations are taken into consideration. Criticizing the Congress for setting up “hench-men of theirs against the true representatives of the Scheduled Castes only to create disunion, misunderstanding and confusion” during the 1936–1937 elections in both the provincial and central legislatures, Mullick recalled how “serious attempts were made all over India by these caste-Hindu associations – specially the Congress and its protégé, the Hindu Mahasabha of recent growth – who did not leave any stone unturned to obliterate the returns as much as possible so that the true and correct strength of the various castes and sections, cannot be ascertained.” Mullick continued: “we know as a matter of fact that in most cases the caste-Hindu officers – both stipendiary and honorary – connived in this unfair and unjust attempt of these interested political bodies and entered only ‘Hindu’ against both caste and religion, though everyone knows that the term ‘Hindu’ does not denote any caste at all.”76 Mullick’s letter suggests the considerable lengths to which caste Hindu activists affiliated with the Congress and Mahasabha went to obfuscate the procedures of the decennial census. Mandal likewise picked up on this manipulation of census data in a statement submitted to The Statesman several years later. Comparing the two most recent censuses, he noted how the Scheduled Caste population in Bengal had declined by more than 18 lakhs over the intervening period. In Calcutta alone, there had been a population of 107,194 in 1931; in 1941, there remained 55,000. Mandal challenged Syamaprasad Mukherjee’s claim in the press that the Mahasabha did not make any gains in their campaign to urge the populace to withhold their caste from among Dalits during the 1941 enumeration – a “sinister distortion of the truth.”77 The size of the Dalit population had indeed declined.78 76 77

78

Mukunda Behari Mullick, Letter Addressed to the Right Hon’ble Sir Stafford Cripps Kt., 24 March 1942, IOR/L/P&J/10/14. The Statesman, 19 April 1944, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pratham khanda, 131–34. Mandal also warned Governor R.G. Casey several years later that “the 1941 census results are not reliable – as each community was out to inflate its own numbers, and so its importance.” Personal Diary, Photo Eur 48/1, January–June 1944, 21 April 1944, 213. The total population of Bengal between 1931 and 1941 increased from 51,087,338 to 61,460,377; the Depressed Classes numbered 8,390,942 in 1931, and the Scheduled

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Rasik Lal Biswas therefore alleged during a discussion about general administration that the “real intention” behind reducing Dalit numbers was to deliberately subvert the procedures by which they could claim their rights to employment and a political future, to “spoil the interests of our community.”79 Madhusudan Sarkar likewise argued that due to the “mischievous activities and mischievous propaganda of some organized bodies during the last census operations” he was deprived of the opportunity to prove with statistical data the Dalits’ progress in education, numerical strength in the province, and actual economic and political situation, what the house already knew – their overwhelming poverty and lack of education.80 The Mahasabha in Bengal was indeed one of the critical forces behind the warping of census returns, although, as Jatindra Mohan Datta of the All-Bengal Census Board would later insist, the “propaganda” included the work of “Congressmen and liberals and non-party men” as well.81 Formed out of renewed anxieties about the looming threats to Hindu interests, the organization consolidated various concerned parties in the later months of 1939 and began to make its presence felt by the following year, its growing prominence spurred on by the bickering within the Bengal Congress between those holding allegiance to Gandhi and the high command, as against those supporting Subhas Chandra Bose. As Syama Prasad Mookerjee recalled of his political conversion in light of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s visit to the province in 1939: “Being then greatly perturbed at the helpless position of Bengal Hindus – whom the Congress failed to rouse and protect – some of us were drawn to Savarkar’s influence and it gradually took root.”82 Among the “formidable obstacles” they confronted Mookerjee included British dislike for Hindu nationalist consolidation, “bitter opposition from the fanatical elements gradually gaining force under the banner of the Muslim League” as well as three sources of resistance from within the Hindu community: the Congress, the Communists, and a section of the Scheduled Castes, “who, having secured thirty seats

79 81 82

Castes numbered 7,597,404, a hardly insignificant decline of 793,538. A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Volume V, Bengal and Sikkim, Part 1, Report (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1933), 502; R.A. Dutch, Census of India, 1941, Volume IV, Bengal (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1942), 44. This may certainly have also been due to the change in the precise castes included within the two categories, but this seems unlikely. Proceedings, 10 March 1941, 39. 80 Proceedings, 19 March 1942, 130–31. “Who Inflated Census Figures? What Facts Tell: Sj. Jatindra Dutta’s Rejoinder to Mr. Suhrawardy,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 5 May 1947. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1993), 29.

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in the Legislative Assembly through the Poona Pact, were being made to demand separate political entity antagonistic to the Hindus and generally to the province.”83 Such were the compulsions that led to the Mahasabha adopting a “firm attitude” regarding the census. As Mookerjee recollected in his diary: “Our agitation was well organised. We wanted to check the growing tendency among the Scheduled Castes people to regard themselves outside the Hindu fold – their antagonism to Caste Hindus was being slowly nurtured on political consideration – Caste Hindus were the enemies of the Sch. Castes’ progress, etc. We wanted that Hindu solidarity must grow; we wanted that caste prejudices should disappear. We therefore declared that we should not indicate our castes but call ourselves Hindus in our census returns. This was bitterly opposed by a section of Scheduled Castes people.”84 Indeed, it was not just within the assembly as noted above; various Dalit associations joined a meeting called by Chief Minister Fazlul Huq to protest the corruption of upper-caste Hindu officials who dominated the enumeration.85 Scholars affiliated with the cultural turn in modern South Asian historywriting have accorded great analytical power to the census as one of the central artifacts of colonial domination.86 Drawing on and extending the insights of Edward Said and Michel Foucault, they have emphasized how colonial subjects came to inhabit and organize their communities in accordance with the categories fashioned by colonial rulers and administrators, thereby contributing to the reification of collective identities believed to have been far more amorphous and fuzzy during the precolonial period. Yet the life of the 1941 census, recounted above, speaks to an altogether different logic of power that was not solely organized across the poles of colonial difference. Rather, in this instance, the two main upper-caste Hindu political organizations of Bengal, under the pretext of conferring an idealized unity to the Hindu community, sought to deliberately minimize the numerical strength of Dalits. It seems necessary to register these actual histories of enumeration, for they suggest that the census hardly bore undifferentiated and uniform significance for all concerned. As far as Dalit leaders were concerned, upper-caste leaders and their networks within colonial bureaucracy made a mockery of the exercise, for which they had little or no 83 85 86

Ibid., 32. 84 Ibid., 45. William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 159–60. See Bernard S. Cohn’s paradigmatic essay on the census and Nicholas Dirks’s volume on caste in modern South Asia for important elaborations on the subject. See Sumit Guha’s “The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India c. 1600–1990,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45: 148–67 (2009), for a review and critique of the colonial constructionist paradigm.

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recourse. This was a caste Hindu governmentality; governance and administration were subordinated to upper-caste ends. An evidently angry article published several years after the 1941 enumeration thus gave the following interpretation to the matter, deserving extended quotation: The census of 1941 was so successfully tackled by Caste Hindus that true figures of the Scheduled Castes can never be ascertained from it. Incidentally, this is one of the glaring instances of intellectual superiority and political far-sightedness of the Caste Hindus. Here we find that attempts have been made with a view to crush or nip in the bud, the political movement of the Scheduled Castes, so that they may not form themselves into a strong political organization or their numbers truly ascertained in a scheme based on the counting of heads.87

The author recounted the systematic upper-caste campaign “through press and platform” to ensure that caste details went unrecorded, as a consequence of which the caste column was returned empty in almost all districts. “In trying to judge the Scheduled Caste problem, dispassionately and without putting blame on the Caste Hindus – though they are primarily responsible for the wretchedness of the whole situation – it becomes, at times, impossible to remain dispassionate.” In the author’s view, “. . . the strength of the Scheduled Castes lies in its numbers. That ought not to be found out – and they have partially succeeded in their attempts. The gradual progress and numerical strength of the Scheduled Castes cannot be ascertained from census to census.”88 For this writer, as in the views of Dalit MLAs noted above, the upper-caste distortion of their numbers was undertaken with a view to undermine their political strength and mobilization. Such coercions were intrinsic to the nationalist will to hegemony over the Dalits. The 1941 census thus suggests how upper-caste actors, even while partaking of the enumerative rationality such technologies enshrined, were nonetheless fully capable of manipulating and subverting the same to decisively affect their implementation and outcomes.89 Mandal was undoubtedly privy to this falsification of census data; indeed, as we shall see, he would bring it to bear on his argument against the partition of Bengal in 1947. Moreover, he would increasingly have had to confront 87 89

“Scheduled Castes,” Morning News, 8 August 1943. 88 Ibid. My concern is that the stress on colonial discourse, construction, and governmentality, while certainly important, too often seems to suggest that India’s social wars were lived primarily through the ideas that British rulers and administrators had of them. The distinction between discourse and experience seems to get flattened. See Thomas C. Holt, “Experience and the Politics of Intellectual Inquiry,” in James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry D. Harootunian (eds.), Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion Across the Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), for an appreciation of this distinction.

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the contradiction of continuing an alliance with the Congress, howsoever strategic, in the face of blatant and ample evidence of its functionaries’ actively working to deflate the numerical strength of the Dalit population. Mandal’s “Breakaway” Crisis struck Huq’s ministry once again toward the latter half of 1941, which, once resolved, emerged drastically transformed. A consequence of the infighting between Huq, Nazimuddin, Suhrawardy, and Jinnah, and the conflicting aspirations to power among the Congress, KPP, and Muslim League, between center and province, the moment represented a decisive parting of ways between Huq and the League.90 Huq agreed to lead a coalition comprising the majority of the opposition, including two of the most dominant figures in public life, Sarat Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mukherjee. This was the Huq of Hindu Bengal’s dreams. The coalition’s prospects suffered a drastic setback, however, with the detention of Sarat Chandra Bose under the Defence of India Rules in mid-December 1941 on account of his suspected links with Japanese forces. Mandal was “overcome with sadness and disappointment” upon hearing of Bose’s arrest, not least because, due to the latter’s absence, his own ambitions of becoming a minister were dashed.91 Several notable features stood out in his memory of the Syama-Huq ministry. Whereas there had been two Dalit ministers in the first Huq ministry, presently there was only one: Upendranath Barman, a Rajbangshi MLA from Jalpaiguri. Mukherjee and Huq ventured assurances that another Dalit minister would be selected in the near future, but when the better part of a year had passed, Mandal realized that they were trying to “hoax” the majority of the Dalit MLAs; moreover, he claimed that they tried, through various strategies, to “sow disunity” among them.92 Consequently, he recalled the deep discontent brewing among not only the Dalit leadership, but also the wider community. Namasudras in particular were agitated over why not a single one of their thirteen MLAs had been chosen – so much so that it became difficult for them to “show their faces” in home constituencies. As secretary of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party, Mandal received resolutions from meetings held all over the province with the following near-identical demand: “This sabha expresses its deep distress about a Scheduled Caste minister not having been appointed within the year, and if necessary for Scheduled Caste interests, informs 90 91

Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal (New Delhi: Impex India, 1976), 126–36. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 44–45. 92 Ibid., 69–70.

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Scheduled Caste MLAs of its demand that they break the present ministry with help of the opposition, and form a new ministry.”93 Mandal’s disenchantment with the Congress grew explicit and pronounced over the course of late 1941 and 1942. Not only were the Bose brothers no longer around to patronize him, but his earlier misgivings about the Congress developed into public disavowal for a number of reasons, not least being the absence of a Namasudra minister in a cabinet supported by that party. The reconfiguration of the ministry, which included Santosh Kumar Basu and Pramathnath Banerjee, both Congressmen with loyalties to the Bose faction, as well as Syamaprasad Mukherjee, did not mean that they worked to give effect to Dalit MLAs’ demands. As finance minister, and chief representative of a Hindu nationalist organization extolling the virtues of Hindu sangathan, Mukherjee provided 1.5 lakhs toward annual expenditure on Dalit education, a sum nearly unanimously deemed inadequate to the task. Radhanath Das, initially elected a Congressite, took particular issue with the fact that when those who currently sat on the Treasury Bench were in opposition, they on innumerable occasions invited greater attention by government toward the issue. Yet now these very same members had provided a “very considerably paltry sum.”94 Mukherjee, moreover, displayed keen interest and provided the impetus for a little-known study of public administration in Bengal by a Calcutta University Ph.D. graduate, Naresh Chandra Roy, who sought to demonstrate how administrative inefficiency was largely a consequence of what he termed the “great evil” of the communal ratio.95 By the middle of 1942, Mandal began laying the groundwork to try and break the impasse in which Dalit MLAs found themselves by making available a platform for their political autonomy. By then, he had arrived at the conclusion that Congress was “not especially keen to ensure the welfare of these neglected communities.”96 Along with Rasiklal Biswas and several others, he attended the founding meeting of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation in Nagpur that July. Convened at B.R. 93

94 95

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The fact that Mandal received these notices, and the sense of shame with which Namasudra leaders presumably approached the members of their constituencies, suggests that the concerns of Dalits and their leadership were not entirely discordant. Even if one ought to read such statements with caution, it may be mistaken to assume that, miles from the seat of power in Calcutta, they were utterly indifferent to their leaders’ parliamentary emphases. Ibid., 69–70. Proceedings, 23 February 1942, 242–46. Naresh Chandra Roy, A Critical Study of Some Aspects of Public Administration in Bengal (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1945), 98. Readers will recall from the previous chapter that Roy had also penned a trenchant critique of the Poona Pact’s effect in Bengal, which also met with Mookerjee’s blessing. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 112.

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Ambedkar’s initiative, the All India Scheduled Castes Federation announced itself as the first and only national political organization representing the Scheduled Castes, and to this end the meeting sought to galvanize various provincial organizations into a unified body. The very fact of Mandal’s presence at the gathering suggested his rejection of the Congress and the search for alternative political possibilities. That historic meeting resolved that Dalits would not accept any government or constitution that did not earn their consent; that did not perceive the Scheduled Castes and caste Hindus as separate and autonomous elements in national political life; moreover, that did not have laws under which they could genuinely feel confident of their existence. In consonance with Mandal’s fairly sustained appeals for relieving agrarian distress, the conference advocated a massive government-backed redistribution of land to landless Dalit cultivators.97 As shown above, Mandal consistently supported legislation that would ease the various economic burdens under which Dalits labored. He had spoken at some length during a Demand for Grant discussion about various inconsistencies and difficulties arising from the Jute Regulation Act.98 In early 1943, in the context of the acute crisis of food supplies that befell the province and only weeks before the Syama-Huq ministry toppled, Mandal drew attention in the assembly to how the scarcity would affect Dalits.99 Days later he rose to elucidate the inequities in the adhi barga and dhanyakarari systems of commuting rent, and to demand the abolition of these practices.100 Shortly thereafter, he followed with a motion to discuss the failure of government to “fix a minimum price of jute at a profitable price” and to “raise the price of jute to 97

98

99 100

Mukti-sangram (Kalikata: Shri Apurbba Lal Majumdar, Bangiya Pradesik Tapashilbhukta Chhatra Phedareshaner sahajogitay Bangiya Pradesik Tapashilbhukta Jati Phedareshan karttrk pracarita, 1/2 Sitaram Ghosh Street, year of publication unavailable), 6–7. Mandal had recently traveled to the mofussil in Barisal, Faridpur and Khulna, and having met with notables among the “Hindu-Mussalman farming community,” reported that despite the majority of them being supporters of the Huq ministry, they were up in arms over how the regulation had impacted their lives. Proceedings, 14 March 1941, 201–5. Ibid., 10 March 1943, 36–37. Mandal knew that when the Chief Minister Fazlul Huq visited his native Barisal, thousands of prajas approached him with the plea that he abolish dhanyakarari. He himself knew personally that prajas in Barisal, Faridpur, Dhaka, Khulna, and Mymensingh had drafted innumerable petitions calling for the repeal of barga and dhanyakarari – indeed, he had received several of these, signed by thousands from Barisal. This was why he represented their pleas in the assembly, imploring that section 40 be reinstated such that in place of produce rent, prajas would be able to pay their dues in cash. Surely such legislative activism constitutes evidence of not only prajas’ concerns, but Mandal’s attempt to bring them to the attention of the assembly. Proceedings, 15 March 1943, 250–1.

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ameliorate the condition of the jute-growers.”101 It is possible to multiply such examples of his concern both within and outside the assembly. Such interventions suggest politics thoroughly invested in the critique and reform of late-colonial political-economic norms. Politicians like Mandal were profoundly engaged with matters economic, a dimension of their activism and experience of caste that has regrettably received insufficient emphasis. In his last major contribution to legislative debate before the ministry was reconstituted once again, and this time, with him as a minister, Mandal delivered an exceptionally angry and accusatory address regarding communal representation. He pointedly accused members of the ministry, Fazlul Huq, Syamaprasad Mukherjee, and followers of “my leader” Sarat Chandra Bose, for their hand in the matter. Mandal regarded Huq however, somewhat distinctly from others in the ministry, given his long-standing reputation as a “messenger of democracy.” He still held out hope that Huq would not be party to policies that seemed designed to “destroy the Scheduled Castes’ existence.”102 And his reasons were quite pertinent: “The existence of the Scheduled Castes is necessary for his own. This the Muslim community understands. Caste Hindus want to absolutely annihilate them, but it would not be reasonable for the Muslim community to adopt such a spirit.”103 Mandal continued: How much ever oppression comes from the Hindus, Scheduled Castes want to survive – will survive – will survive in face of oppression; nobody will be able to annihilate them. They will survive – they are determined to do so. Today Congress says, we are friends of the Scheduled Castes; caste Hindus say, for what are you Scheduled, you are Hindu. But by simply saying Hindu one is not Hindu. You are all when it comes to sharing; and calling them Hindus in name you place them on a high seat.104

Mandal had clearly replaced his earlier, more favorable inclination toward the Congress with a far more critical interpretation of their commitments, skeptical of the gift of Hindutva on offer. Within a matter of weeks he would become a minister in the Nazimuddin ministry and attempt to orchestrate the long-elusive unity of Dalit MLAs in support of the same. As his commentary above suggests, even if they held KPP and Muslim League leaders partly accountable for the plight of their communities in years past, the predominant burden of responsibility, more often than not, lay with the upper-caste Hindus in the Congress and Mahasabha. 101 103

Proceedings, 18 March 1943, 381–82. 102 Proceedings, 24 March 1943, 542–43. Ibid., 542–43. 104 Ibid., 24 March 1943, 543.

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Conclusion Mandal’s gradual drift away from the Congress over the first five years of provincial autonomy offers compelling evidence of the resistance of upper-caste nationalists to Dalit demands. For it was not that he hadn’t tried to resist such an eventuality – indeed, he seemed to have gone out of his way to cooperate with its leaders in good faith and to extend them the benefit of the doubt, despite acute awareness of that party’s inimicality. And, arguably more than any other Dalit MLA, he enjoyed the rewards of Congress’ support. Yet, like Rasik Lal Biswas, one of the most outspoken and articulate of their leaders who started out a Congressite in 1937, Mandal was gradually disabused of the solicitude of Hindu nationalist intentions. By early 1943, it was plainly evident to him that the uppercaste nationalist concern to orchestrate Hindu unity did not, and perhaps could not, genuinely accommodate their aspirations. As Mandal confided to R.G. Casey on his first ministerial visit with the new governor, he had broken with Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who by then had emerged as chief spokesperson for Hindu Bengal, when he “discovered that the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Caste Hindus generally, were out to cripple the Scheduled Castes.”105 I do not suggest that the upper-caste misrecognition of Dalit demands documented in this chapter exhausted the range of possibilities available to relations between the leaders of these communities. We already know a great deal about the various attempts to draw the two together. But I would contend that the profound failure to recognize Dalits’ demands as just, upper-caste Hindus’ misconstruing the desire for democratization as an illegitimate mimicry of Muslim separatism, was a crucial and conjoined element of the project of Hindu nationalist unity that defined the political atmosphere of the last decade of colonial rule. From Mandal’s vantage, the frustration of his and his colleagues’ demands was primarily the consequence of this, in a sense, upper-caste inability and refusal to “see.” Dalit legislative concerns and political demands over the first halfdecade or so of provincial autonomy, far from privileging mere “concessions,” then, in fact comprised interventions desired in the domains of government service, education, and the agrarian economy of Bengal. Such a formulation implies the difficulty of grasping Dalit politics in a one-sided manner, as in latter-day critiques of the phenomenon identified as identity politics. Rather, questions of redistribution and recognition were inextricably linked: their experiences of “material” 105

R.G. Casey, Personal Diary, 21 April 1944, 212.

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disadvantage could not be described independently of their problems with how society perceived and treated them and, in turn, how they understood themselves as socially constituted. In the years to come, Mandal attempted to give greater coherence to this agenda of Dalit politics by launching the Bengal branch of B.R. Ambedkar’s All India Scheduled Castes Federation. The history of that organization and how it was received is the subject of the subsequent chapter. Above all, Mandal’s Federation was the attempt to consolidate Dalit political autonomy. Such objectives could not but squarely contradict the imperatives of uppercaste nationalism in Bengal, thus bringing the Federation into direct confrontation with such tendencies.

3

A Separate Political Existence The Making of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 1943–1945

In the four short and tumultuous years between the foundation of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation in 1943 and the Partition of Bengal and British India in 1947, Jogendranath Mandal transformed that organization such that it posed considerable difficulties to the Congress’ and the Mahasabha’s hegemonic inclinations toward Dalits. Mandal scarcely did so alone, even if he was certainly its driving force. He drew on an expanding network of support from various individuals attracted to the Federation’s political ideology. Departing from the analyses of legislative debate pursued in the framing chapters, this chapter attends to the making of the organization, with a view to examining the stress it laid on political autonomy for the Scheduled Castes. As no detailed historical account of the Bengal Federation is available, the following broad questions frame the narrative arc: to what political ideals did the Federation aspire? What was the extent of its appeal? How was it aligned vis-à-vis the other major political forces and developments of its time? How convincing was its claim to be the political organization most representative of Dalit opinion? Perhaps most important, what did the Federation’s emergence signify? While the first half of this chapter charts the growth of the political organization and Mandal’s role in the newly formed ministry of 1943, the second contrasts two political conferences that both resulted in a failure of sorts. The Hindu Mahasabha attempted the first and the second was organized by the Federation. The comparison enables an assessment of the reception of their contending ideologies among the communities they sought to mobilize, and the illustration of their stark opposition. In this reading, the Federation articulated more meaningfully than ever before a response to Dalit MLAs’ principal demands over the first six years of provincial autonomy: representation, education, and agrarian reform. This was the first and only time in Bengal’s political history when a Namasudra leader with explicitly Ambedkarite leanings emerged to exercise influence over the Dalits of the province, especially remarkable given the depth of upper-caste opposition to their radicalization examined in detail over previous chapters. With Mandal now a member of the ministry, and provincial 94

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head of the only all-India political organization concerned primarily with the caste question, he was uniquely placed to deliver on Dalits’ demands, which he seemed to have done, within obvious constraints. And as a minister in a predominantly Muslim League–controlled government, moreover, he enabled the realizing of a semblance of political autonomy and power and the oft-remarked possibility of Dalit and Muslim political unity. By 1945, the Federation thus developed a certain momentum and impetus, making it one of the most mobilized provincial units of the party in the country, and Mandal one of the few members of the organization who was a minister in provincial government. Indeed, the true significance of Bengal to the wider course of late-colonial Dalit politics seems to have gone rather underappreciated. As we shall see, the organization’s expansion posed distinct problems to both the Congress’ and Hindu Mahasabha’s claims to represent Dalits. Put simply, without establishing control over their political representatives or muzzling the most outspoken among them, the future for upper-caste Hindus looked rather bleak. The following chapter will examine how and why the modestly if steadily increasing strength and mobilization behind the Federation in Bengal was sapped. Here, the focus is on its emergence and development. Only thus might one appreciate the coincidence of Indian and Pakistani freedom with the defeat of Dalit political autonomy in Bengal. Mandal and the Nazimuddin Ministry The crisis of the Syama-Huq ministry in late March 1943 provided a window of opportunity for Mandal to secure a position of ministerial power and thereby claim a special position of leadership over Dalits in Bengal. Following the dissolution of that ill-fated ministry, the legislative assembly had broken into two camps. One sought to return Fazlul Huq as chief minister once again, and another proposed Khwaja Nazimuddin instead. Mandal saw the moment as bearing potential for a renewed assertion of their demands and convened several of his assembly colleagues to discuss the conditions they would press upon whichever party approached them for legislative support. They decided as follows: (1) the selection of three Dalit ministers and three parliamentary secretaries; (2) the allocation of a recurring grant of 5 lakhs for Dalit education; and (3) the assurance that Dalit candidates would be recruited in all spheres of government and administration as per the communal ratio rules.1 1

Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 71–72. Also see “Life Sketch of Mr. Mandal: A life dedicated to the cause of poor, down-trodden peasants and labourers,” Sind Observer, 19 June 1949, 6.

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Huq and Mukherjee had approached the contingent of MLAs who formulated these demands for their support, but to no avail: they wanted signatures prior to granting any formal commitments. By contrast, their consultations with Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy proved more fruitful. Upon meeting with them and presenting their list of demands, the two Muslim League veterans agreed, but not without imposing conditions of their own – the promise of support from twenty Scheduled Caste MLAs. Mandal and his colleagues acceded.2 At this juncture, twenty-one of their total of thirty-one MLAs supported the new ministry, making Bengal the sole province in British India that witnessed such an alliance between Dalit and Muslim representatives.3 As Syamaprasad Mookerjee recalled in his diary, “barring a few Scheduled Caste members, the rest supported the League.”4 Such a configuration a full six years into provincial autonomy, and but four years before Partition, hardly suggests the ascendancy of integrative tendencies. On the contrary, it seems to have symbolized the very essence of upper-caste political anxiety: Dalit and Muslim political cooperation. Mandal believed that, true to the governor’s orders to bring together a broad-based coalition representative of as many of the major political interests of the time as possible, the ministry that emerged did indeed secure such compromise. Nazimuddin reached out to the Congress and took in three of their leaders, and allocated positions so that there were both six Hindus and six Muslims under his command. Of the six Hindus, caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes were even. The parliamentary secretaries were similarly at parity. This was, in fact, given the various constraints, an unusually balanced ministry that represented aspirations for Dalit and Muslim political unity more explicitly than ever before. Mandal was appointed minister of the Cooperative Credit and Rural Indebtedness Department, hardly an enviable position given the years of sporadic, and subsequently devastating, famine leading up to and coterminous with his tenure. The appointment was nevertheless a comment on his perceived insightfulness with regard to the ongoing agrarian crisis. Despite the horrors of the economic landscape, Mandal recalled in exceedingly favorable terms how the Nazimuddin ministry had accepted and fulfilled Dalit MLAs’ demands, in stark contrast to the two ministries

2

3 4

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 73. Also see Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 April 1943, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 103. “New Ministry in Sight: Sir Nazimuddin’s Efforts,” Statesman, 20 April 1943. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89.

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preceding his own.5 They finally provided the recurring grant of 5 lakhs for education, and applicants began to receive employment in all departments according to the communal ratio. Many Dalit candidates became lawyers, magistrates, subdeputy magistrates, co-operative inspectors, auditors, and debt settlement officers, often due to Mandal’s personal efforts, in addition to taking various other such administrative positions that within their respective domains afforded considerable power and influence. The impression he conveys in his autobiography, in a sense, is one of their politics having arrived. In a position of ministerial power along with two other Dalit ministers, Mandal thought the potential for the fulfillment of their demands never seemed greater. Yet, this was no bygone conclusion. In some instances his advocacy involved confrontations with colleagues in his own ministry.6 One such occasion concerned the disproportionately low number of Dalit candidates in employment in the rationing department. Mandal recollected raising the matter along with Dhananjay Roy at a meeting of political parties at Nazimuddin’s Theatre Road office, threatening that if communal ratios were not observed in other departments, he would not enlist a single Muslim or upper-caste Hindu into his own and would make up the deficit with Dalit candidates alone. The threat indicated how ministers looked on the employment opportunities within their own departments as an arena for their own political commitments and loyalties. Mandal’s posturing angered Janab Hamidul Huq Chowdhury, a veteran Muslim League leader, who demanded an explanation as to why, after having been made a minister, Mandal would speak to the chief minister in such a manner. Mandal’s stinging reply came of the confidence of knowing that the Muslim League ministry depended on his own organizational efforts to remain in power: “Mr. Hamidul Huq Chowdhury, do not show me your red eyes for we have them too! I do the work of a minister – not chakuri. This ministry is not a gift given by someone. If necessary, I can destroy this abode of satisfaction we have built within twenty-four hours.”7 At this, the meeting erupted in such an uproar that a recess was announced to allow the atmosphere to cool. Suhrawardy and Nazimuddin stepped aside to discuss the matter Mandal urged, and they returned with a favorable resolution, only reminding him that he ought to have approached them earlier. Perhaps interventions such as these led Mandal to remark retrospectively, and with evident selfcongratulation: “Upon Jogendranath’s wishes, then, even the impossible 5

6

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 75. This was not entirely the case – many MLAs continued to air their dissatisfaction during legislative debate with the measures, albeit improved. Ibid., 76–79. 7 Ibid., 78.

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became possible. Except Jogendranath, one does not know of any minister from any time in Bengal who was as influential.”8 Mandal certainly seemed to have taken every advantage to be had of his position to further his objectives.9 He recalled a resume of his accomplishments with regard to Dalit education in his autobiography: ensuring that Dalit applicants were admitted to the Calcutta Medical College, the Campbell Medical School, and the Shibpur Engineering College. Several Dalit students during his tenure earned scholarships to pursue studies in England and the United States of America, and he arranged for the construction of two Dalit hostels in Calcutta. He tried to ensure that all their students received government assistance, irrespective of whether they were from the districts represented by opposition MLAs.10 He convened an advisory committee to the special officer for Scheduled Caste education that included MLAs from various communities among Dalits, and made arrangements such that their students from each district would receive a proportionate share of stipends. He tells us that the spirit motivating such efforts was to see to it that their students were in fact able to avail themselves of government assistance. Mandal was at pains to stress the important differences between how past ministries attended to Dalits and his own did. There was some truth to the matter. Not simply Mandal, but others, such as Minister for Education Tamizuddin Khan, brought to the table credentials that inspired confidence in their commitment to the Scheduled Castes.11 Despite his manifest animosities against upper-caste Hindus, however, Mandal later claimed to have treated those of them who served under him with justice.12 The Origins of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation Mandal founded the Bengal branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation in May 1943, with Monmohan Das and Syamaprasad Barman, both MLAs, as joint secretaries. The party operated from an office at 1/2 Sitaram Ghosh Street, and Rasik Lal Biswas, who had recently defected from the Congress, resided at the same address.13 8

9 10 11 12 13

Ibid., 79. Even if reduced to the value of being but one primary, and that too an entirely unobjective source on the matter, it is surely revealing that Mandal would write this in the mid to late 1960s, after the passage of two decades, when composing his autobiography. Ibid., 80–84. “Districtism,” or the preference accorded to candidates hailing from one’s own constituency, was a prominent feature of relations among Scheduled Castes MLAs. Khan, for instance, was a long-standing defender of Scheduled Caste demands in the legislative assembly. Sri Jogendranath Mandal, Amar Du-Carti Katha, 3. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 95–97.

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Although headquartered in Calcutta, the Federation fairly rapidly seemed to spread its influence across several districts of eastern and central Bengal, establishing committees in Faridpur, Khulna, Jessore, Barisal, Nadia, Dhaka, Comilla, and Mymensingh. Theirs was not a politics limited to the urban concerns of Calcutta alone; it established branches in the smaller towns of these districts. In time, the Federation attracted adherents drawn predominantly from the ranks of the emergent Dalit professional classes – lawyers, government officers, and students – several of whom were duly appointed officers at various levels of the organization. A students’ and women’s wing followed as well. The Federation quite simply represented the most meaningful and coherent attempt of its time by the Dalits of Bengal to organize their own politics. From June the same year, the Federation began publishing its Bangla periodical Jagaran (Awakening) as well as the English-language People’s Herald. Mandal bore the costs of both the office rent and publication expenses, and enlisted the expertise of a series of editors over the subsequent years. The periodical began with a print run of 1,000 copies in its initial year, and increased by an additional 1,000 annually, so that by 1946, it produced 4,000 copies.14 Jagaran was one of the few weeklies in the Bengali press of the time committed to journalism explicitly concerned with matters pertaining to the Scheduled Castes.15 Needless to say, the gradual increase in its publication numbers (even if indicated by the rounded figures approximated by Mandal) suggested the Federation’s correspondingly growing appeal. It was through Jagaran, a devoted follower of Mandal recalled to this historian, that students and activists of the 1940s came to learn of the wider Dalit movement and that they actually had a party of “their own.”16 The paper thus bore the impress of contemporary aspirations. According to Naresh Chandra Das, in his 1961 survey of the Namasudra community, the periodical’s achievements would remain “unforgettable.” Jagaran was the “mouthpiece” of the Scheduled Castes.17 It played a role, along with journals such as Pataka, Adhikar, and Sadhak, in “educating the Namasudra people regarding their rights . . .”18 14 15

16 17 18

Ibid., 90–92. Jagaran was one of several journals serving the Namasudra public. These included Pataka, Adhikar, Sadhak, Namasudra Suhrid, Namasudra Hitaishi, Namasudrasakha, Ganasakti, Dipti, Acalayatan, and Anantabijaya. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, most of these have not been preserved at any major archive. Interview with Jnanendranath Haldar. Naresh Chandra Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh (Kalikata: Naba Bharat Pablishars, 1961), 56, 60. N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, Being a Connected Account of the Namas from 1812 A.D. Down to the Present Day Together with a Study of Their Antiquity, Volume 2 (Calcutta: B. Sarkar and Co., 1992), 256.

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As Upendranath Biswas described in an article that appeared in Jagaran, it was from that source that they would learn of why they struggled.19 The paper published on matters local, national, and international, and included poetry, letters, essays, and anecdotes that offered a window into quotidian Dalit life, their collective socioeconomic and political conditions, and how these were construed. Jagaran’s subject matter ranged from reports on economic distress, the necessity for primary and secondary education, dimensions of student life, and issues facing Dalit women, to anecdotal tales drawn from the lives of its readers. An especially poignant piece traced a genealogy of rights, noting how every group considered – from Rome’s plebians, to African Americans, to the working classes of Russia – had waged victorious struggles in securing rights, yet Dalits themselves had not done so as yet. It was now their turn, its author asserted, to fulfill this global movement toward freedom.20 Many others critiqued the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha for what their writers perceived as those parties’ duplicitous posture toward Dalits. Illustrated through numerous instances drawn from the everyday life of rural and small-town Bengal came the refrain and critique of upper-caste hypocrisy in claiming goodwill toward Dalits while in actuality regarding them with barely concealed caste disgust and contempt. Jagaran therefore published unabashedly political journalism, urging the reader to raise self-awareness and consciousness about their long-overdue share of dignity, employment, and political and economic welfare. Mandal’s own motivation to establish the provincial Federation originated with his identification with B.R. Ambedkar’s political program at the Nagpur conference of 1942, where the latter had founded the All India Scheduled Castes Federation. He saw in the party a movement that could bring to fruition the “imaginings of his childhood and dreams of his youth.”21 What was it that he hoped to achieve? Mandal explained its objectives with some clarity at a meeting with the governor in April 1944. Casey recalled of the encounter: “He said that the aim of the Scheduled Caste members of the Assembly was to create and maintain for themselves a separate political existence – in order to overcome the disabilities of his community. They had no grievances against the Caste Hindus other than the fact that the Caste Hindus have little sympathy for them and are hostile to their having a separate political existence.”22 Mandal believed the British were “out to encourage the gradual emancipation of the Scheduled Castes and he felt a lively sense of gratitude to the British on 19 20 22

Upendranath Biswas, “Jatiya Jagaran O ‘Jagaran’ Patrika,” Jagaran, 25 May 1946. Ibid. 21 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 115. R.G. Casey, Personal Diary, 21 April 1944, Photo Eur 48/1: R.G. Casey, 212.

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this account – although this is much resented by the Caste Hindus.”23 These were sentiments obviously deeply embarrassing to the upper-caste vanguard of anticolonialism. For Mandal, untouchability was not the central bone of contention, as it was elsewhere in India. Neither was entry to the once closed and charmed circle of the bhadrolok denied to them: Mandal carefully asserted to Casey that, while the category at one time referred exclusively to caste Hindus, bhadrata was changing. Nowadays, “Scheduled Caste peoples can be ‘bhadrologs.’”24 Instead, grievance stemmed principally from the uppercastes’ lack of sympathy and their hostility to the separate political existence they claimed with a view to overcoming caste disabilities. As far as Mandal was concerned, this was the crucial distinction - that politics itself, was somehow, unacceptable. The critique was of a liberalism that, having gone so far, could conceive of no more; a liberalism that circumscribed the full implications of its own logic.25 They could demand their rights, but preferably as unmarked Hindus. Mandal was underscoring the upper-caste Hindu difficulty with perceiving political self-consciousness among Dalits, coupled with their inability to truly comprehend such becoming. For uppercaste Hindu nationalists, to demand inclusion was one thing; a “separate political existence” was altogether unthinkable. Their own claims to selfdetermination were premised on the refusal of Dalit political autonomy. From its very inception, then, the Federation identified itself as a party opposed to both the Congress’ and Hindu Mahasabha’s claims to represent Dalits: “The object of the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation is the attainment by Scheduled Castes of a status as a distinct and separate element in the national life of India and to obtain them their political, economic and social rights to which they are entitled by reason of their needs, their numbers and importance.”26 In his highly publicized resignation letter from the Government of Pakistan in 1950, Mandal translated this mandate to the unusual circumstances in Bengal, indeed to the rationale behind his alliance with the League in the province, as follows: 23 24

25

26

Ibid. Ibid. Mandal oscillated on the issue of whether bhadrolok was a category which fully admitted, or could fully admit, the Dalit into its fold. Very often, he used caste Hindu and bhadrolok interchangeably and exclusively. When talking with the governor, however, the category was more elastic. It seems as though bhadrata contained a situational dimension, which discussions about the appropriateness of sociological categories typically do not address. One imagines that caste elites found the notion of Namasudra bhadrata difficult to stomach, a repugnant misnomer. As a Brahmin respondent to a questionnaire soliciting views on contemporary social problems put it: “With the majority of educated Hindus of all castes, liberalism in belief goes hand in hand with a strange conservatism in practice.” A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Volume V, Part 1 (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1933), 417. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 138.

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. . . first[ly] . . . the economic interests of the Muslim in Bengal generally were identical with those of the Scheduled Castes. Muslims were mostly cultivators and labourers, so were members of the Scheduled Castes. One section of Muslims was fishermen, so was a section of Scheduled Castes as well and, secondly, that the Scheduled Castes and Muslims were both educationally backward. I was persuaded that my co-operation with the League and its Ministry would lead to the undertaking on a wide scale of legislative and administrative measures which, while promoting the mutual welfare of the vast bulk of Bengal’s population and undermining the foundations of vested interest and privilege, would further the cause of communal peace and harmony.27

Mandal thereby hoped to both orchestrate Dalit and Muslim political unity within the provincial context as well as extend Bengali support to Ambedkar’s national organization. This was a challenging vision: the passage of laws which, promoting majority welfare and undermining privilege, were intended to ensure communal brotherhood. Mandal refashioned Ambedkar’s autonomy from the Hindus through alliance with the Muslims. The two leaders first met in Bombay, in October 1943. Mandal had traveled to that city for a meeting of provincial co-operative credit ministers and Ambedkar, at the time labor minister at the center, had coincidentally returned to his home constituency. Mandal went to his office in Bombay Central Station to meet him and recalled how they felt “drawn to each-other.”28 He had already adopted Ambedkar as his politicalideological inspiration by then and had founded the Bengal branch of the Federation. It was not immediately clear, however, that Mandal was Ambedkar’s choice of associate in Bengal. There were numerous other Dalit leaders who understandably aspired to that privilege, many of whom were older and more experienced than he and had encountered Ambedkar over the course of the 1930s. In Mandal’s view, Ambedkar identified his preference when he visited Calcutta in late August 1944.29 Prominent Dalit leaders and their respective organizations gathered to receive Ambedkar, and during their ensuing meeting several among them (apparently, with the sole exception of Rasik Lal Biswas) expressed their reservations about Mandal on account of his election to the Calcutta Corporation with Congress support. Mandal interjected in defense that he was indeed elected to the corporation with a Congress nomination and that he certainly revered 27

28

“Mr. Mandal’s Letter of Resignation to Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Oct. 9, 1950,” Appendix IV, in Recurrent Exodus of Minorities from East Pakistan and Disturbances in India: A Report to the Indian Commission of Jurists by its Committee of Inquiry (New Delhi: Indian Commission of Jurists, 1965), 354. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 154. 29 Ibid., 84–87.

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Subhaschandra Bose as his leader. But he qualified that, in contrast to his detractors, he had learned the meaning of obedience to leadership. “There is this much difference between myself and them.”30 Ambedkar apparently responded with a stated lack of concern over the manner of his election; rather, he asked whether Mandal had in any way harmed the interests of Dalits after entering the corporation. The question apparently drew no response and several MLAs subsequently deferred to Mandal’s legitimacy. Ambedkar concluded the matter, implicitly conferring his confidence on him by declaring that he would thereafter only attend meetings arranged by the Federation. Mandal thus distinguished himself among the various claimants to Ambedkar’s favor among Dalit leaders of Bengal, and won a coveted position of moral authority. As Roy wrote of the moment, “The leadership finally passed into the hands of Mr. Jogendra Nath Mondal . . .”31 Ambedkar stressed urgency at this meeting, that it was “now or never” for making up the political deficiencies of Dalits. He sensed that their “victory was near, and all that he wanted from them was unity.” Reflecting on the past decade of political events, Ambedkar believe that Gandhi’s entire life, political activities, and strategy had been directed toward bypassing the demands of minorities. Yet, even as he had recently revised this approach to the Muslims and Sikhs, he had “no desire to recognize the demands of the Scheduled Castes.” It was therefore a matter of great relief that the Viceroy of India had laid down the following fundamental condition for the transfer of power in recent letters to Gandhi: the impending transfer of power to Indian hands would have to embody a tripartite agreement between Hindus, Muslims and the Scheduled Castes, and not merely the first two communities. “They should be very grateful for a declaration of that kind.” Ambedkar added that he would gladly join either the Congress or the Mahasabha if they submitted to their just demands. However, the “question was whether these organisations were friends or enemies of the Scheduled Castes.”32 His own political experience had left him with little doubt in this matter. Ambedkar clearly wished for the assembled representatives to develop a united front against these upper-caste political parties. The Federation in Bengal was therefore born of various sources: Mandal’s disillusionment with caste Hindus in the Congress and Mahasabha, his encounter with Ambedkar and his selection from among provincial aspirants, and the curiously underremarked dissemination and 30 32

Ibid., 86. 31 Roy, A People in Distress, 244. “‘Now or Never’ for Scheduled Castes: Dr. Ambedkar’s Plea,” Times of India, 29 August 1944, 4.

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affirmative appraisal of its political agenda by the Dalits of the province. Above all, the Federation contained the potential for what its adherents understood by a “separate political existence.” What Bengal made of the Federation makes possible a better grasp of the deeper meaning of its emergence during the closing years of colonial rule. The Federation’s Reach and Reception In 1944, the Intelligence Bureau in Bengal undertook a comparative assessment of the relative strength of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation and the All-India Depressed Classes League. Their findings are revealing of the extent to which the Federation had attracted a following in predominantly rural and semi-urban east Bengal. Their mofussil informants reported that the “districts of Bogra, Jessore, Tippera, Rajshahi, Faridpur, Rangpur and Burdwan have each got a branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, while Barisal has got 3 such units, Mymensingh – 2 and in Khulna – 2 in a disorganized state. In Dacca there is contemplation to start one such branch. There is only one branch of the All India Depressed Classes League at Kisoreganj in Mymensingh District.”33 Elsewhere, the report noted that the “Scheduled Castes Federation is the main organization of Scheduled Caste [sic].” One D.A. Brayden’s assessment to G. Ahmed, deputy director of intelligence in late 1945, drove the point home: “On a reference to the different districts in the Provinces, it is found that branches of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation exist in nine districts while a branch of the All India Depressed Classes League exists in only the subdivision of one district.”34 On the basis of this investigation, the Federation clearly drew on far greater mofussil support than its rival organizations.35 Jamini Mohan Biswas, a lawyer from Faridpur and district head of the Federation, organized one of the first mass meetings of that party. In early 1944 he convened a sammelan in the compound of his village’s upper English school. In Mandal’s reckoning, at least 10,000 people attended. Mandal assumed presidency of the meeting, and was accompanied by the Muslim League Chief Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin, Khwaja Nasrullah, and another Dalit minister, Prem Hari Barman.36 33 34 35

36

File No. 191/46: Scheduled Castes Federation (renamed the Republic Party). Ibid. Naresh Chandra Das writes that the Federation “created a politicization in the minds of Depressed Hindus all over Bengal. It provided the inspiration to Bengal’s Scheduled Hindus to form a renowned peoples’ movement to obtain their own social and political rights.” Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh, 59. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 96.

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The organization evidently grew to enjoy a not inconsiderable degree of legitimacy with Bengali Dalits within a fairly short period of time. Unsurprisingly, Mandal’s and the Federation’s modest rise in prominence in Bengal hardly met with universal approval. An anonymously published poem derided Mandal as kalapahar of kali, in response to a speech Mandal had delivered at a meeting in Batajore village in North Bakarganj when he described how many of the laws of the Manusamhita ran counter to humanity.37 Kalapahar referred to a Brahmin who after embracing Islam, turned into a notorious iconoclast; figuratively, the term connoted an awful religious renegade, a decrier of current beliefs, a turbulent heretic, and suggested the distinct animus with which he was regarded. Circulating both as a “definite and indefinite sign and a polyvalent metaphor,” the reference in connection with Mandal offered comment on the moral umbrage he presumably drew from those committed to casteism.38 In other instances, a scornful press referred to him as “Jogen Ali Mollah,” a reference suggesting he had “gone Muslim” and his role in the Muslim League–run government likened to the cat majantali.39 Majantali was the central character in the writer Upendrakishore Raychadhuri’s short story “Majantali Sarkar.” The story is about a scrawny and underfed cat (who lives in a fisherman’s house), who tricks a fat and bloated one (who lives in a milkman’s house) into coming over for a meal. When the fat cat arrives, the fisherman, suspecting it will eat his fish, beats it to death. The wily and malnourished cat goes to the milkman’s house and gorges itself on cream. Having fattened up, he calls himself “Majantali Sarkar.” Such disdainful characterizations bespoke the peculiar upper-caste discomfiture at a Dalit leader allying with the Muslim League, especially as other upper-caste Hindu leaders who served on the same ministry – say, Tulsi Charan Goswami or Taraknath Mukherjee – were not the brunt of similarly unkind humor and nervous disapproval. Mandal was also made the object of various public barbs and verbal slights. On one occasion, much to his dismay and disbelief, Nalinaksha Sanyal, the chief whip of the Bengal Congress, publicly humiliated Mandal, then a minister, in the presence of the entire legislative assembly. Mandal found the remark “most objectionable” and unbecoming of a gentleman or a member of the 37 38

39

Ibid., 111. Also see Eleanor Zelliot’s interview with Jogendranath Mandal for his awareness of such nomenclature among a wider public. See Ishita Banerjee-Dube, “Myths, Metaphors, Meanings: Kalapahar in Bengal and Orissa,” in Ishita Banerjee-Dube and Sarvani Gooptu (eds.), On Modern Indian Sensibilities: Culture, Politics, History (London: Routledge, 2008), 60–77, for an account of the kalapahar concept. Roy, A People in Distress, 206–7.

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house. As Mandal approached the well to join the ongoing discussion about Fazlul Huq’s resignation, Sanyal exclaimed to hooting laughter, “Ayng jaye, byang jaye, cyang jaye; khalse bale amio jai”; the anthropomorphic and stagist reference presumably intended to mock the perceived subservience of his position within the cabinet.40 Mandal thus elicited a special disdain from upper-caste colleagues and observers. Both Indian and Hindu nationalists and their corresponding publics made little pretense of their inimicality toward Mandal’s and the Federation’s political ideals. As Usharanjan Majumdar, one of the Federation’s student leaders recalled in an interview decades later: “Even if we were students, we would routinely read Anandabajar, Jugantar. In those days the media’s opposition was very severe. Most newspapers would insult Jogendranath.”41 The press in Bengal regarded Ambedkar with similar contempt. His speech at a meeting of the Federation in Hyderabad, for instance, met with strong criticism from “all sections of the press.” Amrita Bazar Patrika jeered that Ambedkar’s claim “‘the Depressed Classes are not a part of the Hindu community’ will be considered by many to be a pale imitation of the cry that the Indian Muslims are a ‘nation’ by themselves. By the magic wand of British diplomacy many such ‘nations’ are likely to spring into life. Has not chalaki in politics become the order of the day?”42 The Hindusthan Standard scolded him as follows: “What particular rights have been denied by the Caste Hindus to the Scheduled Castes according to this self-constituted champion of the latter, he has not made clear. But the Labour Member of the Government of India ought not to have forgotten that he was making himself guilty of the charge of class hatred by his reckless fulminations. Will Lord Wavell care to put a curb on this irresponsible member of his Executive Council?”43 The Telegraph rebuked Ambedkar, holding that his separatist politics were “particularly unfortunate as they only serve to give a longer lease of life to outmoded ways of thought, which if persisted in would lead us to the jungle.”44 And Ananda Bazar Patrika declared with false concern: “In normal times much importance would not have been attached to Dr. Ambedkar’s outpourings, but we want to know whether it is permissible for a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council to declare war against the Caste Hindus and to give incitement in the manner done by Dr. Ambedkar.”45 There 40 41 42 43

Proceedings, 5 July 1943, 34. Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajanitir Svatanta Adhyaya (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 162. Provincial Press Adviser’s Report on the Press for the first half of October, 1944, IOR/L/ P&J/5/151. Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

Mandal as Minister

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was little chance that Mandal’s developing the Federation in Bengal would be received with much sympathy when its leader was regarded with such studied derision. Even as Mandal and his associates sought to extend the Federation’s appeal by means of an extensive campaign of traveling across the province to build requisite alliances, hold meetings, and garner support, he also attended to the national dimensions of the political party. He was in Pune, for instance, on two separate occasions in 1945 and 1946 to meet with the national working committee, as well as the other cities and towns in which the party found a base. Indeed, as the work of other scholars of the Federation suggests, the party definitively gave rise to the emergence of an all-India public among Dalits wherein local and regional concerns and developments found unprecedented national address.46 Never before had a political organization of Dalit communities networked across British India with the same degree of coordination and purpose. There is little doubt that the Federation was a far more substantial presence, both symbolic and numerical, in Bengal’s political history than received wisdom suggests. The welcome reception it enjoyed all the more significant because of the upper-caste dissuasion of any political assertiveness in their midst. Mandal as Minister As noted above, Mandal took every advantage of his position as a minister in Nazimuddin’s cabinet to make good the deficits in the number of Dalit employees in the various government services. One suspects it was in fact precisely this, the very capacity and ability to exercise political power with meaningful effect, that the idea of “separate political existence” anticipated. Yet even during his time as a minister and despite his personal efforts, Mandal encountered forces that were far beyond his individual ability to affect. Ministerial power was no guarantee of a transformation of sentiments; on the contrary, it ran the risk of inflaming them. 46

Ramnarayan Rawat, “Making Claims for Power: A New Agenda for Dalit Politics in Uttar Pradesh, 1946–1948,” in Suvir Kaul (ed.), The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2001); Suvir Kaul, “Partition Politics and Acchut Identity: A Study of the Scheduled Castes Federation and Dalit Politics in UP, 1946–48,” Modern Asian Studies 37 (2003); Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994); Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Owen M. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability: Social Mobility and Social Change in a City of India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992).

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His position certainly afforded greater scope for personal intervention. Although appointed to oversee the Cooperative Credit and Rural Indebtedness Department, Mandal nonetheless pursued his primary set of concerns. On one occasion, he wrote directly to the secretary of the Public Service Commission about why no Dalit candidates were appointed as commercial tax officers, and suggested two individuals who, in his opinion, met the standards of suitability that were often invoked to explain shortfalls. On another, he wrote to the Agricultural Department requesting the advancement of adequate loans to cultivators in the Sadar subdivision of Barisal who, on account of a spike in cattle mortality, had neither funds nor cattle available for requisite purchases prior to plowing their fields. As a minister, Mandal remained preoccupied with problems of institutional reform and agrarian relief. In early August 1944, Mandal sent a letter to Chief Minister Nazimuddin detailing his understanding of why Dalit candidates were not being recruited as intended. It deserves substantial consideration for what it reveals about a minister who, although possessed of evident will to ensure that the communal ratio actually worked as intended, was nonetheless constrained in fulfilling this goal. Indeed, it offers a view of how Mandal understood the functioning of upper-caste discrimination. Generally speaking, he complained, Dalit candidates “fail to receive proper consideration and justice in the hands of the P.S.C. (Public Service Commission).”47 Although they possessed requisite qualifications as per job advertisements they were not given the opportunity to interview for “reasons best known to the P.S.C.” Mandal alleged the commission called on such a small pool of candidates that the number required to fill the quota was invariably insufficient. He believed recruiting officers attached “undue importance” to academic achievements, in his view often of no use in practical fields.48 Even if Dalit candidates were 47 48

Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 117–19. This echoed an argument Fazlul Huq, the first chief minister of Bengal, elaborated in an extended critique of the bogey of “efficiency” often invoked to deny Muslim and Dalit candidates their due proportion of employment. Concerning the criteria considered in appointing circle officers, for instance: “I maintain that judged from this point of view the Muslim community and the Scheduled Castes can supply far more efficient Circle Officers than the community which knows only the art of producing merely brilliant graduates on paper.” Huq noted, in addition, the desirability of circle officers being from the communities they would serve: “He would then be in a position to enter the feelings of the people, so as to be readily trusted and easily followed. An officer of a different community may be capable from other points of view, but as between him and the Circle Officer belonging to the majority community the other officer is bound to be less successful and efficient.” Huq was not convinced by the argument that scoring the highest marks in examinations assured the ideal candidate for work involved in the administration of Bengal: “Experience has shown that officers belonging to the Muslim

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successful at the initial competitive examination, they were often disqualified after the viva-voce examination on the flimsiest of pretexts: 1) Unusual and unimportant questions which are not expected to be known to many are put to them e.g., why black sesame and not white one is used in Sradh ceremony? And the questions put to the candidates of different communities are not the same and uniform. Our apprehension is that as there is no Scheduled Caste member on the Commission, Scheduled Caste candidates are unsympathetically treated in the viva-voce examination. 2) Usually Scheduled Caste candidates do not possess so healthy and beautiful physique as is possessed by the candidates of other two communities. Once the Commission have interviewed Caste Hindu and Muslim candidates Scheduled Caste candidates cannot be pleasing to their eyes and it may be admitted that Scheduled Caste candidates are not so smart as others are.49 Mandal continued that often the commission selected mediocre and inferior candidates at the expense of those better qualified, and proposed that the presence of a Dalit representative at the time of interview might minimize this occurrence. Finally, he singled out the matter of appointments of officers and lawyer magistrates in the Rationing and Civil Supplies Department as a matter of particular grievance to their candidates. These were his proposed remedies: that all candidates who possessed the requisite minimum qualifications should be called for an interview if the number of applicants was not that large in comparison to the number of available vacancies; that one’s academic record should not be the sole basis of consideration; that a uniform set of questions be posed to all candidates; that Dalit candidates be interviewed first and that concessions be made “so far as their physique and smartness are concerned; otherwise the reservation for them shall have no meaning”; that a Dalit representative be present at interviews conducted by the Public Service Commission and any other interview committees; that the secretary of the P.S.C. be a “person with vast experience, broad outlook and broad mindedness having no caste prejudice.”50 Mandal added that he could substantiate his allegations by with specific examples. The commission’s response to Mandal’s note is telling. Short of filing a statement detailing specific

49

community or the Scheduled Caste community have more frequently proved to be more efficient Circle Officers than graduates that belong to the Caste Hindu community.” A.K. Zainul Abedin, Memorable Speeches of Sher-e-Bangla (Barisal: Al-Helal Publishing House, 1978), 86–87. Speaking in the assembly, note how even Huq took recourse to the concept of “the Muslim or the Scheduled Caste community.” Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 117–18. 50 Ibid., 119.

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instances, which would duly be investigated, the Commission found it “difficult to accept or offer an opinion on any of the suggestions and proposals” he offered.51 Mandal’s letter conjured the kind of reasoning upper-caste officials presumably enlisted to deny Dalit candidates their share of government employment: the obsession with academic qualifications, the easy dismissal on grounds of cultural incompetency about arbitrarily identified mores and insignificant norms, and the Dalit candidate’s perceived unpleasant appearance. The interview was thus a critical institutional node in reproducing the effective failure of the communal ratio. Mandal’s letter offered a negative image of the upper-caste sense of being besieged by those they considered beneath their dignity claiming their due. It also confirmed arguably one of the fundamental assumptions of Bengal’s politicians: they registered the esteem of communities according to their visibility and prominence in the quotidian, if absolutely essential, domain of government employment. Political identities were certainly not defined by loaves and fishes alone, but it would be wishful thinking to imagine that the identifiable and objective well-being of communities was not paramount, as it had been in contestations over the communal ratio between upper-caste, Muslim, and Dalit leaders.52 The communal ratio, born in part of provisions in the Poona Pact, was indeed one of the key issues around which antagonisms sharpened, turning as it did on confrontation over the more rigorously equitable distribution of administrative wage-labor. Governor R.G. Casey’s diary entries from 1944 speak poignantly to the utter impasse among Bengali politicians over the matter. Santosh Basu, secretary of the Agriculture Department, confessed to him that the “Communal ratio impedes business all the time, from top to bottom. The Muslims have very few good men. Most of the agricultural staff needed in Bengal are either British or Hindu. His Minister is reasonable in this regard, but cannot combat the Party. Preoccupation with the Communal Ratio really started in 1937, but since 1939 has been brought to a fine art. He believes that the future progress of the country is being impeded by insistence on communal ratio.”53 Syama Prasad Mookerjee likewise conveyed that, “the working of the communal ratio, as applied to the administration, meant the death-knell of efficiency by the appointment of Muslims with 51 52

53

Ibid., 120. It seems to me that there remains more than just a kernel of truth to some of Anil Seal’s controversial and much-maligned propositions in his The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). R.G. Casey, Personal Diary, 47.

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considerably less than the highest qualification of those available. He deplored the doctrine of ‘minimum qualification.’”54 Khwaja Nazimuddin, on the other hand, objected “that the slightest relaxation would mean that a grossly disproportionate number of Hindus would be appointed.” The Muslims had no Press and were constantly the subject of hostile propaganda, which led to an unconscious anti-Muslim bias on the part of the British officials. Nazimuddin proclaimed against the “fetish of Educational Standards.” He believed that a university degree did not necessarily mean that a man was better fitted than another for a number of appointments, and added that if the communal ratio rules were relaxed, it would result in a lowering of confidence throughout the Province as “people had confidence in the Muslims.” Nazimuddin accepted the necessity of departing from the rule where technical qualifications were concerned, and pointed out that “99% of the employees of European firms in Calcutta were Hindus. Practically speaking, no Muslim need apply – as they were ‘run out’ by the Hindu departmental heads.” Shahabuddin said that the Muslim officials, coming from the people, were “more acceptable to the people, and more enthusiastic in their work, than Caste Hindus who looked down their noses at the masses.”55 Professor Suhrawardy (of the Public Service Commission) nonetheless informed Casey of the “difficulty they had in getting adequate Scheduled Caste candidates to fill the Scheduled Caste quota of 15% of appointments under the Communal Ratio rules. They have been so downtrodden for so long that they are markedly deficient in personality and, even when they have reasonably adequate qualifications, they do not show up well on interview. It has been suggested that a Scheduled Caste representative (an M.L.A. or the like) should be present at such interviews to make them feel more at home.”56 The communal ratio thus remained one of the most disputed legislative subjects of these years. Even as Mandal struggled as a minister to give effect to the rationalities of the communal ratio against the backdrop of the strained exchanges described in Casey’s diary, he was unusually terse about the famine of 1943, arguably the most devastating development during his first tenure as a minister. His commentary on this event in his autobiography is limited to the barest of references. Mandal’s reticence is all the more perplexing as Dalits bore a disproportionate number of its effects: a survey of the destitute in Calcutta conducted by Tarakchandra Das, a lecturer in anthropology from Calcutta University, for instance, revealed that 54 percent of persons approached were Dalits.57 Mandal wrote with almost an 54 57

Ibid., 109. 55 Ibid., 158–59. 56 Ibid., 259. The figure is especially remarkable if one considers that Scheduled Castes were a minority not only within Calcutta, but the province at large. That said, the geographical spread of the origins of the destitute – predominantly from South 24 Parganas – certainly

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air of sad inevitability: “The poor, uneducated, day-laborers, those who were mostly of the Scheduled Classes, it was they who would fall prey to this famine. Deprived of food, it was they who would predominantly lose their lives.”58 This was the context in which Mandal thought joining the new Muslim League ministry might afford the opportunity to remedy the agrarian crisis that had already spiraled out of control and given rise to widespread bouts of famine over the previous years. Mandal claimed it was he who first approached Governor R.G. Casey with the plea that gruel kitchens be opened throughout the province to stymie the brutal effects of the famine; furthermore, that he traveled throughout the province during this time, ensuring that the gruel kitchens were stocked with the basic provisions, and the famished were able to avail themselves of them. Clearly, what remained in his memory was what he had tried to do, in face of catastrophe. Mandal was appointed minister of Co-operative Credit and Rural Indebtedness during a period of protracted agrarian crisis in Bengal and thus inherited the outcome of processes that began long before his tenure. One of his tasks involved concluding the negotiations between creditors and debtors resulting from the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act. This legislation provided “the establishment of debt settlement boards to scale down debts according to the debtors’ ability to pay. The express purpose of the legislation was to relieve the burden of the debtors.”59 The act itself was a response to the crisis in the credit system that buttressed the agrarian economy of, especially, east Bengal. To the Bengal agriculturalist, as one historian put it, “credit was capital.”60 The slump in jute prices set off a chain reaction that reverberated through the various linkages connecting rural Bengal to the world economy. As cultivators were unable to repay their loans, the uneasy and delicate symbiosis that characterized these relationships was ruptured. Mandal was aware that without providing alternative lines of credit, both creditors and debtors saw the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act, despite best intentions, as a “machinery of tyranny and repression.” In March 1945, however, his department and

58 59

60

conditioned the sample, and explains the comparatively lower number of Muslims. Das’s study contained some quite remarkable observations regarding the effect of the famine on caste-consciousness, namely, the initial waning yet intended retrenching of casteconscious practices once the crisis was over. Tarakchandra Das, Bengal Famine (1943) as Revealed in a Survey of the Destitutes of Calcutta (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1949), 51, 9. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 119. Sugata Bose, “The Peasantry in Debt: The Working and Rupture of Systems of Rural Credit Relations,” in Sugata Bose (ed.), Credit, Markets and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 269. Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Rural Indebtedness in Bengal, 1928–1947 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1997), 191.

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leadership came in for a significant amount of criticism from members of the assembly when he moved two motions for grants toward his department’s expenditure and for debt conciliation. Nalinaksha Sanyal, the Congress whip who publicly humiliated Mandal in front of the whole assembly, charged his department with maladministration and the “failure to encourage Co-operative Distributing Societies for equitable distribution of essential supplies to the community.”61 Atul Chandra Sen opined that the “Ministry and the Department of Co-operation are absolutely devoid of imagination and ideas.”62 The overall thrust of the various criticisms held Mandal and his department responsible for the abject failure of the co-operative movement in Bengal. Many upper-caste MLAs seemed to believe that his department had the potential to be of immense service to producers, but his own shortcomings stood in the way. W.C. Wordsworth took a broader view on the matter. Wordsworth assigned responsibility not so much to Mandal and his department but to the absence of a “common interest” and “common purpose.” He did not think it “generous or just of us to blame the Department at a particular moment or Government at any particular moment for what is wrong. What is wrong has been handed down and it has become firmly fixed by the operations of generations.”63 Maulvi Ahmed Ali Mridha thus described the situation as follows: “The Hon’ble Mr. Mandal has approached the Hon’ble Finance Minister with a beggar’s bowl but he had not got anything. The Hon’ble Finance Minister has said: ‘improvement of co-operation is not possible and we are very sorry, you shall not be able to spend.’”64 Mandal was evidently working within unusual budgetary constraints. In his reply, Mandal began “encouraged” at the various members’ constructive suggestions and concurred with much of what had been said, particularly Wordsworth’s assertion that a nonpayment mentality among debtors was “no less responsible for the partial failure of the Cooperative movement” and the failure to adequately assess the paying capacity of those who had formed co-operative societies. “Many things, many errors were committed in the past for which the Co-operative movement today is suffering and has a setback.” Mandal assured Sanyal that he would take “drastic action” against any officer found accused of corruption and bribery, and agreed on more than one occasion that “distribution and procurement could be efficiently done through cooperative societies and co-operative organizations.” But this was not the 61 62

Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings Official Reports, 17 March, 1945 (Alipore: Bengal Government Press, 1945), 230. Ibid., 241. 63 Ibid., 234–35. 64 Ibid., 242.

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government’s policy, and his department alone did not have authority to effect such changes. His department was entirely dependent on other departments in government. Much as he would like to give effect to the various suggestions offered, he was powerless to do so.65 Mandal’s statistics about the financial position of the Bengal Provincial Co-operative Bank, recoveries by central banks from agricultural credit societies, recoveries of audit fees, an increase in the number of multipurpose societies, and considerable progression in settlement of the debt of co-operative debtors suggested improvements over past performance.66 His second motion was met with yet another round of criticisms regarding the various reasons for the failure to dispose of cases in a timelier fashion. Mandal accepted these complaints yet reminded the house of a number of considerations: that Debt Settlement Boards were manned by honorary members, that debts were settled by persuasion and not coercion, and that meetings often failed for want of a quorum. He assured that expediting the disposal of cases was being attempted, yet was quick to add, “the benefits derived from the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act cannot be denied by anybody and had not the Act been in operation in this province, perhaps the poor agriculturalists of Bengal would have been turned into labourers or serfs.” Mandal’s summary of the present position suggested hardly inconsequential progress.67 As with his interventions in the cooperative movement of the province, then, Mandal’s ministerial power proved of limited consequence against the force of circumstances far beyond his individual control with respect to the functioning of the communal ratio. While he no doubt secured a number of concrete gains for Dalits, he was powerless beyond a point to effect transformations deemed much too radical. Arguably the clearest illustration of his ministerial clout during his first tenure, however, came in his involvement with the failed Hindu conference of mid-1944. The episode offers occasion to observe in greater detail how Hindu Bengal responded to the particular strand of Dalit political assertiveness Mandal had come to represent, and sought to propagate. The Hindu Conference Shortly over a year into Mandal’s tenure as minister, a remarkable series of confrontations occurred in Dalit majority districts of eastern Bengal that threw into sharp relief why Mandal, the Federation, and his ministry, met Hindu nationalist efforts to mobilize that community with such disapproval. The events in question caused such concern that they 65

Ibid., 242–47.

66

Ibid.

67

Ibid., 253–54.

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immediately provoked an extended discussion in the legislative assembly and, as such, offered rich evidence of the artifice in Hindu nationalist attempts to win Dalits to their side. As is widely acknowledged, the Hindu Mahasabha increasingly focused its efforts from the 1930s onward toward garnering the support of Dalits toward its völkisch vision of Hindu unity. Yet it is far from clear just how genuine these intentions were. As the previous chapter suggested, the majority of Congress and Mahasabha leaders were loath to concede the principal demands of their politicians. The matter at hand thus fueled the increasingly strident opposition between the Federation and the League on the one hand, and the Hindu Mahasabha on the other. The controversy involved the government ban on all public meetings in the subdivisions of Pirojpur, Bagerhat, Gopalganj, Narail, Magura, and Jhenidah from 2 to 16 June 1944. These subdivisions were located at the intersection of four districts: Jessore, Khulna, Faridpur, and Barisal, the very heartland of Dalit activism and mobilization. The Mahasabha had proposed a “Hindu conference” in Lora, Barisal, in early June that year under the presidency of the Maharajdhiraja Bahadur of Burdwan, featuring various dignitaries from that party, and perhaps most prominently, the Dalit leader Promath Ranjan Thakur. The Namasudras in particular supposedly took the initiative, and the conference was intended for the “social, economical [sic] and educational uplift of the Hindus.”68 The conference could not be held as a result of the government ban, and this was the immediate cause for discontent. Narendranath Dasgupta thus moved to adjourn the house to consider this matter of “definite and urgent public importance and of recent occurrence . . .”69 Dasgupta narrated how two months ago the Hindus of the zillas surrounding Lora village collectively decided to hold a conference that the Muslim League government perceived as a “giant threat.”70 This was because, according to Dasgupta, they wanted to divide Hindu society much as they had divided the Indian community. “On the one hand, to divide the Indian community and on the other to destroy what affection, unity and love exists amongst the different classes within the Hindu community, this is the work of the current ministry.”71 Such was allegedly the sole intent behind stopping the conference from proceeding. Referring to Mandal, Dasgupta continued that they knew the minister who was a “cringing dependent” of the League ministry departed on a campaign to obstruct the conference.72 Mandal was indeed in the 68 72

Proceedings, 5 June 1944, 137. 69 Ibid., 138. 70 Ibid., 139. 71 Ibid. At which point “a voice,” perhaps Mandal himself, asked, “When your Santosh-babu, Syamaprasad-babu was on this side, what kind of dependents were they?”

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area, and according to one account, arrived on the scene when Syamaprasad Mukherjee was addressing a crowd and dispersed that particular meeting. Dasgupta alleged that Mandal traversed the localities in question along with a special officer of the Scheduled Castes to entice local residents away from participating in the conference with promises of government aid. At meetings in Malikhali village, not more than a mile from Lora, he delivered speeches designed to create divisiveness among Hindus, and when a teacher in the audience apparently protested his message, Mandal exhorted the crowd to violence against him. Dasgupta proceeded to address the communal violence (which according to him was more in the nature of an agrarian skirmish) that had recently broken out in a nearby locality. This was the pretext under which government had issued the ban in order to prevent further escalation in the first place. The violence occurred at some distance from Lora in Bagerhat; moreover, not only had local Muslims approached Syamaprasad Mukherjee with a gift of a watermelon (evidencing for Dasgupta the absence of ill-feelings between Hindus and Muslims), but the local subdivisional officer and magistrate granted consent to their conference as well. For all these reasons, among others, he expressed not simply a lack of confidence, but his “deep disgust” with the ministry.73 Promatha Ranjan Thakur, Dalit MLA and chairman of the reception committee for the conference, restated Dasgupta’s grievances about the “great injustice” done to the Hindus. Yet he offered crucial insights on the key motivations behind the proposed conference by adding that the ministry banned the gathering as it was trying to have the Secondary Education Bill passed. Thakur thought that if the conference had been allowed, Hindu public opinion would have been so mobilized against the bill that it would have been impossible to pass. He alleged Mukunda Behari Mullick wrote to many Namasudra leaders of the locality, dissuading their participation. And when “all these nefarious attempts failed the League ministry had no other alternative but to ban the conference at the eleventh hour.” Echoing Dasgupta, Thakur asserted that the communal disturbances which formed the backdrop to the conference in Lora occurred at some distance and were of an agrarian nature. The decision to ban the conference thus stemmed from the Muslim League’s desire to prevent that “Caste Hindus and the Scheduled Castes should unite together.”74 This was no less than a direct assault on one of the Mahasabha’s key objectives.

73

Ibid., 141.

74

Proceedings, 141.

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The Secondary Education Bill was one of several major legislative proposals which utterly divided Bengali public opinion, and brief recall of its proposal helps elucidate why the Mahasabha was up in arms over the ban. Governor Casey wrote of discussions surrounding the bill: “They are afraid that Dr. S.P.M. would gerrymander the position (if there were joint electorates) so that his stooges would be elected (Hindu, Muslim or Scheduled) – who, although Muslim or Scheduled, would not in fact adequately represent their fellows. They don’t think that joint electorates would result in the return of individuals acceptable to themselves (Muslims and Scheduled Classes).”75 A letter that Casey wrote to Lord Wavell, then the Viceroy of India, conveys just how charged the issue had become: “Dr. S.P. Mookerjee is, of course, the prime mover against the Bill – as he has the most to lose. He and his followers are indulging in great flights of exaggeration as to the catastrophic nature of the Bill. I do not believe it is a very wonderful Bill – but I am not enough of an educationalist to be able to say where it is wrong. But, whether it is good or bad, I believe the Hindus have brought it on themselves by their selfish disregard in the past for the educational rights of the communities that they affect to despise, the Muslims and the Scheduled Castes.”76 Casey was quite an unusual commentator. An Australian politician and diplomat, he hadn’t cut his teeth in Bengal or even elsewhere in India. His was a rather anomalous appointment in that sense, and he brought to the situation a seemingly untrained set of eyes. Casey believed that secondary education was “very largely a closed preserve for the Caste Hindus for generations” and in recent memory, Mukherjee and his father represented the “high priests of secondary and university education.” He continued: “The torch is now in the course of being snatched from the Caste Hindus – and, when this Secondary Education Bill becomes a law, it will be controlled and directed by a board on which Muslims will have 50% of the representation, and the Hindus (including the Scheduled Castes) 50%. This puts the Caste Hindus into a minority. Under the present Governmental alignment, the Scheduled Castes definitely tend (or at least a majority of them) to side with the Muslims. This comes about by reason of their being a community, like the Muslims, which is struggling to emancipate itself and rise in the world – and also for the material and selfish reason that they can get more out of the Muslims than they can out of the Caste Hindus.”77 75 76 77

R.G. Casey, Personal Diary, 3 April 1944, 193. Governor’s Report from R.G. Casey to Wavell, 15 May 1944. Ibid. Casey’s letter, especially the claim that the majority of the Scheduled Caste MLAs tended to side with their Muslim colleagues, could inform evaluations of their “integration” over the course of provincial autonomy.

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Casey seemed to have encountered little difficulty in perceiving the nub of the matter. The ban on the conference was an affront to the already offended sentiments of a beleaguered caste elite. Mookerjee, possessed of what the governor found to be a “viper-like personality,” counted the Secondary Education Bill among the two “black bills” which awoke him from his “academic seclusion” to realizing his duty to “rouse public opinion.” He had organized a “stirring agitation” against both, and his efforts eventually apparently yielded the majority of the Congress leadership, including Sarat Bose and Haren Chaudhuri, among those who felt they were “being slowly dragged into the net of Mahasabha politics.”78 As with the Poona Pact several years prior, the Secondary Education Bill brought Hindu right and left together. In response to their outrage against the government’s ban, Mukunda Behari Mullick, whose constituency was among the localities that had witnessed the recent violence, sought to correct his critics. He conceded that the region had a history of violence between Namasudras and Muslims of a secular nature that at times assumed explicitly communal overtones. Yet, more often than not, as in the most recent case, “strangers” would appear and incite the two communities against each other. These “strangers” and “political agitators” were Mahasabha activists who in the context of the recent disturbances “thought of organizing a conference [on the other side of the river] for purposes best known to themselves.” Mullick added that he not only received letters from notables of all four districts, but that a “large number of people” had visited him in Calcutta asking his advice and opinion on the proposed conference. They brought him printed leaflets issued by the Mahasabha to publicize their activity, which he found objectionable both in content and form: Again these leaflets are alleged to bear the names of some of the leading gentlemen of the Namasudra community of the four different districts. It appears that a large number of these gentlemen do not know anything about the conference or about the leaflets being issued with their names printed on it – not to talk of giving consent at all to it. Some of them at least who live close to this place have issued a counter-leaflet to indicate that they have nothing to do with this conference and have no sympathy with it. They have further shown by this leaflet that if this conference be attended by people of their community, it will go very hard against them since it was designed to strike at the root of the political achievement that they have been able to make under the British administration . . .79

Mullick regretted the epithets critics used to deride the ban, and requested his Dalit colleagues in opposition to reflect on how “these 78

Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, 45.

79

Ibid., 144. My emphases.

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uncalled for friends of theirs” had treated their own. “Having known the activities not only of those who are shouting the loudest today but also of their predecessors for well-nigh over 30 years, I would only say that we have known enough of their charities . . . and we would only request them to call back their dogs.” In view of prior events, the government order ought to have been promulgated even earlier. In any case, he concluded, the order “produced the effect of stopping bloodshed of a large number of human beings which would have undoubtedly happened if this conference at this time of tension would have been allowed to be held at a place which is at very short distance of the original place of disturbance.”80 Mullick’s rebuttal baldly exposed the Mahasabha’s fabrications of Dalit consent. The wide gulf between how Bengal’s politicians grasped the motivations and propriety of the failed Hindu conference is evidence of the thoroughly contested nature of the project of Hindu nationalism and its votaries’ attempts to mobilize Dalits.81 Where one party saw the fostering of Hindu unity, another perceived the spurious concern of insincere intentions. Evidence of Dalits responding affirmatively to Hindu nationalist exhortation cannot be sequestered from their equally strident resistance to the same. The point is not simply that upper-caste nationalists of various ideological commitments actively dissuaded and disapproved any independent movement among them, but that even their highly touted activism appeared to require mendacity. On this august occasion, which sought to unify Hindus in the wake of arguably the one legal measure that broke the proverbial last straw – the Secondary Education Bill – Dalit political will had to be manufactured. The question of consent did not, perhaps need not, even arise. That could be imagined into existence. Indeed, when it was Mandal’s turn to speak, he confronted the contention that the conference was convened with benign and altruistic intent. He read aloud from one of the leaflets which in his view sought to “rouse the Hindu community against those who do not profess the Hindu religion.”82 An Islamophobic rant, it was clearly objectionable to him. Like Mullick, Mandal indicated that impetus for the conference did not arise organically from among Dalits themselves, the very possibility for which the Federation strove. Instead, the vast majority of those whose names were included on the leaflet had no knowledge of the conference. 80 81

82

Ibid., 144–45. Chatterji’s assertion that there is “not much contemporary evidence to suggest that the Scheduled Castes resisted this drive to bundle them into the ‘Hindu community . . .,’” even if applicable to the immediate context to which she referred, may be considered in light of the foregoing evidence. See Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 197. Proceedings, 153–54.

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Once more, neither had they consented to the same. Mandal noted how local men of authority and distinction, such as Rai Sahib Lalit Kumar Bal, Rajendra Nath Malakar, Bhabani Sankar Gain, and Narayan Chandra Bala expressed their resentment and opposition to the conference, and how several took the initiative to counter the spread of false information by calling their own meetings where they expressed their objections. “In this way hundreds of names from different parts of four districts were used. Moreover most of the names are not of Scheduled Castes but of Caste Hindus.”83 Mandal then clarified what in his view was the sole purpose of the conference: “. . . the locality was selected with the one object and that object was that the locality was a hotbed of riot and regular intervals and that was a junction of four districts, and if a conference of that nature could be held and the Namasudra people could be roused against other communities, the object of the Hindu Mahasabhaites would be fulfilled. That was the only object and there can be no other object.”84 Rousing Namasudras against Muslims, or uskiye daoya, to instigate, in the colloquial phrase, was hardly a seamless process to which the former acquiesced unhesitatingly. Mandal plainly saw through the Mahasabha’s ulterior motives. The letters and reports exchanged among district level authorities offer a view of the matter closer to the ground. The district magistrate in Khulna, M.H. Ali, reported to the commissioner of the Presidency Division that the ban was “. . . well received and has had a salutary effect on the situation.”85 Along with his letter, Ali enclosed the report of the subdivisional officer of Bagerhat, one A. Ahmed, which contained a detailed account of how the events of the first few days of the month of June unfolded. Once Ali announced the government ban to the locality, as well as to Syamaprasad Mookerjee: “The situation at once grew calm. People dispersed quietly. As regards the repercussions of the Govt. order, I find that the Mussalmans and right-thinking Hindus heaved a sigh of relief over this order. Everybody thought that a threatened communal situation has been averted by the timely order of the Govt.”86 And later in his report: “I have tried to study the repercussions of the Govt. order. The Mussalmans and Namasudras were telling me that it was a very timely order of the Govt. and they welcomed the order everywhere. They said that the smoldering communal discontent is there, it is just fit and proper that people belonging to communal organizations should not 83 84 85 86

Ibid., 154. Ibid. Also see the folk poet Surendranath Sarkar’s recollections of Mandal’s intervention at the Lora conference in Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal, 128–29. Letter from M.H. Ali to A.S. Hands, 7 June 1944, File No. 272/44 (pt). Letter from A. Ahmed to M.H. Ali, 6 June 1944, File No. 272/44 (pt).

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be allowed to visit the area for some time to come. They say that it will be conducive to the interest of the future peace of both the communities.”87 This may have been the report of a Muslim officer, subject to his own prejudices, but this does nothing to negate the fact that apparently at least some Namasudras and Muslims felt relieved by the ban. Not to be outdone, the Mahasabha approached the government later in the month with a request to distribute relief to the riot-affected areas. Relief work had already begun weeks in advance, yet it is telling that permission was granted “provided that they give [you] a guarantee that their work will not be made the vehicle for political propaganda and so long only as you [ M.H. Ali] are satisfied that this assurance is being observed.”88 Little is of known of the League’s accommodation and latitude. Granting permission to the Mahasabha to offer relief in such charged circumstances might be one such instance. The failed “Hindu conference” brought to the fore antagonisms which lay at the very heart of Bengali politics only a handful of years before Partition and Independence. The Hindu nationalist project of fashioning Hindu unity turned, in this instance, on the demonization of the Muslim, by rousing Dalits to perceive them as aggressors even while fictitiously marshaling their support. On the other hand, Mandal and Mullick regarded the Mahasabha’s attempts to capitalize on instances of violence as had occurred in Bagerhat as the exogenous fomenting of antagonism between Namasudras and Muslims. In one vision, Muslims were the common enemy of Dalits and caste Hindus; in the other, Dalits and Muslims stood united against caste Hindus. In such circumstances, the Federation’s bid for Dalit political autonomy could not but squarely contradict the Mahasabha’s will to Hindu unity. Gopalganj If the controversy surrounding the Mahasabha’s conference sheds light on the nature of Hindu nationalists’ overtures toward Dalits, the Federation’s conference on 23–24 April 1945 in Gopalganj offers insight into that organization’s growing strength and why it stood against the appropriative tendencies of the Congress and Mahasabha. A Namasudra commentator writing in the early 1960s considered this conference in particular to be of exceeding importance for the attainment and 87

88

Ibid. Ahmed’s letter also made mention of the fact that Mandal had raised the question of compromising the cases against those who had perpetrated the violence several days earlier, possibly to preempt any further conflagration. Ahmed felt this was unwarranted, as “law breakers should not be allowed to feel that they can break the law with impunity.” Letter from E.B.H. Baker to M.H. Ali, 30 June 1944, File No. 272/44 (pt).

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awareness of Scheduled Castes’ political rights.89 According to Mandal, and this was indeed true in his historical present, the Federation’s conference at Gopalganj mobilized the widest network of public support among Dalits in Bengal in history, a moment of galvanizing. The conference adopted the following resolutions, which deserve extensive quotation for an adequate understanding of the Federation’s politics. These were certainly excellent “peasant interests,” the archival remains of the desire for a more just accommodation within extant political-economic structures, demands for the economic justice for the Scheduled Castes.90 They included the following proposals: the foundation of village colonies by distributing khas mahal lands for landless Dalit cultivators; accomplishing the abolition of zamindari and subinfeudation and the introduction of equitable agricultural taxes; the fixation of a minimum and reasonable value on agricultural produce and the foundation of cooperative agriculture and trading centers; establishing the rights of fishermen to marshes; the introduction of minimum wages as required for laborers in municipalities and other industrial institutions; the grant of employer-born unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, sickness insurance, and maternity policy. The resolutions closed with appeal for immediate organization of aid for Dalits affected by the famine as private relief organizations were run by individuals inimical to their welfare, as well as the request for Dalit officers to be appointed to the Public Service Commission. Similarly, a poster for the conference summarized the Federation’s agenda, a testament to the considerable depth of their political vision, as follows: Which path to freedom? In the Federation’s movement. What do they want? 1) In the state: separate political rights. a) Separate elections. b) Proportional numbers for those elected. c) Proportional distribution of employment. d) Proportional distribution of government sanctioned shops. 89 90

Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh, 59. “Its [the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation’s] distance from the average Scheduled Caste peasantry does not appear to have been narrowed. Of the seven major demands of the Federation, as put forth by Mandal at the first provincial conference, only one had any relevance to peasant interests, while the rest dealt with either institutional concessions or constitutional rights.” Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947 (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997), 203. Bandyopadhyay’s research generally tends to suggest the relative marginality, unimportance, and inadequacy (as above) of the Federation. The Federation is confined to a mere handful of pages in his chapter on the leadership’s “alienation to integration.” The aforementioned list of demands ought to suggest the considerable degree to which the Federation was in fact invested in both economic and political justice for Dalits.

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Figure 3.1: A poster for the conference in Gopalganj identifying the Federation’s demands in various domains: the state, the center, education, industry, self-government, business, agriculture, antiuntouchability, administration, and medical care. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal.

2) At the center: a) Arrangements for the proportional reservation of seats in the Central Legislative Assembly. b) Proportional distribution of employment in every department of the central Government (I.C.S., I.P.S., Telegram and Post Office, etc. departments).

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3) In education: a) Separate universities. b) Separate educational institutions. c) Allotment of adequate and separate expenditure grants. d) Compulsory, free and night educational institutes for the elderly. 4) In industry: a) Separate hide factories (tanneries). b) Separate cloth industry institutes. c) Separate bell-metal, X etc. industrial institutes. d) Separate science laboratories and engineering institutes. 5) In self-government: a) Reservation of seats in all zilla boards according to proportion and as necessary. b) Proportional distribution of employment in zilla boards. 6) In business: The unrestricted admission of Scheduled Caste rights in the textile ordinance of 1943–44. 7) In agriculture: a) Raising the value of agricultural produce in proportion to the value of industrial products. b) The sound management of fisheries and the arrangement of nets and tar for fishermen. c) The establishment of their rights to marshes. d) Arranging the digging of canals, ducts and ponds for water supply to all localities where agriculturalists predominate. 8) In removing untouchability: a) Untouchability should be considered an offense under Indian criminal law. b) The arrangement of land for the landless on arable land and the practical abolition of sweepers carrying night-soil. 9) The prompt admission of Scheduled Caste members to the Ronald administration enquiry committee. 10) Separate charitable hospitals for the Scheduled Castes.91 It is necessary to place the import of these resolutions and demands in their immediate historical context. This conference took place during a month that witnessed a “spate of ‘days’ and ‘weeks’ and national flag hoistings.”92 Reflecting on those organized by Hindus, the writer of a contemporary fortnightly confidential report of the Presidency Division wryly mused: “At all these meetings the speakers, who . . . are always caste Hindus and frequently Brahmins, shout ‘Unite and achieve your freedom, or your independence, or your rights,’ or indeed whatever the usually small audience happens to like best . . . At the Krishak meetings they shout ‘Down with the zamindars and the mill-owners’ though these are largely wealthy caste Hindus. I have never seen a report of a meeting addressed by the caste Hindus in which the speakers even mentioned the deplorable conditions of the depressed classes . . .”93 The Federation’s conference was likely the sole meeting of the time 91 92 93

Nikhil Banga Tapashil Jati Mahasammelan. Gopalganj (Gopalganj: Pracar bibhag Gopalganj Phedareshan Aphis, Papulara Presa, 1945). Fortnightly Confidential Report, Presidency Division, 2nd half of April 1945. Ibid.

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oriented to concerns the writer of the confidential report found lacking in those surveyed. Two aspects of the resolutions and demands deserve special notice: the explicit focus on economic welfare for Dalits and the increased emphasis on separatism. Both had existed, in one form or another, in prior formulations, but here their dual importance found distinct emphasis. The Federation’s was the most articulate political statement of the time to address questions of both recognition and redistribution as they touched on Dalits’ lives.94 What should one make of these “demands”? What did it even mean for the Federation to issue them, in full awareness of the fact that they were unlikely to be met, almost certainly invisible to and unheard by those who needed the most convincing? Rather than realistic expectations of what was achievable, they might be read as occasion for critique, a negative index of the social conditions of Dalit lives. They bore the impress of consciousness that envisioned Dalit freedom in terms of both political and economic right. Demands were thus an expression of implicit critique, a key element in the Federation’s representative claim, and an instance of what political theorist Michael Saward calls “constituting constituency,” the attempt to make visible the referent of politics.95 Demands were distillates of political community. As the largest gathering of Dalits in Bengal to have occurred in its time, the conference at Gopalganj, in the words of a participant, was of “exceeding importance for the obtaining of Bengal’s Scheduled Caste Hindus’ political rights.”96 Two decades later, Mandal would write: “A conference of this magnitude had never occurred before and would never do so again.”97 As late as the early years of this century, Anilkrishna 94

95 96

97

I believe the point merits consideration in terms of understanding the Federation’s national aspirations at this time more generally. Even a cursory glance at some of the titles of articles published in Jagaran evinces the Federation’s preoccupations with political economy: “Jamidari-prathar ucched cai” (“We want the abolition of landlordism”), 4 May 1946; “Adhiarer apar jotdari julumer abadh rajatva” (“The Rule of Unrestrained Jotdari Oppression on Adhiars”), 11 May 1946; “15 Laksha Krishak Paribarer Jami Behat – Durbhiksher Sarbanasha Phal – Baijnanik Tadante Banglar Pallijibaner Bedanadayak Citra Udghatita (“15 Lakh Peasant Families Lose Possession of Their Land – Results of the Famine’s Utter Destruction – The Agonizing Picture of Bengal’s Village Life Revealed in Scientific Investigation”), 25 May 1946; “Ei Jami Bhumihin Krishakder Madhye Bili Hay Na Keno? Banglar Patit Jamir Pariman” (“Why Is This Land Not Distributed Amongst Landless Peasants? The Extent of Uncultivated Land in Bengal”), 1 June 1946; “Tamluk Mahakumar Matsyajibider Durbasta,” (“The Misery of Tamluk Subdivision’s Fishermen”), 4 June 1946. Michael Saward, “The Representative Claim,” Contemporary Political Theory 5, 2006, 313. I thank Rupa Viswanath for directing me to Saward’s piece. See Anilkrishna Mallick’s reminiscences of the conference in Anil Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajnitir Svatantra Adhyaya, 147–151. Also see, Das, Namasudra Sampraday o Bangla Desh, 59. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 107.

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Mallick claimed he had never been to a larger gathering of the community.98 District authorities anticipated a crowd so large that the superintendent of police and district magistrate of Faridpur remained at hand, several tube-wells were sunk to provide a sufficient water supply, doctors were specially deputed for the event, and the director of public health deputed an epidemiologist to ensure against the breakout of an epidemic.99 Mandal estimated that 50,000 people were present at the very least, with attendees arriving from as far afield as Dhaka, Mymensingh, Rangpur, Pabna, Bogra, Jalpaiguri, Comilla, and even Assam, and certainly the proximate districts of Jessore, Khulna, Barisal, and Faridpur. Nearly a thousand helpers were enlisted to make preparations for the conference intended to accommodate an expected audience of one lakh individuals.100 Nisikanta Sarkar and Bijoy Sarkar, both acclaimed folk poets, were supposed to perform, although they were eventually unable to do so.101 Attendees apparently brought Rs. 100 notes as tokens of support. Under the guidance of Shri Kamini Prasanna Majumdar, and with the financial assistance of another Gopalganj resident, Umeshchandra Kirttaniya, and other contributors and facilitators, Gopalganj was transformed in the weeks prior to the conference into a flurry of preparatory activity. A local businessman, R.P. Saha, offered Mandal the services of his ostentatiously out fitted boat for transport between Khulna and Gopalganj. This scale of mobilization of resources in a political community with precious little by way of disposable income was truly unprecedented, for Bengal as for other regions of India.102 All of this preparation undertaken in order to celebrate their chief guest of honor, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. Resident in Delhi at the time as a member of the Governor General’s Executive Council, Ambedkar was initially unable to definitively commit to Mandal’s invitation due to exigencies of the Central Legislative 98

99 100 101

102

Anilkrishna Mallick, “Mahapraner sange aitihasik Gopalganj mahasammelan,” in Anil Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajnitir Svatantra Adhyaya (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 150. Fortnightly Confidential Report, Faridpur, 22 April, 1945. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 97–98. Mandal’s acquaintance and friendship with these folk poets suggests the degree to which political and cultural leaders were in close conversation with each other. Indeed, as one of Mandal’s surviving followers recalled in a conversation with the writer, Sarkar would subtly interlace messages of explicit political content in the impromptu recitations for which he was renowned. There is no reason to assume that the world of high politics encountered an impregnable barrier in Namasudra popular culture. Two points of meaningful comparison, among others, might be the historic Mahad conferences of 1927, which involved 1,500 people, or the Kalaram satyagraha in Nasik of 1930, which involved 10,000. Eleanor Zelliot, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Untouchable Movement (New Delhi: Blumoon Books, 2004), 77, 85.

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Assembly and meetings of the National Defence Council, which required his presence. He eventually agreed, provided a day’s attendance was sufficient: “If so, I will try my best. But I can only make a contingent promise and you must be prepared to be disappointed if circumstances proved too strong for me to keep my promise.”103 A subsequent letter suggested ever more concrete plans. Mandal and Ambedkar exchanged tentative programs and he was to make all necessary arrangements for Ambedkar’s travel from Calcutta to Gopalganj and back.104 A week later he assured that his arrangements had in fact been made, yet qualified, noting the risk of unforeseen circumstances.105 Ambedkar had visited Bengal earlier on in the year. At a conference hosted by the student wing of the Federation in Calcutta, he advised the gathering to “dissociate themselves from the All-India Students’ Federation, which, [he said] was doing nothing but seconding Congress resolutions.”106 Yet, resentment also brewed among sections of the provincial Dalit leadership, particularly on the part of Mukunda Behari Mullick, who likely had felt snubbed by Ambedkar’s selecting Mandal to be his chosen representative in Bengal. Mandal’s conference in Gopalganj was thus being “opposed by the association run by the Mullick brothers, who are supported by the Hindu Mahasabha.” Mullick had clearly changed his mind since his criticisms about that organization’s proposed conference in Lora recounted earlier. The brothers were to have addressed a meeting in early January that year “in opposition to the party led by Dr. Ambedkar and supported by the Hon’ble Minister J.N. Mandal.”107 Mandal wrote of “one or two conspirators in positions of leadership” who made efforts to hinder the proposed gathering to ensure that Ambedkar would not arrive to inaugurate the conference. They allegedly wrote to Ambedkar to warn him against coming to Gopalganj, adding that the majority of the Namasudras of Gopalganj were supposedly opposed to the conference.108 This seemed highly unlikely, given that if this were indeed the case, a meeting of the kind and scope envisioned would simply have been impossible without the necessary public sanction. The purpose of the conference, they claimed, was to “flow a river of blood” in Gopalganj. The conspiracy to dissuade Ambedkar from attending the 103 104 105 106 107 108

B.R. Ambedkar to Jogendranath Mandal, 7 March 1945; 29 March 1945. B.R. Ambedkar to Jogendranath Mandal, 5 April 1945. B.R. Ambedkar to Jogendranath Mandal, 12 April 1945. Fortnightly Report on the Press for the second half of January 1945; see Fortnightly Confidential Report on Political Situation in Bengal for second half of January 1945. FCR, Dacca Division, 1st half January 1945, File 37/45. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 98.

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conference ultimately proved, in Mandal’s words, “fruitful.”109 He ultimately did not come. Yet Ambedkar refrained from explicit mention of the efforts to keep him from the conference in a profusely apologetic letter to Mandal penned the day the conference actually began. Moreover, Fortnightly Confidential Reports of the days immediately prior to the conference observed that the opposition had “considerably weakened” and “no major trouble [is] apprehended.”110 Ambedkar explained that he was constrained from departing for Calcutta on account of the indeterminacy of Lord Wavell’s impending return to Delhi, whereupon the latter was expected to make a statement regarding various matters, including the future constitution of India. Ambedkar thus reassured: It is the interest of our people that I should stay here to know from him what our future is going to be. It is not an occasion which you would want me to miss. In the circumstances, I hope you and those who will come to this conference will excuse me for the deep disappointment which my absence may cause. Though I cannot be present at the conference physically, I am there in spirit. I am happy to note how the Federation has gone from strength to strength in Bengal. Though it has not been in existence for more than a year, it has caught the imagination of all the Scheduled Castes of Bengal, who, I feel sure, are determined to rally round the flag of the Federation.

Ambedkar nonetheless drew attention to the disunity among Dalits: “I hope that the conference will bring about a deep and solid sense of unity among our people and that those of our people who are acting as the tools of our opponents and are working against the true interests of our people will feel ashamed of their part, repent and join the fold of the Federation.”111 Disunity, from Ambedkar’s and Mandal’s vantage, implied no more than the success of Congress’ and Mahasabha’s attempts to entice Dalit representatives into their own organizations. The Federation’s efforts to consolidate Dalits of the province directly contravened the nationalist and communalist claim on their allegiance. The sense of disappointment at Ambedkar’s absence was profound.112 Adding to Mandal’s woes was the dissolution of his ministry only days before Ambedkar’s expected arrival, which threw his plans to procure government conveyance between Khulna and Gopalganj into disarray. Residents from localities surrounding stations on the rail line to Khulna 109 111 112

Ibid., 99. 110 FCR for period ending 22 April 1945, District Faridpur. B.R. Ambedkar to Jogendranath Mandal, 23 April 1945. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 101–4.

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had gathered to welcome and felicitate Ambedkar with garlands. At one station, Mandal burst into tears after conveying news of Ambedkar’s absence, eliciting an equally stricken response from the expectant crowd. A “pathetic sight,” as he later described.113 The entourage met scenes of despondency on arrival at locations on their way to Gopalganj as reception parties learned of the disappointing news; the atmosphere at the start of the conference was marred by dejection. Mandal’s presidential address the following day is evidence of the kind of political self-fashioning the Federation imagined for Dalits at this juncture, all the more poignant given Ambedkar’s absence.114 He explained why Gopalganj in particular had been chosen for the site of the conference. Gopalganj, and Faridpur district by extension, was significant in the history of their political movement for the highest concentration of lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. It was home to notables such as Bhismadeb Das (a member of the conference reception committee), who was the first member of their community in the Bengal legislature, and the Namasudras of this municipality had nearly a half-century ago brought about an “awakening” among the depressed classes of other provinces by means of their movement. In every respect, he averred, the Dalit community of Gopalganj had accomplished the most compared with other regions where they resided in numbers. Mandal was underscoring the propriety of the chosen site, thus drawing attention to the mass legitimacy the Federation had evidently earned by then. Certainly the fact that the conference earned the support of many among the surviving first generation of Namasudra political representatives is of consequence. These included Bhismadeb Das, Mohini Mohan Das, and Amulyadhan Ray, among others. The Federation seemed to have won the confidence of an older and more seasoned generation of Dalit politicians. Mohini Mohan Das, a senior leader who, after spending the majority of his career with the Congress, realized “in the adversity of the Scheduled Castes lay the prosperity of the caste Hindus,” and thus wrote a number of editorials in his journal Sadhak chastising those who were trying to ensure the conference’s failure. Apparently, several caste Hindu leaders had bribed some of their own (presumably the Mullick brothers) to foment opposition to the conference.115 113 114 115

Ibid. My subsequent exposition of his address draws on “Sabhapatir abhibhasan,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 173–84. Roy, A People in Distress, 211.

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Mandal located their movement and the timeliness of present conference within a global context of political turbulence characterized by the war, movements for self-determination, and closer to home, the anticolonial movement in India. As the transition of rule in India on allies’ victory in the war (an enthusiastically endorsed outcome) was imminent, the primary consideration for convening the conference was to “determine with the support of which policies Scheduled Castes’ political, economic and educational demands and rights would in all aspects be well-established and protected under India’s new constitution,” and to redress the “injustice” and “oppression” that had come their way throughout the ages.116 Referring to the tyranny of “Brahminical rule,” which subjected them to “inhuman oppression and injustice” and denied them of all the rights of man for time immemorial, Mandal called on his audience to remember their ancestors thus: Those who exhausted their bodies’ blood, spilled the sweat of their brow to their feet, burned by the sun, drenched by the rain, bitten by leeches cleared the forests and jungles turning uncultivated lands into watered, fruitful, plentiful ones; those who supplied milk, ghee, etc., by tending cows; those who despite being fevered in the extreme severity of winter in the dark of night procured fish from the high and agitated rivers and seas, ponds and canals for Bengalis’ dainty cuisine; those who sacrificing the attachment of their own lives, being under enemies’ grasp, protected the wealth, honor and lives of landholders and capitalists, they were defeated by the untouchable and inhuman state in this country – eternally disgraced, persecuted, neglected, this completely deprived group received disgust, malice, insult and persecution from the upper-castes of this country.117

Mandal identified the country’s true producers, the labor that produced Bengal as it were, with Dalits, and the exploiters of this labor with the upper-castes, and related the theft of their labor to the exploitative nature of untouchability. This was his thinking on the labor theory of value in conjunction with his social world. Mandal’s identification of Dalits as the foremost producers of Bengal and untouchability as a consequent theft suggested a conceptualization of caste as deeply rooted in the realities of Bengal’s production. Addressing the leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and Brahman Sabha, he recited from Rabindranath Tagore’s poem “Abamanona,” or “insult,” which the poet composed intending for the upper-castes to introspect on their denial of humanity to those they regarded as untouchable. Mandal’s was a discourse that pleaded for the dignity of labor through its marriage of Tagore’s poesy and Marxist concepts.

116

Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 173–84.

117

Ibid.

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Echoing Ambedkar’s thesis, Mandal argued that it was only through political means that their condition might improve, as with his efforts to wrest political rights for Dalits at the Round Table Conferences of 1931–1932. He explained how Ambedkar realized it would not be possible to attain their due rights without their own political party. The Nagpur conference of July 1942 achieved this objective, and it was a matter of “great happiness” that the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation had expanded in various districts, municipalities, thanas, and unions in the province. An “unprecedented awakening, enthusiasm, and impetus” had arrived among the Dalits of the province. Mandal proceeded to narrate the demands of the Federation as listed above in the conference poster and resolutions. These demands, he claimed, were imperative for their “independent political existence” and vice versa. In turning to address why the Mahasabha was so fiercely resistant to their self-determination, he laid bare the caste anxieties on which Hindu communalism rested: Friends, it is upon the admission of this independent existence that the jealousy of one class of caste Hindus and the Hindu Mahasabha has arisen. They cannot at all tolerate that communities untouchable and oppressed for ages will realize their educational, economic, political equality in all matters. That is why the Hindu Mahasabha is creating impediments in all of the Federation’s attempts to unite the Scheduled Castes. Those who for all these days have exerted inhumane persecution on this community in the name of religion and the shastras’ precedent, it is they who today are becoming excessively agitated at this community’s awakening.118

Mandal elaborated on the Mahasabha’s recent efforts to stall the success of the Gopalganj conference, which included a well-orchestrated misinformation campaign in the “so-called nationalist” newspapers: “the Hindu Mahasabha has understood that it will not be possible to resist the Scheduled Castes’ just demands if they all unite under the banner of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation. If their independent free existence is admitted there will be no opportunity to keep them downtrodden . . . It will be impossible for the thirty lakhs of Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas to enjoy all the conveniences and opportunities of two-and-a-half crore Hindus.” He continued: “Thus, by deception, by force, by artifice, by whatever means, the Hindu Sabha’s singular intent is to keep the Scheduled Caste multitudes separated.”119 Mandal identified here a very specific issue, as with his early conversations with Governor Casey: the upper-caste Hindu incomprehension of Dalit political autonomy. Digressing into a capsular Phule-esque 118

Ibid.

119

Ibid.

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historical account about the upper-castes, Mandal depicted them as robbers and thieves who, upon entering the country, defrauded its original inhabitants by intellectual and economic force and consigned them to their untouchable status. The Dalits now no longer labored under “centuries’ reproach,” and wanted to “survive with respect as humans.”120 Invoking their labor as the source of all capital, he reminded that it was from their productive capacity that the country’s wealth and riches issued; the country was their land of birth – “this country is theirs.” Mandal conjured the notion of being expropriated in one’s own home, an uncanny echo of Ambedkar’s exclamation to Gandhi that he had no homeland. In a fit of rhetorical bluster, he enjoined the upper-castes to leave the country – were they to remain, they would have to do so on equal terms. There was still time, he assured, for them to desist from inciting divisiveness and confusion among Dalits and their leaders. Mandal stressed that his audience should remember the Hindu Mahasabha’s profound resistance to their welfare. Like the Congress, it was an organization of wealthy caste Hindus that had “no right to represent all the Hindus of Bengal or India.”121 Congress’ major leaders had up until the present done nothing at all for the political, economic, and social welfare of the eight crore Scheduled Castes of India. Its insultingly named Harijan movement and associated fund was staffed with caste Hindu members.122 The freedom they wished to attain would be of no benefit to them. With respect to the ongoing constitutional unfolding, he reminded the British government that simply reaching compromise between the Congress and the League alone would not solve India’s problems. They remained hopeful, however, that the League was gradually becoming democratic with the gradual erosion of the Nawabs’ influence over that organization, and in doing so would along with the Federation struggle for the country’s “extorted classes.” Muslims and Dalits were similarly backward, a fact understood by Muslim representatives as well. Revealingly, he noted how Muslim and Dalit members of the Floud Commission opined in favor of abolishing the practice of zamindari, but the representatives of “capitalist Hindus and zamindars” had intensely objected. Mandal then spoke on a matter he deemed of greatest importance: the “indescribable” and “cruel injustice” of the 1941 census.123 Because of the Mahasabha’s efforts to deflate the number of Dalits in the province, although the Muslim and Hindu population had increased over the previous decade, the Scheduled Caste population had 120 122 123

Ibid. 121 Ibid. Note that Ambedkar developed identical objections to Gandhi’s program of “harijan” uplift. See the discussion about the 1941 census in the previous chapter.

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not. Mandal therefore appealed for redress: either their population would have to be increased relative to how much other communities had grown over the past decade, or they would have to be re-enumerated. In closing, he effusively thanked the students and youth workers of the Scheduled Castes Federation, the “repository of our hopes.” It was by their efforts that the conference was organized. Exhorting the audience to establish the Federation in every administrative division, he informed them of the party’s weekly mouthpieces, Jagaran (in Bangla) and People’s Herald (in English), the vehicles for the spread of their political ideology. They must always remember, he impressed, that “we want prosperity, we want freedom.”124 Whatever they had been in the past, they would tolerate no more. “We have strength in our arms, courage in our hearts, we create the country’s wealth and property, in what are we inferior? Because of our lack of knowledge, the absence of our rights in the country, a few selfish rulers of society have kept us small by through artifice and deception. We will no longer observe those laws which create differences and distinctions amongst humans.”125 Dalits needed to remove their divisions and establish a greater community. The community’s service, provision of welfare, and self-sacrifice for their freedom struggle would be “Scheduled Castes’ dharma.”126 Mandal’s speech and the circumstances surrounding Gopalganj present historians the opportunity to behold both the great potential of, and constraints on, autonomous Dalit political power as articulated by him and the Federation. For their vision was not merely one among several competing views, but had seemingly acquired an indisputable degree of moral authority such that the Namasudra community mobilized its resources in evidently unprecedented fashion to enable such a gathering in honor of their most distinguished political representative. Unlike with the Mahasabha’s efforts in Lora, Mandal and the Federation sought to offer Dalits an independent voice, a project that evidently found enthusiastic endorsement among politically assertive Dalits the province over, and condemnation from those pleading the cause of Hindu unity. This was of no small significance given the fray of political sentiments and anxieties into which they intervened. Ambedkar’s was thus an unfortunate, if ironically telling absence, given the welcome reception awaiting his arrival in Bengal.

124 125

“Sabhapatir abhibhasan,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, prathama khanda, 173–84. Ibid. 126 Ibid.

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Conclusion The political vision expressed by Mandal’s Federation in Gopalganj was the most coherent expression of Ambedkarite principles in Bengal: the struggle for a “separate political existence.” As their demands for political-economic and social justice assaulted every core aspect of the Hindu nationalist project, Congress and Mahasabha alike found the Federation’s critique deeply objectionable and inconvenient for their own efforts at consolidation. In their view, upper-caste Bengalis’ attachment to caste prejudice had been dissolving for some time, and their province, in any case, was the most liberal with respect to the strictures of untouchability. Within such a political-cultural milieu, the unmistakable if modest expansion of the Federation as an organization signified a collectively felt necessity for politics predicated on the specificity of Dalit demands despite, indeed, defined against, the varied forms of outreach undertaken by Congress and Mahasabha organizations. Dilip Menon has suggestively asked whether communalism is a deflection of the central issue of violence and inegalitarianism within Hindu society. He answers in the affirmative: “Why Communalism in India Is About Caste.”127 Similarly, scholars such as Badri Narayan and Ornit Shani have pointed to processes of papering over the fissures internal to Hindus in the interest of countering the Muslim other in other regional contexts.128 Late-colonial Bengal presents interesting parallels, in illustration of the constitutive relationship between caste and communalism: that “caste, and especially Untouchability, is the deep structure of secular and religious configurations of community and nation.”129 Bhadrolok Bengal’s response to Mandal would seem to bear out the observation. In conjunction with the foregoing, this chapter has suggested that the in some senses uniquely Mahasabhaite project of Hindu communal unity (in which the Congress was no less implicated and which slowly but surely moved to center stage in these years), had to be fabricated out of imagined solidarities, because there was actually very little prior historical experience with and memory of such relatively newly-concocted concerns. At the heart of efforts to marshal this collectivity, as at the ill-fated 127 128

129

Dilip M. Menon, The Blindness of Insight: Essays on Caste in Modern India (Pondicherry: Navayana, 2006), x. Ornit Shani, Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Badri Narayan, Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2009). Anupama Rao, “Ambedkar and the Politics of Minority,” in Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar, and Andrew Sartori (eds.), From the Colonial to Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 154.

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conference in Lora, lay the hollow and empty claim expressive of profound anxiety; thus, the imperative of falsifying the signatures of local Namasudra leaders in support of the conference, or the insistence on holding a conference near the site of recent Namasudra–Muslim agrarian violence to ratchet up public opinion against Muslims – indeed, the upper-caste aversion to the Federation, and worse still, to Dalit and Muslim unity. Coupled with the fact that even Mookerjee privately confessed the shortcoming that he had “failed to collect a band of enthusiastic workers” to commit to his vision while reflecting on the Mahasabha’s highly touted efforts at mobilization in 1945, Hindu unity seems to have rested on far shakier foundations than hitherto believed.130 Something of the pathology of those given to Mookerjee’s way of thinking comes across in the following scene from his reminiscences. Less than six months before the muscle of his Mahasabha, the Congress, and the League brought the city of Calcutta to its knees, he wrote as follows in his diary entry on the evening of 8 January 1946, a reflection on the meaning of life, and on his in particular: Life should be based on complete equality and unity. Men should not despise or shun each other on the basis of caste, creed or religion, or look down on each other because of differences in occupation. I have noticed the importance of the sweepers in our house. If they do not come even for a day, the whole house stinks. Even though they do us such a great service, we call them untouchables. I do not like anything unclean – be it objects or human beings. But if their habits are clean, I would not hesitate to fraternize with them.131

Let there be no doubt about the profound failure of intellect and moral vacuity in this deeply Gandhian resolution to the dialectics of untouchability, which informed the dusky musings of the preeminent ideologue of Hindu community in Bengal. The untouchable was good for instigating against the Muslim; but fraternity? That was contingent on the cleansing of habits integral to the very labor required for the upkeep of Mookerjee’s household. The capacity to perceive the contradiction was evidently unavailable to him. I do not suggest that those Dalits who identified with the Hindu Mahasabha and Congress in the acts of mass violence between Hindus and Muslims of the 1940s were somehow duped in any simplistic sense, or that the affective dimensions of the communal violence they both perpetrated and suffered were in any sense unreal. Yet, it would be equally amiss to ignore that tendencies toward Hindu consolidation were primarily propagated by upper-caste Hindus, who by their conduct put paid to their paeans to egalitarianism internal to the Hindu body130

Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, 98.

131

Ibid., 106.

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politic. From Mandal’s and the Federation’s vantage, participating in a Hindu violence against Muslims struck at the core of their dual project of Dalit political autonomy and Dalit–Muslim unity; it was a capitulation to an ideology that not only did not originate organically from among themselves, but was scripted by leaders fiercely inimical to their demands for inclusion and sociopolitical equality. Conversely, the project of Hindu nationalist unity and consolidation against Muslims necessarily entailed the whipping up of support among the Dalits, a community whom uppercaste leaders were only too happy to assimilate as Hindus, even if they were less enthusiastic in practice about the substantive content of their politics. Without ensuring a compliant Dalit leadership, the upper-caste Hindus of Bengal stood little chance of reviving and maintaining their withering dominance. In short, on the verge of Partition, the antinomy between the Federation’s aspiration to Dalit political autonomy and the hegemonic impulses of Hindu nationalism took remarkably clear expression. The subsequent chapter attends to what came of this sharp antagonism.

4

“No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated” The Scheduled Castes Federation and the Partition of Bengal, 1945–1947

How was it that Mandal’s Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, which by all accounts had done more to propagate the growing political assertiveness of Dalits than any other party, fared so poorly during the last elections of British colonial rule? Why did Dalit political representatives joined the Congress in record numbers, such that where the majority of their MLAs supported the Nazimuddin ministry as late as 1944, the exact reverse was true by the time the results of the elections were announced in 1946? How was it that the Federation was marginalized over the years immediately preceding Partition? These dramatic changes have been explained as a consequence of Dalit identification with the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s anti-Muslim exhortations in their bid to consolidate Hindu unity.1 Faced with the prospect of Muslim domination, it is argued that the vast majority preferred the rule of their own religious community’s brethren. No doubt there is ample evidence of their participation in communal violence and their receptivity to ideologies and practices of Hindu communal unity. It is indeed true that many among them supported the demand for Partition, and that the majority of Dalit members of the legislative assembly were elected with Congress support. Yet it is necessary to place within the same analytical field the varied efforts to subdue the Federation, the dubious means whereby the Congress secured the majority of Scheduled Caste MLAs, and the Federation’s deep-seated reservations about the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s majoritarianism. For alongside the familiar strategies of integration through persuasion, securing the allegiance of the Dalit leadership hinged critically, and with far-reaching consequences, on a range of fairly systematic coercions. 1

Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947 (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997).

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This chapter argues that the so-called integration of Dalits into mainstream Indian nationalism was born of the fact that the Congress not only exploited the electoral mechanisms under the Poona Pact to thwart the emergence of non-Congress Dalit candidates during the crucial 1946 elections, but also deployed electoral fraud, violence, and bribery to ensure the success of those they sponsored. Achieving the long-sought Hindu communal unity of these years entailed manufacturing the defeat of Dalit political autonomy by fundamentally coercive measures, and creating the semblance of representativeness in face of yawning contradictions. As Mukunda Behari Mullick remarked with apparent dismay in the legislative assembly in 1947 about the electoral results the previous year, their representatives had not been chosen by Dalits themselves, but by the Congress organization.2 This chapter elaborates these propositions by locating the Federation’s participation in the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day against the backdrop of the two parties’ recent strategic political alliance. It then turns to detailing the circumstances of the 1946 elections that resulted in the Congress winning the majority of reserved Dalit legislative seats, and follows with a documentation of Mandal’s attempts at securing Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly. The chapter subsequently narrates Mandal’s quite exceptional view of the Calcutta riots and examines his role in the Interim Government of India, before elucidating the significance of unity between Dalit and Muslim political parties at a time when this was nearly unthinkable. In closing, it assesses the fate of Mandal’s anti-Partition campaign. In so doing, this chapter touches on key moments in Mandal’s and the Federation’s trajectory through these final two years of British rule and thereby draws into focus the peculiar animus with which they contended on the eve of freedom’s dawn. I thus advance another view of Partition and the transfer of power by taking seriously the Federation’s critique of the Congress’ claim to represent the Scheduled Castes and, indeed, the very processes whereby the decision to divide Bengal were reached. From Mandal’s vantage, freedom from colonial rule in Bengal was as much about a forced nationalist resolution of the caste question as it undoubtedly was about the politics of religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. The artificial erasure of caste difference was thereby constitutive of the seemingly united Hindu 2

Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 26 February 1947, 461. Mullick witnessed and played a key role in the world of Dalit politics over the previous two decades, and served as the most senior Scheduled Caste minister in the first ministry of Bengal under Fazlul Huq. In addition, he contested elections as an independent candidate in 1946. His insight on the representative character of the Scheduled Caste MLAs after those elections cannot easily be dismissed.

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demand for the partitioning of Bengal and formed one of the deep premises to the cultural logic of Hindu nationalism. To a considerable degree, the outcome of the 1946 elections determined the means whereby the Dalit support for the division was ascertained.

Anti-Poona Pact Day and the Federation–League Alliance The events of mid-August 1946, while typically understood to confirm Hindu apprehensions about Muslim domination and therefore the justification behind Partition, have yet to be adequately situated in the context of the several years of Dalit and Muslim political alliance preceding them. Although these years often explain the growing apprehensions among the upper-caste Hindu intelligentsia, they were also the only time in the history of Bengal that political power in Calcutta was wielded by the representatives of the socioeconomically most disadvantaged communities. Mandal was at the center of this novel political experiment. Following the dissolution of the Nazimuddin ministry in 1945, he was thereafter chosen as minister in charge of the Judicial and Legislative Department and Works and Buildings in Suhrawardy’s. The events that transpired in August of 1946, then, as a result of the call for the Day of Direct Action, must be placed in the context of the cooperation that had developed between the Scheduled Castes Federation and the Muslim League over the previous three years.3 The Star of India of 13 August 1946 thus featured a poster calling for “Representatives of minorities, suppressed and oppressed people and anti-Fascist parties who have been unjustly bypassed by the British government and who are ready to make common cause with the League in its fight for the equal freedom of the Muslims, the Hindus, the Scheduled Castes, the Adibasis, the tribals, the Christians other peoples are welcome at the meeting.”4 Mandal and the Scheduled Castes Federation had responded in kind. Although insufficiently acknowledged, 15 August 1946 coincided with 3

4

The Day of Direct Action was a Muslim League protest of the Cabinet Mission proposals. The Mission was mandated with overseeing the transfer of power. “Muslims through the country were ‘to suspend all business . . . and to observe the complete hartal.’ Public meetings were to be held on that day to explain the League’s rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan and express the determination of Indian Muslims to ‘vindicate’ their honour, to end ‘British slavery’ and fight the ‘contemplated caste-Hindu domination.’” Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 165. Star of India, 13 August 1946. There is a longer history of solidarity between leaders of the Dalit and Muslim communities that has been insufficiently treated. We seem, as it were, to be only able to comprehend the League’s concerns for Dalits as cynical and instrumental.

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the Federation’s Anti-Poona Pact Day, part of a series of protest activities coordinated across British India. A day earlier, the secretary of the Calcutta District Muslim League issued a statement urging Muslims to support the Federation’s protest.5 A procession of Federation and League activists paraded through several streets in central Calcutta and converged at the designated Ochterlony monument. Mandal presided over a meeting where speakers condemned both the Cabinet Mission and the Congress for “by passing the legitimate demands of the Scheduled Castes and called upon the audience to be prepared for any future struggle under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar and Mr. Jinnah.”6 He informed that he had received a letter from the secretary of the Muslim League supporting them and added that they must take joint action to “force the Congress and the Government to concede their demands.”7 The Federation had also organized protest rallies in the moffusil towns where its party had found a base over the previous two years. On 15 August 1946, “about 400 persons of the Scheduled Caste community of Gopalganj paraded through the main thoroughfares of the town under the leadership of Kiran Chandra Biswas shouting, ‘Down with British Imperialism,’ ‘Down with the zamindari system,’ and ‘We want separate electorates.’” Speakers at the subsequent meeting urged the audience to have faith in the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar and declared that if their demands were not considered by the British Government and their interests overlooked when the interim government was formed, they would be prepared to lay down their lives in the interests of their community. In Khulna, about 50 Scheduled Caste students processed through the town on the same day, shouting “Down with Poona Pact,” “No compromise with the enemy” and other slogans. Speakers at a subsequent meeting urged members of the Scheduled Caste community not to cooperate with the interim government as their interests had been overlooked by the Cabinet Mission. They appealed to the audience to unite under the flag of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, and declared that Jagjivan Ram was not the chosen representative of the 50 million Scheduled Caste Hindus in the country. They passed resolutions condemning the proposals of the Cabinet Mission and demanding separate electorates for Scheduled Castes. About 300 supporters of the Federation paraded through the main thoroughfares of Jessore town the same day under the leadership of Amulyadhan 5 6 7

Star of India, 14 August 1946. Copy of S.B.D.N. dt. 21.8.46., File No. 191/46: Scheduled Castes Federation (renamed the Republican Party). Ibid.

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Ray. This procession was followed by a meeting held at the B. Sarkar Hall, under the chairmanship of Rasik Lal Biswas, who had defected several years prior from the Congress. Speakers explained that the Scheduled Castes had been duped by the upper-caste Hindus. They criticized the proposals of the Cabinet Mission and declared that the ministers had not looked to the interests of the minorities. They urged members of the Scheduled Castes to be ready to fight against the Congress and the British in alliance with the Muslims, in order to wrest their legitimate demands from them. Members of the Muslim League who were present delivered similar speeches. Two weeks later, a “large procession organised by the Scheduled Castes Federation and consisting of about 1,500 persons moved through the main thoroughfares of Kanchrapara town shouting Dr. Ambedkar Zindabad and Benia Gandhi Murdhabad.” In Midnapore, about 200 persons attended a meeting organized by the local branch of the Scheduled Castes Federation. M.B. Patel, secretary of the District Scheduled Castes Federation, spoke on the growth and development of the organization and the difficulties that had been overcome by Dr. Ambedkar in the interests of the uplift of the Scheduled Castes. All these events evidence, without a doubt, the presence of political will and consciousness entirely opposed to upper-caste and Congress dominance in the political life of Bengal. At stake was the Federation’s struggle for Dalit political autonomy: the demand for recognition as a distinct political community to be represented by leaders selected by Dalits alone. Mandal once described the desire as the chance to “stand up on our own feet” and not be dependent on either the Congress or the League. Similar protests occurred elsewhere in India. They suggest the considerable pool of support, documented in the previous chapter, on which the Federation drew in rural Bengal. The Federation’s mobilizations underscored their sense of betrayal at being excluded from deliberations at the Cabinet Mission about the transfer of power from the British government to an Indian leadership. The rationale behind their exclusion was the party’s poor performance during the elections, as well as the fact that the Congress had been able to claim by far the largest number of Scheduled Caste seats. Yet closer inspection of how the 1946 elections occurred in Bengal suggests that the results were less an accurate reflection of the full range of the Dalit electorate’s political preferences than the consequence of the Congress’ fairly considered violation of quite basic electoral norms and regulations.

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“Caste Hindu Money Is Expected to Influence the Scheduled Caste Vote . . .” The fact that the Congress swept the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes by winning 24 out of 30, a stunning response to Ambedkar’s and Mandal’s claim that Congress did not represent their communities, has been freighted with tremendous importance in recent historiography: the “integration” of the Scheduled Castes into mainstream nationalism;8 the crisis of the Federation brought about by its own inadequacies;9 or the “extraordinary success of propaganda about a Hindu ‘community.’”10 The results have been taken as indices of “at least the middle-class mind among these communities” and their “popular will.”11 Ramnarayan S. Rawat has justifiably called such evaluations into question and demonstrated the considerable weight to the Federation’s claim that the electoral arrangements under the Poona Pact were heavily tilted in favor of the Congress’ candidates in the United Provinces, and has argued that to ignore this is to perpetuate a “caste-Hindu” point of view in the writing of history.12 The evidence from Bengal would seem to corroborate Rawat’s stance.13 However, it is possible to push further, and more assiduously detail the circumstances and consequences of this crucial election. This is necessary not only because the results of the election conditioned understanding of late-colonial representativeness, but as we shall see, structured the very basis for the legislative assembly’s vote about Partition. Other indices of Dalit political consciousness should include the fact that of the 121 candidates who stood for the primary elections in Bengal, 8

9 10 11 12

13

While it is true that Bandyopadhyay has gradually modified his argument about integration by initially qualifying it with “inclusion” and later proposing the notion of “strategic alliances” (as in the postscript to the second edition of his book Caste, Protest and Identity), he nonetheless states in the new preface of the same volume that his main conclusions have not changed. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945–1947,” Modern Asian Studies 34 (2000). Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 230. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “From Alienation to Integration: Changes In The Politics of Caste in Bengal, 1937–47,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 31 (1994): 373. Ramnarayan Rawat, “Making Claims for Power: A New Agenda for Dalit Politics in Uttar Pradesh, 1946–1948,” in Suvir Kaul (ed.), The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2001); Ramnarayan Rawat, “Partition Politics and Acchut Identity: A Study of the Scheduled Castes Federation and Dalit Politics in UP, 1946–48,” Modern Asian Studies 37 (2003). It seems clear from the following that government anticipated and appreciated this eventuality with some sympathy. That said, they did not concede that the Federation, as opposed to the Congress, represented the Dalits on account of it having contested a limited number of seats and the fact that Congress had “the largest proportion of Scheduled Caste votes.” See “Confidential – Brief for Dr. Ambedkar’s Visit to the U. K. 1946,” IOR/L/PJ/10/50.

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only 29 were from the Congress. Or that of the 75 candidates who successfully emerged from the primary to the general elections to contest the 30 seats reserved for Scheduled Caste MLAs, only 25 were Congress, whereas Independents (the largest category) numbered 37. What this suggests is the presence of a far greater diversity of political opinion than the final results seem to indicate. In Jessore, for instance, a Federation candidate who won the second-highest number of votes in the primary elections failed to win either of the two seats reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates in the general election; both went to the Congress. In Faridpur, neither of the Federation’s candidates who won the second and third highest number of votes in the primary elections won either of the two reserved seats in the general election. The joint electorate was clearly disadvantageous to them. Such trends raise important questions about the circumstances under which 24 of these 25 Congress candidates emerged victorious in the general election, and whether the results of the general election ought to be read as a reliable indication of Dalits’ political preferences.14 Such being the case, the Congress’ hegemony over the Dalits of Bengal might further be qualified on account of the fact that four of their leaders subsequently defected to Mandal’s Federation after the elections, a development that will be subsequently addressed; or that the property and education qualifications in force excluded the vast majority of the Dalit population from the franchise; or, the sheer difficulty of being able to procure the requisite fees to run campaigns in both primary and general elections. This was an “election” in which the number of upper-caste Hindu voters vastly outnumbered those of the Scheduled Castes in a joint electorate that would choose the Scheduled Caste candidates who were successful at the primary election. It is necessary to bear in mind that, as with the elections a decade ago, no more than about 10 percent of the Dalit population was eligible to exercise a choice. But there is more. Mandal was one of but two Federation candidates all over India to have won in the election – even Ambedkar did not prove victorious – from among the 151 seats in the various provincial assemblies reserved for the Scheduled Castes. It is undoubtedly true that the Congress’ vastly more developed organizational machinery and financial clout dwarfed the Federation’s, yet this only makes the depth of their antiFederation sentiment all the more instructive. Here is Mandal, writing to 14

The corresponding figures for the totals of all provinces where primary elections were held are as follows: of a total of 505 candidates in the primary elections, 153 were Congress; of a total of 383 candidates sent to the general elections, 142 were Congress. Return Showing the Results of Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures in 1945–46 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1948).

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the Governor of Bengal about the 1946 election. An extensive quotation is necessary: Congressmen prevented Scheduled Caste voters from voting and attending many polling stations by force and intimidation. Caste Hindu zaminders, talukders, mahajans and school teachers threatened and stopped Scheduled Caste voters from voting. Polling stations wrongly selected at corner and caste Hindu areas causing inconvenience to Scheduled Caste voters and giving undue privilege to Congressmen. Promulgation of Section 144 was utilised by educated and clever caste Hindu Congressmen to threaten illiterate Scheduled Caste voters with fear of imprisonment for attending polling stations. Caste [H]indu presiding and polling officers hobnobbed with caste Hindu Congressmen at all centres and encourage proxy and false personation by turning deaf ear to and disregarding objections raised by many polling agents at many polling stations. More than 50% caste Hindu votes polled for the Congress candidate was proxy votes. At many polling centres, Caste Hindu Presiding and Polling Officers snatched ballot papers from Scheduled Caste male and female voters in spite of protest and put in the Congress Candidate’s box. They instructed and persuaded many voters to vote for the Congress Candidate. Elections were stopped before due time for which many voters could not cast their votes. At some polling stations where the number of Scheduled Caste voters was very large, the Caste Hindu Presiding Officers opened polling booths much later than the due time and harassed my voters by making undue delay in issuing ballot papers for which my voters had to wait till late at night and many of them could not record their votes. Many Scheduled Caste voters were refused ballot papers on frivolous grounds. Congressmen gave bribe to voters of different communities. In some cases, they delivered lectures showing pictures in which they depicted me as a man of very immoral character and narrated many false stories to prove me to be a man of vicious character which adversely prejudiced my voters and materially affected my election. All these facts and many others materially affected the whole election. Praying for kind orders re-election.15

In the absence of detailed voter lists, it is difficult to calculate the precise effect of these astounding allegations Mandal leveled at the Congress. What makes such activities all the more revealing are the stringent financial circumstances under which the Federation operated. Mandal, who along with significant support from the large pool of well-wishers from among the Namasudra and wider Dalit community funded the election campaigns, could only afford to put up eight candidates for election.16 Due to campaigning for his own election and the constraints of time and 15

16

Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 21–22. Masayuki Usuda has written that “there seems to have been a considerable degree of obstruction arising during the campaign.” Masayuki Usuda, “Pushed Towards the Partition: Jogendranath Mandal and the Constrained Namasudra Movement,” in Hiroyuki Kotani (ed.), Caste System, Untouchability and the Depressed (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 252. Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 123.

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money, Mandal was unable to canvas for the remaining Federation candidates in their own constituencies leading, in his view, to their defeat. The Congress was nonetheless keen to secure his failure. As Mandal recalled of the moment: “No matter how, Jogendranath had to be defeated.”17 What he represented had become absolutely objectionable. It is the coincidence of this imperative – “had to be defeated” – with Partition and the transfer of power that requires emphasis and elaboration. Mandal explicitly recollected the following transgressions in connection with the 1946 election in the northern Bakarganj general constituency, one of the two elections in which he was a candidate (and the same constituency from where he had initially been elected in 1936 amid unprecedented circumstance) in his autobiography: gazetted officers took it upon themselves to sign several thousand election ballots in favor of the Congress candidate and added these to the totals at the election office late at night, well past the time the polling was meant to have ended. Secondly, the Congress put up one Manoranjan Gupta, the only candidate who could possibly carry the confidence of the various political outfits in northern Bakarganj at the time (despite his being imprisoned in Meerut jail) in their bid to outdo Mandal. He was informed that thousands of voters had cast their ballots under dubious pretexts. Many women voters had been allowed to cast ballots not only for themselves, but for several of their female relatives as well. The presiding officers, not wishing to instigate disaffection, did not prevent this from occurring.18 Mandal nevertheless eventually won from a reserved seat in the south Bakarganj constituency, the very heartland of Namasudra political clout. This part of the district encompassed the Pirojpur and Patuakhali municipalities, areas from which the first stirrings of Namasudra political activity emerged. Reaching back into this history, he credited the voters of that constituency for his own historic election in 1946; historic, as will soon be elaborated, because of Mandal’s absolutely critical and largely unacknowledged role in ensuring Ambedkar’s election to the constituent 17 18

Ibid., 126. Ibid., 126–27. It is possible that these infringements were what Governor Burrows had in mind when he conceded to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (in contrast to the thrust of his report, which sought to convince his superior of the “remarkably little trouble” in Bengal) that there were in fact cases of Government officials’ partiality toward a particular party. Letter from F.J. Burrows to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 5 April 1946, IOR/L/PO/2/9(ii). These were electoral practices that bore uncanny precedent to the “management” of voting booths ably described by Jeffrey Witsoe in his study of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Bihar in his Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).

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assembly.19 He had been approached by several prominent Namasudra social welfare workers of Pirojpur to seek election from south Bakarganj, and it was through their and various students’ organizational efforts that Mandal’s campaign succeeded. Indeed, his very candidacy emerged as a product of considerable debate among the Namasudras of southern Barisal about which leader of several, including the incumbent Upendranath Edbar, was the surest claimant to the mantle of legislative representativeness. Mandal had to negotiate far greater obstacles to his reelection to the assembly, as the Congress had apparently launched a smear campaign against him in northern Barisal. He devoted his time to southern Barisal, and the district Congress activists appeared to make the most of his absence. The basis of his candidacy was called into question given that his residence was in north Barisal and an election petition was filed against him, which the deputy magistrate rejected. On returning to north Barisal after an absence of several days, Mandal recollected a student leader, one Surendranath Sikdar, bursting into tears and narrating the following to him: Sir, taking advantage of your absence, Congress has spoiled the entire field for you. The zamindars and talukdars of this area, who never set foot in the prajas’ homes, are canvassing at the prajas’ homes, so much so that some are staying the night in the cowsheds. Many caste-Hindu vakils, moktars and doctors are wandering the Namasudra villages canvassing against you. The caste-Hindu male and female students of the colleges are going round the homes of Namasudra leaders and are spending the night in some of these homes. Besides this, they are evenly distributing money. Please consider what you will do now. After today and tonight the vote collection will begin.20

19

20

There is considerable misinformation about this election. Christophe Jaffrelot writes that in 1946, Ambedkar “had contested elections to join this body, not in Bombay, where Congress was the ruling party, but in Bengal, where he was elected after winning the support of the Muslim League.” Christophe Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 100. Another instance of this misattribution of credit to the Muslim League, is Aditya Nigam’s in a blog posting: “Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly as independent member from Bengal with Muslim League support.” This emphatic assertion comes in the context of a rebuttal of Sudipta Kaviraj’s similarly puzzling claim that Ambedkar “was critically reliant on Congress support and Nehru’s dominance inside the Congress. A gathering impulse of hagiographic exaggeration of Ambedkar’s singlehanded impact on Indian society through its constitution does serious damage to an unexcited assessment of causes and consequences in political history.” Nigam, “Reflections on Sudipta Kaviraj’s ‘Marxism in Translation,’” http://criticalencounters .wordpress.com/2011/03/02/reflections-on-sudipta-kaviraj-marxism/ accessed 15 May 2011. Italic emphasis is mine. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 138.

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Despite the forethought that the Congress appeared to have given to “spoil the field,” Mandal was elected from South Barisal, again, as one of but two Federation candidates all over India. Even Ambedkar could not prevail. The victory therefore catapulted Mandal into a position of unexpected seniority within the Federation itself. Mandal’s election in 1946 was all the more exceptional if considered in light of contemporary correspondence between the governor of Bengal and the viceroy that strongly suggested the charge of bribery, a corroboration of Sikdar’s reference above to the pecuniary influences the Congress deployed, as well as Mandal’s own account. In one of his reports assessing the probable outcomes of the 1946 election, Governor Frederick Burrows wrote: “The Hindus will be a solid party of probably not less than 90 and not more than 96 – according to the numbers of Scheduled Caste seats captured by the Congress. There are 30 Scheduled Caste seats of which probably at least 24 will go to the Congress.”21 How would Burrows have known that there would be such a dramatic swing in the number of Scheduled Caste seats that Congress would clinch and that too with such precision? Especially given that he wrote fairly early in the year, and the elections had not as yet occurred? A prior report sheds light on the matter, the significance of which cannot be underestimated. Written on 5 November 1945, Burrows speculated to Wavell on the outcome as follows: “It is rash to attempt to forecast the result of the elections, but the present outlook is that, in the General Constituencies and Muslim Constituencies, the Congress and Muslim League respectively will come out in considerably greater strength than at present – and that, failing agreement between Muslim League and Congress, we shall see a Muslim League Ministry with probably no Caste Hindu support and probably little Scheduled Caste support (Caste Hindu money is likely to influence the Scheduled Caste vote and elected members) . . .”22 Consider this candid turn of phrase: “Caste Hindu money is likely to influence the Scheduled Caste vote and elected members.” Burrows’ casual bracketing of the probable monetary influence to be exerted in determining the outcome of the 1946 elections is of obvious relevance to the line of argument pursued here. His frank admission indicates that the electoral results were almost certainly conditioned by such premeditated attempts by the Congress of distinctly dubious legality to preconfigure the expression of Dalit political preferences.23 These 21 22 23

Governor’s Report, 7 January 1946, IOR/L/PJ/5/152. Governor’s Report, 5 November 1945, IOR/L/PJ/5/152. My emphases. Is it, for instance, mere coincidence that a considerable number of the candidates who did eventually win with Congress support were relatively unknown figures in legislative politics?

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“No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”

electoral results were hardly the outcome of the un-induced and organic gravitation of Dalit leaders and voters toward the Congress. Consider as well the Federation’s memorandum to the Cabinet Mission, which argued that the Federation had been routed in the election because the joint electorates in which seats had been reserved for the Scheduled Castes have, “by reason of enormous disparity in the voting strength of the Scheduled Castes and the Caste Hindus, become rotten boroughs from the point of view of the Scheduled Castes and pocket boroughs from the point of view of the Caste Hindus, who have been able to put up Scheduled Caste candidates, wishing to be their tools and get them elected in the joint electorates exclusively with Caste Hindu votes.”24 The system of joint electorates had made a “mockery” of the Scheduled Castes’ right to send their truest representatives to the legislatures, and as such, was a “fraud” upon them. The memorandum included an appendix analyzing the relative strength of the caste Hindu voters and Scheduled Caste voters in constituencies in which seats were reserved for Scheduled Castes in the Bombay provinces; the appendix showed “how the Scheduled Caste voters are vastly out numbered by the Caste Hindu voters and how impossible it is for the Scheduled Caste voters to win the reserved seat by dint of their voting strength, even if everyone of the Scheduled Caste voter were to come to poll. Exactly the same sort of situation exist [sic] in other provinces.”25 The Federation’s point was that by implicitly enabling Hindu majoritarianism, the electoral provisions under the Poona Pact served to ensure the election of candidates palatable to the caste Hindu electorate and were thus unreliable as a measure of ascertaining the independent political preferences of Dalit themselves. There was certainly some justice to the claim. As to the issue of representativeness however, by the Congress’ own admission not a single one of its Scheduled Caste candidates who won in the 1946 elections was included in the list of 72 representatives from Bengal to the All India Congress Committee that year.26 Neither was a single one of them president or secretary of any of the district Congress committees throughout the province;27 rather, these were positions occupied almost exclusively by upper-caste leaders. Their conspicuous absence from any position of authority within the Bengal Congress’ party structure indicates how integral they were in actuality to that organization. 24 25

26

All India Scheduled Castes Federation, Memorandum to the Cabinet Mission, 5 April 1946. Ibid., 16. Indeed, the president of the Muslim League in Great Britain, Ali Muhammad Khan, delineated a nearly identical interpretation of the 1946 elections as they concerned the Scheduled Castes in his “Open Letter to the British Government on Boundary Demarcations Between Pakistan and Hindustan,” IOR/L/PJ/7/12465. Congress Handbook, 1946 (Delhi: Swaraj Bhavan, 1946), 4–6. 27 Ibid., 49–54.

“… in Spite of Violent Congress Opposition.”

149

Indeed, although there were serious differences between Dalit leaders in the Congress and those in the Federation, representatives of the Depressed Classes League (the Congress body) were also disappointed with the absence of their spokesmen from the Cabinet Mission’s deliberations. These were precisely the concerns motivating the Scheduled Castes Federation’s support and joining in the Muslim League’s protest. In “An Open Letter to the British Cabinet Mission and the Leaders of the Country,” which Dharam Prakash, founder of the All India Depressed Classes League, sent to Surendra Mohan Ghosh, president of the Provincial Congress Committee in Calcutta, he opined that the parity granted to Hindus and Muslims came at the cost of their representation. Although he scolded the Federation for “cursing their twice-born Hindu brethren in the hour of elections, hurling abuses at them, picking up a quarrel with the Congress, burning down Gandhiji caps, and throwing mud on revered Gandhiji,” his objections were nearly identical to those expressed by Mandal and Ambedkar. Having noted how Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan agreed that the Cabinet Mission’s announcement was the “best form of what the British Government could do in the present circumstances,” Prakash concluded that they “do not doubt their honesty and good intentions.” Nonetheless, he continued, “we cannot conceal the unpleasant fact that, perhaps, the missions have overlooked the claims of the Depressed Classes by an error of their judgment and that that wrong can still be rectified by the amendment of the proposals. We have sanguine hope and complete faith that the important and serious problem of the Depressed Classes shall receive due consideration at the hands of the British Cabinet Mission and leaders of the country, who, will give evidence of their sense of justice, fair play, devotion to duty and magnanimity.”28 Such hopes, as history proved, were misplaced. The Cabinet Mission and the Congress, a potent example of what Rupa Viswanath terms the “caste-state nexus,” were only too content to bypass the “problem of the Depressed Classes.” “. . . in Spite of Violent Congress Opposition.” Given the exceptional constraints recounted above, Mandal’s attribution of his election to a sequence of events culminating in the existence of the constitutional provisions for the Dalits of postcolonial India is all the more notable. Significantly, he looked on the very possibility for Ambedkar’s work for the Indian constitution as contingent on his 28

Dharam Prakash, “An Open Letter to the British Cabinet Mission and the Leaders of the Country,” File No. 581/46: All India Depressed Classes League.

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“No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”

election: “But Jogendranath’s achievement lay at the root of this, and that Jogendranath was elected by the Namasudras of Pirojpur and Patuakhali municipality. Thus they are the recipients of the gratitude of the Scheduled Castes of all of Bharat.”29 Leaving aside the question of whether this was a fair assessment, especially given Congress’ supposed cooptation of Ambedkar following on the transfer of power, it is undeniable that, irrespective of the Congress’ subsequent change in attitude, within the historical present Ambedkar would not have been initially elected to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal were it not for Mandal’s activism amid utterly hostile circumstances. Certainly, other members of the Federation concurred, as in J.D. Manikpuri’s introduction of him as president-elect of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation’s student conference held in Nagpur in late December, 1946: “. . . Over and above all, he has rendered greatest service to the Scheduled Castes community in India by securing Dr. Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly in spite of violent Congress opposition.”30 Ambedkar arrived in Calcutta following the announcement of the elections to the Constituent Assembly.31 He apparently hoped to gain the support of the European MLAs in Bengal as he saw no prospects of his election from his base in Bombay, but upon hearing that they would not be participating, returned to Delhi disappointed. He had complained to Mandal that there was no chance of his being elected from any province except Bengal and even that did not come to fruition.32 It was then, Mandal recalled, that he took it upon himself to ensure Ambedkar’s election.33 In response, the Bengal Congress launched its own efforts to prevent this possibility. Kiran Sankar Roy, one of the most senior leaders of the Bengal Congress, was allegedly requested to stay away from the All-India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay in order to undermine the Federation’s leader.34 Various student activists of the Federation, whom Mandal directed to elicit support from among members of the legislative assembly, undertook the actual work of this campaign. M.B. Mullick and P.R. Thakur, two of the most prominent Dalit leaders in Bengal, also decided to contest the election, making Mandal’s efforts all the more challenging. 29 30 31 32

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 129. All India Scheduled Castes Students’ Federation, Report of the Second Session held at Nagpur on 25, 26 and 27 December 1946 (Nagpur: Scheduled Castes Federation, 1947), 5. “Scheduled Castes and Cabinet Mission: Dr. Ambedkar’s Criticism,” Times of India, 1 July 1946, 6. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 145. 33 Ibid., 144–53. 34 Ibid., 146.

“… in Spite of Violent Congress Opposition.”

151

Mandal personally secured the agreement of the independent Rajbangshi MLA from Rangpur, Narendra Narayan Roy. The Congress had apparently prevented one of their MLAs from Tangail, Gayanath Biswas, from meeting with Mandal, evidently to stymie his campaign. It is thus absolutely clear that at this stage the much-celebrated appropriation of Ambedkar by the Congress had not occurred, indeed, quite the opposite; the Congress remained intent on ensuring his exclusion. Mandal described the Congress’ and Hindu Mahasabha’s vituperation toward him for trying to get Ambedkar elected at the Federation’s fourth annual provincial meeting in late 1946 as follows: You have seen to what extent the Congress, Hindu Mahasabha, all the caste Hindu organizations have tried to prevent the election of Dr. Ambedkar to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal. They have circulated vile falsehoods and much propaganda against us. I have had to listen to various types of heart-rending abuse. I have been given thousands of rupees – this type of untruth has been publicised. I have digested so much poison that everything from my nails to the hair on my head ought to have turned blue.35

Although Gayanath Biswas was initially elected with the Congress, he was willing to support Ambedkar and sent word of his intentions to Mandal from his concealed location. The evening before the election at the Assembly, Mandal received a telephone call from Khwaja Shahabuddin confirming the former’s prediction during a conversation earlier in the day that once M.B. Mullick heard that Gayanath Biswas and Dwarika Nath Baruri would support Ambedkar, he would also vote accordingly. He also received the commitments of Congress Dalit MLAs from Jessore and Pabna, Bholanath Biswas and Haran Chandra Barman, respectively. A crowd of Federation activists gathered outside the Assembly to receive news of the elections results on the day they were announced, and were evidently involved in a scuffle.36 Ambedkar’s election was celebrated at a victory procession taken out throughout Calcutta the following day and subsequent festivities Mandal hosted at his own home. In a congratulatory letter to Ambedkar, Mandal described the scene: “. . . about half a mile in length consisting of several thousands of people with slogans expressing our sympathy to the Satyagrahis and other slogans such as ‘Dr. Ambedkar Jindabad,’ ‘Scheduled Castes Federation Jindabad,’ ‘Down with Cabinet Mission,’ ‘Boycott Congress,’ ‘Benia Gandhi Murdabad,’ so and so forth. No police help was requisitioned. The procession paraded along many main roads and streets covering a 35 36

“Bangiya Pradesik Taphasili Jati Phedareshaner Caturthha Barshik Adhibeshan,” 31 December 1946, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 121. “ Polling in Bengal Assembly: Harijan Demonstrations,” Times of India, 18 July 1946, 10.

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distance of about 10 miles. It was an unprecedented affair in Calcutta. All went on smoothly.”37 It was indeed Bengal’s Federation that enabled Ambedkar’s entry to the constituent assembly of India. Shortly after the election, several of the MLAs Mandal had encouraged to vote for Ambedkar defected from the Congress. A letter they published in Jagaran (the Federation’s Bengali mouthpiece) on 12 October 1946 explained their reasons. Titled “Why We Left the Congress,” the four MLAs deemed it their “duty to give our reasons to our constituents in particular and the public in general” for their recent defection. Although they had joined Congress, were elected with their support, and extended assurances about their legitimate rights and interests, “as days passed by we became doubtful about the Congress attitude towards the Scheduled Castes. Our hopes and aspirations to serve our people were set at naught by a series of deeds and expressions of the Congress High Command.”38 First, the Congress had “done grave injustice to the Scheduled Castes of all provinces . . . in depriving them of their due shares in the Constituent Assembly.” Second, they had appointed but one seat to 60 million Scheduled Castes, while the same was awarded to 30 lakhs Sikhs, or a few lakhs Indian Christians, or a few lakhs Parsis. Third, Jagjivan Ram’s selection to the interim government “reflects another act of gross injustice and insincerity to the Scheduled Castes inasmuch as the said Mr. Jagjivan Ram is more a puppet in the hands of the Congress than a representative of the Scheduled Castes.” Fourth, by excluding Dr. Ambedkar, “the fittest representative of the Scheduled Castes” from the interim government, the Congress had “forfeited the confidence” of 6 crores of Scheduled Castes. Fifth, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s (Congress President) request to the viceroy to “refuse recognition to the Scheduled Castes,” the “sole object” of which “is to do away with the separate political entity of the Scheduled Castes in the national life of India.”39 Last but not least, the Congress government’s treatment of Dalit satyagrahis in Poona and Nagpur and their threat “to suppress with iron hand the Satyagraha and any other movement of the Scheduled Castes amply demonstrates the real motive 37

38 39

Letter from J.N. Mandal to B.R. Ambedkar, 25 July 1946. Ambedkar wrote to Mandal inquiring into the costs he had incurred over the course of the campaign – a sum of four and a half thousand rupees – to which the latter replied that they could discuss it in due course in person. When they met in Delhi several days later, Mandal declined any reimbursement, claiming whatever expenses had been occurred were for their political community and not for Ambedkar himself. Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath o Babasaheb Ambedkar (Kalikata: Bisvas Pablisar, 1999), 86–88; see also Jagaran, 12 October 1946. Ibid. Indeed, Mandal also emphasized this point as well as the brutal repression of the Federation’s satyagraha in Poona and Nagpur in his address to the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation in Calcutta on 31 December 1946.

“… in Spite of Violent Congress Opposition.”

153

Figure 4.1: The working committee of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, Bombay, 20 November 1946. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal.

of the Congress and how the Scheduled Castes will fare under Congress rule.”40 They thus concluded that the “Congress will never help the Scheduled Castes to secure their political rights and interests which can only be achieved by the united efforts of all the Scheduled Castes people under the banner of the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation and leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar . . . If they fail to do so, the Scheduled Castes are doomed forever.”41 This surge in support for Ambedkar that Mandal orchestrated formed the basis for the former’s appeal to the British government that they reconsider their refusal of recognition to the Federation. In a letter protesting Attlee’s claim against the view “that the Cabinet Mission and the Viceroy were unjust to the Scheduled Castes . . .”42 Ambedkar replied as follows: “That the Mission was grossly misinformed is proved by my election to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal. The Cabinet Mission stated in the House of Commons that my influence was confined to 40 42

Ibid. 41 Ibid. Letter from Mr. Attlee to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, in B.R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17, Part 2 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra Department of Education, 2003), 250.

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“No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”

Bombay and C.P. How is it then that I was elected from Bengal?”43 Ambedkar underscored three facts regarding his election to Attlee: “One is that I did not merely scrape through but I came at the top of the poll beating even Mr. Sarat Chandra Bose, the topmost Bengalee leader of the Congress party. Secondly, I am in no way connected by communal ties with the Scheduled Castes of Bengal. They are of different castes to which I don’t belong. In fact the people of my caste do not exist in Bengal at all and yet the Bengalee Scheduled Castes supported me, so strongly that I was able to come first. Thirdly, though the Scheduled Castes in Bengal had been returned on the Congress ticket, yet they broke the rule of their party not to vote for anybody except for Congressmen and voted for me. Does this prove that I have no following in Bengal?”44 On account of his election from Bengal, Ambedkar challenged Attlee: “if the Cabinet Mission are honest in their conclusion, they ought to revise their erroneous opinion which they have expressed in the House of Commons and . . . give proper recognition to the Federation.”45 Ambedkar was in effect drawing attention to the comparative strength of the Federation within that particular province as grounds for rectifying what he took to be colonial officialdom’s erroneous estimation of his party. The Federation did not eventually receive due recognition, but the basis for not doing so was fundamentally conditioned by everything the Congress had done to effectively muzzle the organization, from exploiting the joint electorate terms of the Poona Pact that worked to the Federation’s disadvantage, to undertaking the electoral misdemeanors Mandal alleged, to actively working to bias the electorate against him and the Federation. To be sure, for Mandal, both his own election to the Bengal Assembly and Ambedkar’s subsequent election to the Constituent Assembly was of tremendous import to the course of postcolonial constitutionality. Yet the denial of recognition to the Federation signified the exclusion of their political agenda from the very terms under which power was being transferred. The ironic implications of this exclusion become clearer when considered alongside the communal violence synonymous with Partition.

43 45

Letter from Dr. Ambedkar to Mr. Attlee, in Writings and Speeches, 253–54. 44 Ibid. Ibid. Earlier in the same letter, Ambedkar protested the exclusion of the Scheduled Castes from the consultations about the future of British India and argued “. . . that the majority of the Scheduled Castes are with the Congress is an atrocious statement and has no foundation in truth.” Ambedkar laid out his critique of the Cabinet Mission in a memorandum that he circulated prior to departure to London to meet with Attlee and Churchill in October 1946. See “The Cabinet Mission and the Untouchables,” in Writings and Speeches, 263–65.

Mandal and the Calcutta Riots

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Mandal and the Calcutta Riots In the days following the killings in Calcutta, Mandal faced a groundswell of anger, vitriol, and criticism for his role in the provincial government.46 Hindu public opinion, including that of other notable Dalit leaders, turned violently against him, demanding his resignation from the Suhrawardy ministry. Mandal was perceived as but a stooge of the Muslim League. The Congress Dalit MLA Bejoy Krishna Sarkar posed his criticisms most pointedly. Sarkar asked, given that Mandal was associated with the League’s direct action, what he had done to secure “the lives and property of the Scheduled Castes of the different parts of the province” and what rehabilitation measures his cabinet had proposed for families destroyed by their relatives’ deaths. Sarkar went so far as to ask whether he was “. . . partially responsible for the so many lost lives of the Scheduled Castes in that riot?”47 As the sole Dalit minister in the Muslim League ministry, the full force of Hindu Bengal’s fury and indignation was directed toward Mandal. In contrast to how he was pilloried by other Dalit and upper-caste MLAs, relatively less is known about how he himself was reacting and responding to the maelstrom of violence for which he was held accountable. What follows, therefore, is a close reading of his perspective a little less than a month after the worst of the Calcutta riots had subsided. Mandal adopted an entirely exceptional view on the mass violence for which he was allegedly culpable, which effectively called on Dalits to extricate themselves from the polarizing dynamic of the carnage.48 His position was all the more extraordinary given that he apparently “used to receive threatening letters from caste Hindus and Mahasabhites practically every day . . .”49 Indeed, as he recalled in his resignation letter from the Government of Pakistan several years later, the Calcutta riots found him fearing for his own life, the first of several such occasions. 46

47 48

49

Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest, and Identity; Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage, 2004); Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932–1947: Contour of Freedom (London: Routledge, 2004); Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” in The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). The Nationalist, 14 September 1946, File No. 581/46. It is telling that Mandal did not squarely address the Calcutta riots in his autobiography. A lacuna of such major proportions will likely be read as an admission of guilt or culpability. Alternatively, given what he does focus on in his manuscript, one might also interpret this absence as reflecting a fundamentally different set of priorities that could not but refuse the overwhelming communal antagonism of the moment. “Life Sketch of Mr. Mandal,” Sind Observer, 6.

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Mandal initially publicized his views on the Calcutta riots in an editorial published in Jagaran.50 He complained that those upper-caste-owned newspapers that published various pieces chastising him did not offer him the opportunity to respond to their public censure. He had even sent various statements to their offices to no avail; they refused to publish them. Their unwillingness, he reasoned, was due to the fact that his policies and opinions no longer served upper-caste interests. Responding to those trying to tarnish his reputation, he diminished the value of their accusations, given that they were predominantly of the Congress or Hindu Mahasabha. Reprising the specific context for the Federation’s participation alongside the Muslim League in the Day of Direct Action – namely, the Federation’s exclusion from the proceedings of the Cabinet Mission thus far – Mandal emphasized the ongoing nationwide anti-Poona Pact satyagraha and the various protests in East Bengal noted earlier. It was in this context, and this context alone, that the Federation’s participation with the Muslim League in protest ought to have acquired meaning. Commenting on the Calcutta riots, Mandal made the bald and categorical assertion that even though these riots had communal overtones, this was not at all a communal war: “Even if these riots appear communal, this is not a communal war.” This was simply a political battle between the Congress and the Muslim League. Mandal therefore characterized the opportunistic claim that the vast majority of people involved in the Calcutta riots were Dalits, as but a ploy to pit them against the Muslims. He contended that they had nothing to gain from enmity with the Muslims, who, in economic and political terms, stood on essentially the same footing as they did. This was of particular significance, again, in the context of their exclusion from the Cabinet Mission and the refusal to recognize the Scheduled Castes as a minority community. Mandal was thus drawing attention to how the specificity of the Federation’s protest had been erroneously conflated with the communal violence they were perceived to have condoned. His contentions thus ran in direct contrast to his critics. Birat Chandra Mandal, president of the Depressed Classes Association, for instance, noted in the context of the soon to be selected interim government: “A large number of Scheduled Castes residing in Calcutta bustees have been killed. At Belliaghata in Calcutta, the house of Babu Satish Chandra Bairagi, a follower of Dr. Ambedkar has been burnt to ashes.”51 The implication was that even 50 51

“Phedareshan Sabhapatir Bibriti – Tapashil Jatike Nirapeksha Thhakibar Nirddesh – Danga Hangamay Kono Sampraday Upakrita Hoibe Na,” Jagaran, 14 September 1946. Hindustan Standard, 27 August 1946, File No. 191/46.

The Interim Government

157

Ambedkarites were not spared the wrath of Muslim rioters, fundamentally compromising the basis of the Federation’s and League’s cooperation. The most notable aspect of Mandal’s statement, however, was his declaration of a policy of neutrality with regard to the violence in Calcutta and his urging Dalits to adopt the same. He hoped that both Hindu and Muslim leaders would refrain from trying to engage their followers against the other community, and that they themselves would not respond to such exhortations. In closing, he made a plea to their leaders, activists, students, and general populace, to bear in mind the future political and economic welfare of their community, and remain aloof from the battles being waged between other political parties. Despite the overall reconciliatory tenor of his statement, Mandal could not but have been painfully aware that Dalits had in fact been participants in and victims of the violence that brought the city to its knees. Keeping his own political and ideological commitments in mind, he sought to reveal the full implications of Dalit victimhood being converted into fodder for Hindu communalism. As his arguments suggest, Mandal was only too aware of the cruel irony that their involvement in the riots bolstered the moral capital of Hindu righteousness against Muslim aggression. The Interim Government Even as news of the violence in Calcutta triggered similarly brutal exchanges elsewhere in Bengal and beyond in October 1946, Mandal was nominated by the Muslim League to join the interim government as Law Minister. The selection has generally been viewed as the League’s cynical attempt to retaliate against the Congress for including Muslims among their own list of nominated representatives. If one adopted a somewhat more sympathetic reading of the matter, however, one would have to contend with the very genuine sense of gratitude that Dalits all over the country felt toward Jinnah and the League for this choice. Such expressions were on display in processions and demonstrations that appeared all over the country, from Agra and Fatehgarh to Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, and Nagpur.52 At a gathering of “about 3000 Scheduled Caste men who went to the League leader’s house on October 16th to thank him for including their representative in the new central government,” Jinnah addressed them: “It is easy to make promises and then forget them, but I believe in action, and I assure you that I shall never fail to do for you whatever lies in my power . . .” He added: “I am your friend, and I shall always be your 52

Hindustan Standard, File No. 191/46.

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“No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated”

Figure 4.2: A group photograph of the Working Committee of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation. Seen in the picture is Mr. Jogendranath Mandal, law member, interim government. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal.

friend. I did my very best for the Scheduled Castes at the Round Table Conference, and this matter is on actual record.”53 The correspondent for The Times of India thus spoke of a “deeper political motive.” Mandal’s nomination was also regarded as a “gesture of sympathy and solidarity with the down-trodden section of the Hindu community.”54 At a press interview on 16 October, Mandal himself stated that “. . . an injustice was done to the Scheduled Castes by the British Cabinet Mission, and that Congress has been undone by this act of the Muslim League. I am grateful to Mr. Jinnah, for his offering a seat to the Scheduled Castes Federation out of the Muslim League’s quota . . .” He would represent the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, which “commands the support of 90% of the Scheduled Castes in India. Congress captured a large number of seats because of the existence of the Poona Pact, which provided 53 54

Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3563 from the Press Information Bureau, New Delhi, 18 October 1946), IOR/L/PJ/10/50. “India’s New Coalition Government,” Times of India, 16 October 1946, 1.

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joint electorates for the Scheduled Castes. That was no indication that the Scheduled Castes supported Congress.”55 At another interview the following day, he elaborated his stand: “Although I have the cause of the Scheduled Castes deepest at heart, my first duty must be to the Muslim League which has taken up our cause. Secondly, I will work for the betterment of the whole country without considering caste, creed or province. Thirdly, I will work for the betterment of the position of the Scheduled Castes. Our cause is nearest my heart, and I shall work continually to eradicate the many injustices under which we now suffer. Particularly I shall work to change the unfairness of the position of the Scheduled Castes in regard to the primary and general elections.”56 Mandal recalled that when his nomination to the interim government was being celebrated by the Federation, the upper-caste Hindus of Bengal responded with “limitless malice and adverse criticism.” Newspapers that “ostentatiously displayed their progressiveness” published pieces containing opinions about Mandal that “as a measure of caste-hatred put the violent malice of the whites of South Africa and the negro animosity of one class of whites in America to shame.”57 Anti-black racism evidently became a foil against which he could comprehend the hostile animus he encountered. The Congress high command was likewise hardly pleased with Mandal’s nomination. Nehru confided to Wavell: “I think I owe it to you to tell you privately and personally that I regret deeply the choice the Muslim League has made. That choice itself indicates a desire to have conflict rather that to work in cooperation. This is especially evident in their choice of a member of the Scheduled Classes.”58 And Gandhi, for his part, held forth at one of his prayer meetings that “he could not sense any generosity” in Mandal’s nomination, “especially when he read what was happening in Eastern Bengal. A man like himself ought to be glad, they might say, that another seat had been given to a Harijan. But he would be deceiving himself and Mr. Jinnah if he said so.”59 Abul Kalam 55 56

57 58 59

Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3561 from the Press Information Bureau, New Delhi, 17 October 1946), IOR/L/PJ/10/75. Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3563 from the Press Information Bureau, New Delhi, 18 October 1946), IOR/L/PJ/10/50. Bandyopadhyay omits from his use of this source everything from “Our cause is nearest my heart . . .” onward, as well as “Although I have the cause of the Scheduled Castes deepest at heart . . .” This enables the, in my view, unsubstantiated argument that Mandal “seemed to be more keen on pleasing his patron than serving his community.” Bandyopadhyay, “Transfer of Power,” 932. Other such curious assertions include that Mandal was allegedly Ambedkar’s “solitary supporter in Bengal.” Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “Partition and the Ruptures in Dalit Identity Politics in Bengal,” Asian Studies Review 33 (2009): 461. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 167. Letter from J. Nehru to A. Wavell, 15 October 1946, IOR/L/PJ/10/75. Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3561 from the Press Information Bureau, New Delhi, 17 October 1946), IOR/L/PJ/10/75.

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Azad, known as the “quisling” in Muslim League circles, recalled how the choice “caused both amusement and anger,” for Mandal “was almost unknown in Bengal, and had no position whatsoever in all-India politics.” Azad made sure to note that Mandal’s British secretary allegedly complained almost every day about his difficulties working for him.60 That these figures hardly looked kindly upon, let alone welcomed, Mandal’s nomination, spoke to their willingness to accommodate his concerns. Their view of Mandal as but a Muslim League representative furthermore seriously flattened the distinctiveness of his politics. At a Federation meeting in Calcutta in May 1947, for instance, Mandal countered claims that he was urging conversion to Islam by asking that if this were in fact the case, why was he (along with the Federation) demanding separate electorates and an independent political existence?61 In these statements, Mandal once again drew attention to the problem of whether the electoral structure under the Poona Pact could act as an appropriate mechanism for accurately gauging Dalit political opinion, and, by extension, to the question of whether the Congress could claim to represent them. This question of representativeness, crucially, had a clear bearing on who exactly demanded Partition in Bengal. The following categorical assertion by Sarat Chandra Bose (one of the handful of Bengali Congressites who held against the move), in a letter to none other than Vallabhbhai Patel, might temper the assumption that the vast majority of Dalits had fallen in line with the upper-caste Hindu opinion in favor of the move, the product of what Suranjan Das once termed the convergence of elite and popular communalism. Bose asserted: “… having been in close touch with public opinion both in West and East Bengal I can say that it is not a fact that Bengali Hindus unanimously demand partition. As far as East Bengal is concerned, there is not the slightest doubt that the overwhelming majority of Hindus are opposed to partition.”62 Recall that Dalits and Namasudras, in particular, constituted a substantial number of East Bengal’s Hindus. During much of his tenure as minister of law in the interim government, Mandal was preoccupied with the Federation’s various activities across the country. Perhaps this is why he does not feature too prominently in the transfer of power documents. Wavell wrote rather disparagingly to King George VI on 24 February 1947 that Mandal was “usually 60 61 62

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: An Autobiographical Narrative (Calcutta: Orient Longmans, 1959), 165–66. Jagaran, 17 May 1947. Jahanara Begum, The Last Decades of Undivided Bengal: Parties, Politics and Personalities (Calcutta, Minerva, 1994), 176. Bose’s letter does not, of course, conclusively demonstrate the proposition, given he was invested in shoring up support for his proposal for a united Bengal.

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travelling around the country to attend Scheduled Caste political meetings; when he does come to the Cabinet he is silent or silly.”63 Mandal’s engagements with Mountbatten and his views on the transfer of power further illuminate the matter. Mountbatten had been deputed to replace Wavell upon the latter’s failure to reach an agreement between the Congress and the League. On his first meeting with Mandal, he apparently spent an hour over the designated half-hour, asking him about the history of the Scheduled Castes, their political, social, and economic situation, and Dr. Ambedkar. Mandal believed that Mountbatten listened to him with great intent. At a subsequent meeting, he apparently asked him: “Mr. Mandal, whenever you come, you only say various things about the interests of the Scheduled Castes, but you don’t say much about other matters – what is the reason for this?” He answered: “The reason is that no other ministers say anything to you about this matter, they speak about the general conditions of the country. Therefore I have to speak about these oppressed and persecuted peoples. When Pandit Nehru comes and speaks to you of them, then I will no longer have to do so.” At this, Mountbatten allegedly began to laugh.64 Arguably one of the most important documents from his tenure in the Interim Government, Mandal had drafted a note, “On treatment of Scheduled Castes by Caste Hindus,” which he forwarded to Jinnah several months after his nomination. Since his assumption of office, he had received a growing swell of petitions from all over the country regarding caste Hindu atrocities and violence committed against Dalits. Mandal compiled some of these accounts for people “not only in India but of countries abroad with a view to apprising them of the actual state of affairs which the Scheduled Castes of India are suffering in this country.”65 Ranging from incidents of physical assault, the insistence on forced labor, rioting and arson of Dalit neighborhoods, to a case of the live immolation of four individuals and two animals, Mandal concluded the essay hoping that his overseas readers would gain some idea of how they were treated by caste Hindus and “their great political organization, viz. the Indian National Congress, even in the year 1947 when India is about to attain her independence and liberty.”66 He thus sought to challenge 63

64 65

66

Nicholas Mansergh and E.W.R. Lumby (eds.), The Transfer of Power, 1942–7, No. 460, 24 February 1947 (London: H.M.S.O., 1970–1983), 801. A “personal comment” about Mandal by Wavell is omitted from the official version. Ibid., 203–4. J.N. Mandal to M.A. Jinnah, 22 April 1947, in Z.H. Zaidi, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers, Volume 1, Part 1 (Islamabad: National Archives of Pakistan, 1993), 584–87. Ibid., 587.

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their propagandizing to the West that India was free from untouchability and social disabilities, or indeed, free at all. At several points in his autobiography, Mandal registered a profound unease and alienation from the proceedings of the interim government, especially with regard to the decision-making processes that led to Partition. He understood what he perceived to be this peculiarly unfair distance as a consequence of the notion that acquired force following the 1946 election – that the Federation did not really represent the Dalits on account of their poor electoral performance, and that the fundamental problem of freedom thus turned on reconciling the Congress and the League. Mandal claimed in his address at the fourth annual conference of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation for instance that 72 percent of the Scheduled Caste voters in the primary election had voted for nonCongress candidates, whereas Congress had only claimed the remaining twenty-eight.67 By misreading the election results as confirmation of the Congress’ representativeness of all Hindus, Scheduled Castes included, the British thereby accepted the, to his mind, erroneous notion that the transfer of power was primarily about solving the communal problem. Mandal thought that he would certainly be consulted about the contemplated division on account of his seniority, and had decided to venture his opinion, whether or not he was asked. But the opportunity, much to his chagrin, never came: “. . . the sad thing is that a day before the date of the next interview, the private secretary of the Governor-General telephoned Jogendranath’s personal assistant and informed him that ‘If H.M. Law has no official business to talk to H.E. then H.E. does not expect him to morrow.’ This meant, in exceedingly polite language, to forbid Jogendranath from going to meet the Governor-General . . . The chief reason for Jogendranath’s mortification being that on the logic of dividing India an extremely important matter would be brought about and despite being a minister in the central government, not even his opinion was asked.”68 Mandal linked this exclusion from due consideration to the 1946 elections. He was not consulted because the British incorrectly perceived the election outcome as furnishing conclusive evidence that all Muslims supported the League and all those remaining supported the Congress: This is why the British government and the Governor-General got the impression that if the founding of the future governance of India was agreed upon by these two parties no other disturbance would remain. Thus British Government and the 67 68

“Bangiya Pradesik Taphasili Jati Phedareshaner Caturthha Barshik Adhibeshan,” 31 December 1946, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 121. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 204–5.

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Viceroy began to discuss all kinds of matters regarding the founding of India’s governance with the leaders of these two groups. The demand for an independent political existence for the Scheduled Castes in the national life of Bharat that Dr. Ambedkar had made on behalf of the Scheduled Castes Federation no longer survived. The autonomous existence of the Scheduled Castes in the national life of Bharat was annihilated right here. Thus in the founding of Indian governance or whether India would remain undivided or partitioned, in related discussions, British government or the Viceroy did not feel the necessity of speaking with Dr. Ambedkar. For the very same reason, the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten did not perceive the need to talk with Jogendranath.69

Here Mandal signaled both the tremendous effect of the elections on government’s thinking and the consequent inevitable occlusion of his and the Federation’s search for political autonomy under the extant electoral set-up. For in conjunction from the very outset, the Congress’ abuses of electoral propriety and norms, the joint electorate under the Poona Pact, the upper-castes’ anti-Federation activities, and the idea that the transfer of power was therefore essentially about solving the impasse between the League and the Congress effectively ensured the Federation’s exclusion from a seat at the negotiating table. It was telling, perhaps, that on the day of Mandal’s departure for Karachi as first speaker of the Government of Pakistan, 5 August 1947, he parted ways with Mountbatten after the latter apparently conceded to him, “What is done is done. We could not help.”70 The Possibility of Dalit and Muslim Unity In distinct contrast to his assessment of the Calcutta riots – which he characterized as a political battle between the Congress and the League – after touring East Bengal in October 1946 to urge calm upon various localities in his new role as a minister of the interim government, Mandal asserted that it was “fantastic to impute political motives behind the recent outbreak, and link political parties with the disturbances. It was an uprising of violent elements pure and simple, and nothing but sheer lawlessness and the activities of the goonda elements are responsible. No political parties are involved.”71 This was also in part the message conveyed in a joint communiqué co-signed by Khwaja Nazimuddin, Fazlur Rahman, Choudhuri Moazzem Hossain, Abul Hashim, Jogendranath Mandal, Rasik Lal Biswas, Bholanath Biswas, and Dwarika Nath Baruri. In a plea to Muslims and Dalits all over Bengal, they reasoned that their political alliance had no value if their communities were to 69 71

Ibid., 231–32. 70 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 21. Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3602 from the Press Information Bureau), New Delhi, 25 October 1946, IOR/L/P&J/8/578.

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forsake living together peaceably and lose sight of their conjoined futures. They warned, “Our enemies can instigate Muslims and Scheduled Castes into riots and mayhem,” and thus especially hoped that they would desist from such incitement and keep their two communities’ mutual welfare in mind.72 This leaflet was distributed in Jessore and Faridpur, and cropped up in the intelligence reports of the time. In a confidential weekly report of early November, beside the last sentence of the leaflet, which ran as follows: “It is, therefore, not unlikely that their enemies will try to bring a disruption among them; so it warns member of both communities – the Muslim and the Scheduled Caste [sic] – to refrain from killing each other . . .” the District Superintendent wrote, “But not Caste Hindus!! – a significant omission – has the leaflet come to notice elsewhere?” Various articles and editorials published in Jagaran after the riots in eastern Bengal stressed a similar message – that neither Muslims nor Dalits stood to gain from them, and the only parties that stood to benefit from this violence were the Congress and Mahasabha, which could exploit the slippage between their dual identification as both Scheduled Caste and Hindu, and thus instrumentally mobilize animosity (as in Noakhali and Calcutta) toward the alleged irreconcilability of Hindus and Muslims. Such articles sought to demonstrate the absurdity of how Congress was doing its best to exclude Dalits from their proportionate share in the future governance of independent India, even as it sought to speak on their behalf, and even as their goons proceeded to pit them against Muslims. As such, they drew attention to the disingenuousness of caste Hindu conduct. Twenty officers of the local Muslim League and Scheduled Castes Federation therefore circulated “An Appeal to the Jhenidah Sub-divisional Muslim League and Scheduled Castes Federation,” which, drawing similar conclusions as did articles in Jagaran, advocated the formation of joint committees at various levels of local administration with the representatives of the Muslims and Scheduled Castes “for the maintenance of peace and order and for the 72

“Musolman o Tapashili Sampradayer Prati,” Jagaran, 9 November 1946, File No. 717D/46: Muslim League. Interestingly, the Hindusthan published a piece in response to the Federation and League’s pamphlet, “Satan’s Policy of Division,” that landed the paper in legal trouble because the article in question “tended to promote feelings of enmity between the Hindus and Muslims.” The article was written in condemnation of an entire series of events to which Mandal was central that culminated in the Federation and League issuing their joint statement. As N.C. Chatterjee, one of the key leaders of the Partition agitation and legal counsel for Hindusthan, described, the article had been written to “combat the two-fold propaganda – (1) to detach the Scheduled Castes from the main body of the Hindu community, and (2) to point out the mischievous character of the attempt to drive a wedge amongst the Hindu community.” “Security Demand on ‘Hindusthan’,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19 March 1947.

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good of both communities.”73 Federation and League student leaders maintained correspondence to similar effect.74 There remained considerable efforts to prolong sentiments of mutual goodwill and solidarity in a context in which they were not readily available. A truly exceptional pamphlet circulating in Dacca district in midJanuary 1947, drafted by the Muslim League Revolutionary Workers Association in Calcutta, presented an analysis of the ongoing violence and sheds light on how they perceived the alliance between Dalits and Muslims. As such, it recapitulated in detail the reasons for their collaboration, given their structural identity as primary producers in Bengal’s agrarian economy, corresponding with Mandal’s own rationalizations for forging the same. Titled “Anti-Muslim feelings of the caste-Hindus and Calcutta riots,” the writer chastised the “meanness displayed by casteHindus during the Calcutta carnage” and “chalked out an aggressive program of complete boycott of the caste Hindus by joint union of the Muslims and the Scheduled Castes with a view to bring the caste Hindus down to their own level.”75 Significantly, the pamphleteer laid responsibility for the breach of peace during the Calcutta riots on Congress activists, emphasizing how Jinnah had insisted that the protests on the Day of Direct Action be peaceful. Exulting in the Muslim response to the “open attack and brutal torture perpetrated by the Congress,” the writer reprised the broader context of freedom from British rule, and the attendant question of how a future state might be democratically governed by representatives of its communities: “What is the significance of the freedom of a country? It is the freedom of the poor and down-trodden masses and their peace and prosperity. Who are these masses in India [sic]. Muslims and a few other low caste Hindus (Namasudras). So in this triangular fight (British, Hindu, Muslim) – we really deserve to be freed. A revolution cannot be complete leaving aside the poor downtrodden people.”76 The pamphlet proposed a program for the Muslim League Revolutionary Workers Association: the formation of Union Defence Committees composed solely of Muslims and Dalit workers of each ward and union, which would control their jurisdiction according to the following directions. Primarily, “they will keep no connection with the caste Hindus. Business, revenue, land tenure, discussion and even 73 74

75 76

File No. 717D/46. File No. 191/46. The entire outlook on communal violence in this archive is utterly alien to and irreconcilable with the story of Partition and concomitant riots that Indian nationalist historiography tells. “Anti-Muslim Feelings of the caste-Hindus and Calcutta Riots,” File No. 717D/46. Ibid.

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association with the caste Hindus are prohibited. They may only be called at any time of necessity to notify them regarding orders of the committee.”77 The committees would arrange for the market and other places of trade and commerce to be under their joint control. In this desired future, upper-caste Hindus would not receive more than a quarter share of the produce of the barga land, which they would have to harvest and carry themselves: “Poor men are not their servants.” If they [the caste-Hindu land-owner] were to take the land away, the cultivator occupier would cultivate it forcibly: “Rice, foodstuff and other commodities of trade are under our control. They must not be sold to the caste Hindus. We shall starve them to death. There will be no necessity for killing them. Rice must not be sold to the caste Hindus even if they pay Rs 5/- for a seer. If we carry on for two months only in this way you will find that they have come down to the same status with us. Then they will not accost a Muslim or a Namasudra as ‘thou’ (in contempt). Then the country will be free. If any prominent man secretly visits the casteHindus with a view to getting advantage for himself, on receipt of information, that man must be boycotted from the society and he must be insulted everywhere.”78 As an instantiation of the desired policy changes, the association seized on that emblem of Bengali labor – jute – and contemplated regulation of the jute industry given that “the jute-growers of Bengal are mainly Muslims and Namasudras.”79 The pamphleteer described the present situation, where Hindu Marwaris cheated the cultivators by purchasing jute at Rs. 10 or 12 per maund and selling the same at Rs. 100, “thereby sucking the blood of the cultivators.”80 The cultivator had no choice but to sell his jute for bare sustenance. To transform these extortionate circumstances, the Muslim and Namasudra leaders of Bengal would organize a jute-buying syndicate for the whole of Bengal that would enable the cultivators to sell their jute at more favorable rates. “You must be careful,” the pamphleteer warned, as in order to stall such developments: “Hindu Marwaris are carrying on secret conspiracy with the Kayestha [sic], Brahmin and other rich merchant leaders with a view to bring about complete ruin on the jute cultivators of Bengal.”81 The imagined audience “must on no account sell your jute to the Marwaris or caste-Hindu jute traders who are cheating you.”82 Within two months, it was promised, they would be able to sell their produce at Rs. 40 per maund. Reminding its readers of the Muslim majority in Bengal, the pamphlet predicated the loss of upper-caste power on Namasudras combining with 77

Ibid.

78

Ibid.

79

Ibid.

80

Ibid.

81

Ibid.

82

Ibid.

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Muslims. The caste Hindus would have to obey the “direction and administration of the poor class Muslims and Namasudras whom they hated and oppressed so long.” Continuing in this vein, its writer sketched the details of such government, proposing the development of various organizational features for a network of committees, including the raising and distribution of funds consistent with Islamic ideals. Since “caste Hindus have collected all the money due to the labour of the Muslims and the Namasudras” they would be bound to contribute the major portion of finances for the defense of the country. We shall not kick the caste Hindus out of Bengal. We shall rule over them. So long they have thrived sucking our blood. We shall now turn the table. It will be sufficient to tell the Namasudras and other Scheduled Caste brethren that so long the caste Hindus who were under the British Government hated and tortured them more than us. Now let them understand what shall be their position if a free caste Hindu empire is established and join hands with us. While still there is time, for their own future welfare and self-defence according to the direction of QuiadeAzam Mohammed Ali Jinnah the protector of the Scheduled Caste people and Dr. Ambedkar. At this moment, being cornered the caste Hindus will hold out many promises but immediately after they achieve their object they will play the same game which they have done all through. It is necessary to make them understand this.83

Bringing the reader up to speed with the cataclysmic riots that followed in East Bengal and Bihar (and how Kripalani and Gandhi were glad about the retaliation), the writer urged, “Please note it specially, that the incitement to riots in Calcutta and Bihar for killing the Muslims have all come from our Bengalee educated Congressite caste Hindus.”84 This astonishingly candid and aggressive pamphlet indicates how the violence preceding Partition in Bengal was apprehended as gathering in its energies dynamics of struggle that far exceeded the structural coordinates of conflict between Hindus and Muslims, so thoroughly ingrained in historical understanding and imagination of this event. Especially significant is the attribution of the most unprecedented acts of communal violence in Bengal not to Hindus as a blanket category, but to the caste Hindus in the Congress. In this mentality, the Calcutta killing was the act of a specifically caste Hindu violence. No doubt the articulated program did not come to pass, but it is unmistakable that for this writer, Partition’s potential lay not simply in the resolution of relations between imperial rulers and those they ruled, or Hindus and Muslims, but fundamentally held out the possibility of transforming the social and economic relations between caste Hindus on the one hand, and Dalits and Muslims on the 83

Ibid.

84

Ibid.

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other. Such incongruence needs to be thought of alongside narratives that see in Partition the replacement of caste by religion as the defining criterion of community boundaries in order to underscore the instability of this shift. Indeed, the Federation’s Jagaran contained a plethora of letters, poems, and essays, inspired by the daily life of Partition-era Bengal, that stood considerably at odds with the view of this historical moment as consumed by irreconcilable and unavoidable conflict between unmarked Hindus and Muslims. It is clear that many of these correspondents were deeply skeptical of the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s attempts at constructing what they perceived to be a spurious Hindu communal unity and did not look upon Muslims as the selfish and domineering oppressors integral to the upper-caste imagination. Given the precedents of the recent past, it is not readily apparent why the historian ought to grant greater veracity to the intentions binding Hindu unity unless a methodological communalism informs evaluation of political solidarities.

Mandal and the Anti-Partition Agitation During his term as law minister in the interim government, and increasingly once the possibility of Partition drew near, Mandal toured the country extensively, addressing various meetings on the details of the Federation’s constitutional and political demands, the need for Dalit political unity, and about how disastrously Partition would impact their communities. He traveled from Delhi, to Bombay, to Calcutta, Nagpur, Karimganj, Ferozabad, and Pune, in addition to countless smaller district towns all over Bengal, laying great emphasis in his autobiography on the effusiveness of his various receptions all over the country, seemingly enthused by the prospect of political mobilization. Indeed, Mandal and some of his colleagues expressed great optimism, despite the Federation being confronted with a situation where Congress had for all intents and purposes manufactured their redundancy. The veteran leader Amulyadhan Ray lectured at the annual conference of the Bengal branch of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation in late 1946 for instance, saying that, despite the mistake of having voted for the Congress during the elections and thus having compromised the rights their communities had gained over the past fifteen years, these had received a new lease of life on account of Ambedkar’s entry to the constituent assembly from Bengal, the Federation’s satyagraha, Mandal’s position in the interim government, and Ambedkar’s invitation to London to plead their cause.85 Mandal struck a similarly optimistic note 85

“Bangiya Pradesik Taphasili Jati Phedareshaner Caturtha Barshik Adhibeshan,” 31 December 1946, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 118.

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at the same meeting. Upon Ambedkar’s election, he said, “the Scheduled Castes of Bharat have no more fear.”86 This curiously upbeat assessment changed dramatically as the certainty of Partition drew near. The Bengali Hindu movement for dividing the province began to develop momentum in late 1946 in the wake of riots in Calcutta and East Bengal. It emerged to public prominence in March and April of 1947, with the Hindu Mahasabha’s annual provincial conference at the Shaivaite site of pilgrimage in Tarakeswar marking a key turning point.87 In May of that year Mandal and the Bengal Federation launched a campaign throughout the province opposing the Hindu demand for the Partition of Bengal, eliciting the wrath and opposition of the Bengal Congress and Mahasabha, the principal proponents of the divide.88

Figure 4.3: “Jogen Mandal’s tour of Bengal successful; all is ablaze with praise.” A sarcastic and humiliating cartoon mocking Mandal’s anti-Partition agitation among the newspaper cuttings Mandal collected. Source unknown. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 86 87 88

Ibid., 122. See Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 240–65, for an account of this movement. It is certainly ironic that Mandal became the lynchpin for the Partition of Bengal once the sordid effects of the decision began to materialize.

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Over the previous six months, their agitation for partitioning the province in the hope of influencing the negotiations in Delhi had grown from strength to strength, but Mandal was not convinced. He reasoned that Partition would not solve the problem of communalism in Bengal, moreover, that the “present scheme for the Partition of Bengal is only to crush the Scheduled Castes and get all power in the hands of the Caste Hindus.”89 At a meeting in Harinarainpur in 24 Parganas he claimed that Partition would result in a situation where “the Scheduled Castes of Eastern Bengal will be at the mercy of the majority community, and the Scheduled Castes of Western Bengal will be subject to the perpetual slavery of the Caste Hindus.”90 The caste Hindus of East Bengal, “mostly rich and influential . . . could easily move to West Bengal” whereas: “. . . the Scheduled Castes were very poor and they lived by cultivation of land, catching fish in rivers in East Bengal. . . . By no means, could the poor helpless people belonging to the Scheduled Castes be rehabilitated in West Bengal. A united Bengal, therefore, was a necessity in the interest of the Scheduled Castes people of the province.”91 Partition would “decay the growing political consciousness” and “ruthlessly crush the solidarity of the Scheduled Castes of Bengal,” distributed as they were throughout the province.92 Editorials in Jagaran took the view that Partition was essentially about the consolidation of caste Hindu power, motivated by the fear of losing their already battered hegemony.93 The writer of one of these asked with some justice that if the supporters of Partition among the Bengal Congress were as democratic as they claimed to be, why were they unwilling to conceive of living equally in a province with both Muslims and Dalits? Arguably of greatest concern for the Federation, Partition would destroy the very possibility for Dalit political autonomy. Throughout May 1947, Mandal and the Federation organized meetings in localities as far afield as 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Haora, Bardhaman, Birbhum, Bankura, Nadia, Khulna, Jessore, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Darjeeling, and Calcutta, with financial assistance he sought and received from the Muslim League for “our work.”94 These were 89 90 91 92 93 94

“Partition to Crush Scheduled Castes: Scheme Opposed by Mr. Mandal,” Morning News, 11 May 1947. “Partition of Bengal Injurious to East Bengal Hindus: Scheduled Castes Federation Deprecate Move,” Nationalist, 16 May 1947. Free Press, 18 May 1947, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 27–28. Nationalist, May 16 1947, in Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 40–41. Jagaran, 5 April 1947. Also see “Taphasili jatike bibhranta karar byapak sharayantra,” Ajad, 18 Jyaishta 1354. See J.N. Mandal to M.A. Jinnah, 30 April 1947; Ahmad Ispahani to M.A. Jinnah, 10 May 1947; Ahmad Ispahani to M.A. Jinnah, 30 May 1947; in Zaidi, Jinnah Papers, Volume 1, Part 1, 632–33, 717, 933–35.

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undoubtedly among the few Dalit efforts at resisting the divide, yet the claim that these meetings were “isolated demands” and “attracted little attention” underestimates their scope and significance.95 Various articles in Jagaran indicated that the upper-caste Hindu press allegedly deliberately ignored these rallies in an effort to minimize their import, published misinformation about them, inflated the numbers of Dalits present at meetings, reported on which supported the Partition of Bengal, and in some cases local Congress committees attempted to muzzle gatherings resolving against Partition.96 The very archival materials that form the evidentiary bases for historical argument were thus shaped by these contestations over and fabrications of political Dalit will. Finally, several senior Dalit leaders – some of whom were prominent leaders even prior to provincial autonomy in 1937 – such as Amulyadhan Ray, Anukul Chandra Das, Kshetra Nath Singha, Syama Prasad Burman, Advaita Kumar Majhi and Rasik Lal Biswas – as well as what seems to have been a fairly wide party network for having existed only three years, supported the Federation’s meetings against Partition. As with the Gopalganj conference of 1945, and especially given the intensely charged political atmosphere of the time, it is unlikely these meetings could have occurred without a fair degree of local support and legitimacy. On 4 May 1947, Mandal addressed a meeting in Darjeeling attended by approximately 6,000 to 7,000, including local leaders and other notables among the Rajbanshi community.97 Two days later, at a meeting of 10,000 to 12,000 attendees presided over by the ex-president of the Kshatriya Samiti Girijakanta Sinha in Jalpaiguri, he elucidated the drawbacks of the proposed Partition. 95

96

97

Bandyopadhyay writes in response to Mandal’s claim that Dalits opposed Partition: “The reality of the situation, however, indicated a different scenario, as Mandal’s anti-Partition rallies attracted little attention. A meeting organised by him in early May 1947 in the 24Parganas was attended by not more than 50 people, while as a counterpoint to this, a meeting organised by the Congress-supported Bengal Provincial Depressed Classes League on 27 May 1947 was attended by about 2500 people, ‘including a thousand members of the Depressed Classes.’” Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony, 229. By contrast, Jagaran reported that a meeting in Kholapota village in 24 Parganas (potentially the same one to which Bandyopadhyay referred) was attended by individuals of various communities among the Scheduled Castes amounting to “nearly 5000” people. “24 Pargana Jelar Kholapota,” Jagaran, 24 May 1947. See the entire issue of Jagaran for 17 May 1947, especially articles titled “Barnahindu Kagaj Anandabajar Patrikar Taphasili Bibhrantamulak Apapracar” and “Jalpaigurir Sabhar Prakrta Bibaran.” Also, a report by an attendee to one of the meetings in Calcutta that was allegedly largely attended by Dalits found that the majority of the audience was composed of caste Hindus and non-Bengali Dalits who had been paid for their presence at the gathering. “Tathakatithha Taphasili Sabhar Swarup,” Ajad, 18 Jaishtha 1354. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, 22.

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Some caste Hindu goondas of the Congress tried to disrupt and stop the meeting, but their attempt was foiled by the gathered audience.98 On 7 May in Dinajpur, he addressed a gathering of 7,000 to 8,000 presided over by the ex-MLA Syamaprasad Barman. As in Jalpaiguri, some Congressites tried to forestall the proceedings, apparently with little success. At a meeting called by the Congress in Poradanga village in Jessore on 8 May about the prospective Partition, a crowd of predominantly Federationist Namasudras silenced several of the Congressmen who were present at the gathering, and resolved in favor of a united Bengal.99 On 9 and 10 May, Mandal spoke at meetings in 24 Parganas.100 On 16 May, he was in Calcutta;101 on 17 May, at a meeting one in Bardhaman.102 D.N. Barori presided over a meeting at the Kalachora in Hooghly district that was attended by “over six thousand people representing such scheduled caste communities as Santal, Bagdi, Kaora, Tiyar, Bowri, Hadi, Dom, Muchi, Jelia, Kaibarta, etc.”103 Toward late May, Mandal addressed a meeting attended by about 10,000 people at Rangpur in Khulna, resolving against Partition.104 Two other such meetings in Khulna were attended by 7,000 to 8,000 people.105 Several days later, Mandal noted, “The President of the All-Bengal Mahishya Samity has already expressed that the Mahishyas are against the division of the province. Besides, the President of Tippera-Noakhali Hindu People’s Party has issued a statement opposing Partition. One section of Baruijibis, who are Caste Hindus, have also opposed partition.”106 Syama Prasad Barman, ex-MLA and president of the North Bengal Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity, took his colleague Prem Hari Barman to task for initially standing against, and then subsequently supporting, the Partition demand. The former submitted that widely attended meetings were held in Rangpur on 27 April, then Dinajpur on 7 May, opposing Partition.107 Clearly there was substantial skepticism about

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107

Ibid., 23. “Jashohar Jela Kangresi Netader Shocaniya Parajay,” Jagaran, 24 May 1947. “24 Pargana Jelar Kholapota,” ibid. “Partition Opposed By Scheduled Castes,” Statesman, 17 May 1947. “Bardhhaman, Birbhum o Hugli Jelar Tapshil Jatir Caturthha Barshik Sammelan, Banga-bhanger Biruddhe Prastab Grhita,” Jagaran, 24 May 1947. Bengal Provincial Scheduled Castes’ Federation, “Press Message,” 12 May 1947. “Bengal Partition Move Opposed,” Statesman, 26 May 1947. “Jibaner Binimayeo Banga-bhanga Rodh Kariba,” Jagaran, 7 June 1947. “Mandal Opposes Bengal Partition Plan,” Statesman, 28 May 1947. Indeed, Mandal’s private papers contain a statement dated 16 May 1947, issued by G.S. Nath, president of the Tippera-Noakhali Hindu People’s Party, to this effect. “Bengal Partition Opposed,” Morning News, 20 May 1947.

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what Partition would mean to the Dalits of Bengal.108 As Debnarayan Ray, secretary in the Chamber of Commerce, perspicaciously stated of the “Caste-Hindu proposal” to sever the province: “When the CasteHindus find themselves in helpless minority, Muslims and Scheduled Caste having joined hands together – some new device for preserving their vested interest was quite natural and this they have forged out. This division would mean new shackles for the Scheduled Caste people.”109 The prospect of Partition thus hardly bore identical significance for all Hindus or Dalits. The Federation’s advocacy for a united Bengal and its claim that the Dalits of Bengal did not desire Partition suggests that opinion was in reality far more unresolved and uncertain than we have been given to believe. Chatterjee’s assertion that it is “historically inaccurate” to suggest the decision to Partition Bengal “actually involved the participation of masses of people” seems germane to the issue as well.110 Indeed, before being converted to the Partition cause, for instance, P. R. Thakur presided over an All-Bengal Nationalist Depressed Classes Association meeting in Calcutta on 14 March that “seriously requests the Hindu leaders to cry a halt to the movement and earnestly urges upon the people of Bengal to work for the establishment of peoples’ Government in united Bengal.” Additionally, the meeting called for “an Association of the Hindu leaders of Bengal who are against partition should be immediately formed to devise ways and means of how to retain solidarity of Bengal in the interests of all people living in the province, irrespective of community, caste or creed.”111 At a subsequent meeting Thakur presided over in Faridpur, those gathered made it “definitely clear that the proposed partition of Bengal for the purpose would, in no circumstances, be allowed to take place unless and until definite measures for the total repatriation of the poor class Hindus, specially the scheduled caste people, from the Muslim majority areas of East Bengal were taken by the Hindu leaders.”112 Bejoy Krishna Sarkar, elected a Congressite, held a meeting in Calcutta, which, despite resolving in favor of Partition, nevertheless strongly urged that “Caste Hindu leaders should declare that they will not go 108

109 110 111 112

Jagaran reported at least three more meetings in 24 Parganas, Bardhhaman, and Mymensingh opposing Partition in late May and early June, attended by audiences of more than 1,000. Jagaran, 7 June 1947. “Partition Not to Be Tolerated: Scheduled Castes Demand Greater Bengal,” Star of India, 21 April 1947. Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 37. “Depressed Classes Association Against Movement,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 March 1947 “Repatriation Before Partition,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 March 1947.

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back on their words of honour, so often given to the depressed classes that they should at once start whole-scale reform of the Hindu social structure on the basis of equality.”113 Evidently, even for those who joined the Congress, questions remained about how and whether Partition was in their communities’ best interests and if the contemplated divide would bring about the kind of social and political equality between caste Hindus and Dalits which they themselves desired. Crucially, even for Dalit politicians such as Thakur and Sarkar, whose sympathies aligned, as described in the previous chapter with Hindu nationalists, support for the division was qualified by the assurance of rehabilitation within the contemplated “Hindu” Bengal and India and the promise of egalitarian treatment. Indeed, there is good reason to reassess whether Dalits in Bengal as a whole unambiguously desired Partition. Perhaps most indicative of the British colonial government’s willingness to forgo sustained consideration of Mandal’s claims against Partition (despite alleging as much), consider the following excerpts from the minutes of the meeting of the viceroy with Indian leaders on 2 June 1947, the day before the decision was formally announced. Mandal apparently raised the necessity of a Dalit referendum, which had been rebuffed.114 The reasons for doing so included their substantial presence among “Hindu casualties” during the Calcutta riots, the absence of separated Scheduled Castes electoral rolls combined with the unavailability of caste data within the Hindu electoral lists, the exhaustion of necessary political and military resources, and “because the principle, if applied in Calcutta, would have to be applied elsewhere – which would result in endless complications.”115 The necessity of ascertaining Dalit opinion was thus dismissed on account of multiple expediencies. Furthermore, the most recent population statistics derived from the 1941 census, the same census that recorded a decline of the Dalit population due to the Congress’ and Hindu Mahasabha’s attempts to encourage the withholding of caste identifications and enumerators’ intentional omission of the same. In early May, Mandal therefore challenged Syamaprasad Mukherjee, one of the key proponents of Partition, on his claim that the Mahasabha had not made considerable headway among Dalits in their campaign to persuade Hindus to not mention their caste at all, and be recorded simply as Hindus during the 1941 census.116 Their population in the province had artificially “declined” between the 1931 113 114 115 116

“Scheduled Castes Demand Partition of Bengal,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 5 May 1947. Mansergh and Lumby, The Transfer of Power, 1942–7, No. 23, 2 June 1947, 39–42. Ibid. “Hindu Population of Bengal: Dr. Mookerjee’s Statement Refuted by Mr. Mandal,” Statesman, 3 May 1947.

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and 1941 censuses; in Mandal’s opinion, it should have grown by more than 20 percent.117 Such considerations formed the basis for his conjecture that “Even if cent per cent of the Caste Hindus of West Bengal support partition, it cannot obviously be taken as the verdict of a majority.”118 This was why he called for a referendum. Mandal also pointed out that since the election to the provincial assemblies had occurred on the basis of existing territorial boundaries it would be “only just and fair” that government ought to “proceed on the basis of existing facts.”119 Instead, the notional scheme, eventually adopted in Mountbatten’s plan, that divided the legislative assembly into Muslimmajority and Hindu-majority districts implicitly privileged the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s demand for Partition. Like Mandal, H.S. Suhrawardy also raised objections about Calcutta to Eric Mieville, principal secretary to the viceroy in a letter dated 19 May 1947. He argued that Calcutta ought not to go to the non-Muslim area as it had been built up by the British and was a cosmopolitan city. Furthermore, Dalits in West Bengal had held meetings at which they declared against Partition: “A propaganda is going on amongst them and they are being rapidly converted. It only needs a little more time and the whole atmosphere will change. But if you take a notional vote of the representatives who have been elected to the legislature, then of course Bengal is doomed.”120 Suhrawardy continued, “If you really want to know what people are thinking about it, it is necessary to have a general referendum. It would not be fair to partition Bengal because some leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha are continuously shouting for it and some newspapers have taken up the cry.”121 In a letter to Liaquat Ali Khan penned the same day, Suhrawardy wrote: “I think I was unduly pessimistic regarding Jogen Mandal. I met him yesterday with his group of workers and had a long discussion with him and have arrived at certain scheme of work. He has had a very successful meeting in Burdwan. It was composed of about 3000 Scheduled Castes . . . His propaganda is making considerable headway in Khulna . . . and it is hoped that we shall soon get the Scheduled Castes on our side there [i.e., 24 Parganas] and some headway in Burdwan Division, but obviously the difficulties are considerable and the time is short.”122 Suhrawardy nonetheless acknowledged the 117 118 119 120 121

Ibid. “Partition Will Not Solve Problem: Majority of Non-Muslims Against Proposal,” Statesman, 23 April 1947. Ibid. Harun-or-Rashid, Inside Bengal Politics: Unpublished Correspondence of Partition Leaders (Dhaka: University Press), 78. Ibid. 122 Ibid., 80.

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limitations of the various propaganda marshaled in service of arguments against Partition. In a subsequent letter to Khan dispatched two days later, he found that the propaganda in their favor was “weak against the propaganda of the Hindus, viz. That ‘we Hindus of these areas, both Caste and Scheduled Caste, will govern together and have a great Hindu province which will be linked to the Hindu provinces of the rest of India and which will dominate over the Muslims, a province which will be rich in resources and which we shall not surrender.’”123 Several days later, however, writing to Lord Ismay, chief of staff to the viceroy on 27 April 1947, Suhrawardy objected to the notional scheme of ascertaining the people’s preferences for or against Partition. Crucially, the scheme assumed the elections of 1946 were in fact the authentic representation of the Dalit political views. Suhrawardy elaborated: In the first place, how do you know which are the areas which want partition? The statement of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha which collapsed during the last elections are of no value. This is an attempt on their part to capture Hindu sentiment. The Congress has thrown out a qualified support but it will be unable to demarcate the area because it is well known that the Hindus of Eastern or North Bengal do not desire partition. Not knowing the wishes of the people how can you determine the area in which you are to ascertain the wishes of the people . . . ?124

For Suhrawardy, ascertaining the “wishes of the people” referred primarily, to Dalits. He was “absolutely certain . . . that the present representatives of the Legislatures of the Hindu community do not represent the interests of the Scheduled Castes.” If they proceeded on the basis of the present composition of the legislative assembly, “. . . you are knowingly proceeding on a wrong basis which you cannot justify merely because of the difficulties of ascertaining the wishes of the people within the time that you have set for yourself.”125 Does Suhrawardy’s letter corroborate the claim that the Congress did not represent Scheduled Castes? Or was this sheer opportunism on his part? What are we to make of his accusation that Ismay was “knowingly” proceeding on the basis of compromised veracity? As crucial, was that his critique of the notional scheme was grounded not in an argument about his own political community – Muslim Bengal and India – but his “absolute certainty” that Hindus in the Bengal legislature did not represent Dalits.126 Indeed, as a proponent of the United Bengal proposal along with Sarat Chandra Bose, 123 126

Ibid., 83–84. 124 Ibid, 76. 125 Ibid. For an elaboration on the theme, see “Note by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy on the Partition of Bengal” in Zaidi, Jinnah Papers, Volume 1, Part 1, 607–14.

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Suhrawardy was more closely aligned with Mandal’s own preference for a united and independent Bengal. In a similar vein, Ali Muhammad Khan, President of the Muslim League Branch of Great Britain, in a lengthy submission to the British government on the Partition decision, argued that the “tragedy of the situation” was that not only were Dalits being treated as Hindus “but their number is being utilized to make up Hindu majority in the Provisional Plan of partition of India between Hindustan and Pakistan, and to help their Caste Hindu oppressors to establish their own hegemony on the Scheduled Castes together with others.”127 Khan believed that their opinion had to be established, particularly in areas where they formed a considerable part of the population. “Taking all points into consideration, it seems eminently just and fair that a plebiscite of the Scheduled Castes people should be taken in all the areas where their decision might change the majority decision of the areas concerned, to join either Hindustan or Pakistan.” He granted that if the plebiscite revealed that they chose Partition along with the caste Hindus, the status quo would remain unchanged. “But on this ground there is no justification to refuse the Scheduled Castes the exercise of their birthright of freedom of expression of their opinion on such a vital issue as the partition of their home-land.”128 Such appeals fell on deaf ears, and would likely have met with skepticism given that they originated with the League. Yet in adjudicating between the Congress’ or Mahasabha’s as against the League’s concern for Dalits, there is little clarity about whose motivations were the more sincere and genuine. To be sure, that the government moved on the decision to partition Bengal without specifically ascertaining public opinion is clear from an “Explanatory Note” on the Partition of Bengal from a Secret and Confidential Governor’s Secretariat File. The office conceded as much: “There being no time now specifically to consult public opinion on the basis of adult franchise, we must make a partition which will conform to what is believed on present evidence to be the wish of the majority community in any particular area, as evidenced at the General Election of 1945–6 and by the current ‘partition’ agitation.” In spite of “some uncertainty as to the effect of the Scheduled Caste vote” as well as the “large number of Hindus who did not specify their caste,” the government rationalized that Hindus had voted for Congress ideals and against 127

128

An Open Letter to the British Government on Boundary Demarcations Between Pakistan and Hindustan from Ali Muhammad Khan, President, Muslim League Branch, Great Britain, 21 July 1947, IOR/L/PJ/7/12465. Ibid.

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Pakistan.129 Partition therefore proceeded on this unverified assumption and despite the acknowledged uncertainty that since Dalits had voted for Congress in the 1946 elections, they now also predominantly demanded division in a united Hindu chorus. On 20 June 1947, the Legislative Assembly of Bengal met to vote on the partitioning of the province. At the preliminary joint meeting (comprising MLAs of both East and West Bengal), 126 to 90 voted that the province, if remaining united, should join Pakistan. At a separate West Bengal Legislative Assembly meeting the same day, 58 to 21 voted in favor of Partition and joining India. The separate East Bengal Legislative Assembly meeting resulted in 106 to 35 votes against Partition, and 107 to 34 votes in favor of union with Pakistan, if Partition eventuated.130 A closer look at the representative preferences of the legislators in Bengal as a whole, discounting notional schemes, by totaling the votes from east and west, shows that 127 as against 93 legislators voted against Partition. Partition therefore proceeded against the will of the majority of MLAs in united Bengal and along with the sanction of majorities in a divided one. It should be no surprise if the majority of Dalit MLAs voted for Partition: they, after all, were elected with Congress support in the 1946 elections. In a sense, it did not even matter how they voted. Their numbers had served to make the case for a notional scheme; the final outcome was thus a foregone conclusion. Perhaps the most revealing view on the contemporary hold of the Congress over Bengal’s Dalits comes, however, not from electoral data, but from the reminiscences of Latika Ghose’s visit to a village called Tutamundra in the Namasudra heartland of Gopalganj in early 1947. Ghose was an ardent supporter of the Congress, the niece of Aurobindo Ghose, and had proved to be an effective and determined organizer during the agitations against the Simon Commission.131 Yet, not until her visit to Tutamundra did she realize, “how utterly superficial was our politics, how little in touch with the actual soil, even our great national institution the Congress was – at least in Bengal.”132 Ghose stayed as the guest of Harinarayan Sen, secretary of the Brahmo Samaj’s Society for the Improvement of the Depressed Classes, and spent her days walking in neighboring villages in order to “put myself in touch with the soil of our 129 130 131

132

“Explanatory note” titled “Partition of Bengal” in Secret, Confidential Governor’s Secretariat File, Mss Eur E341/46. Mansergh and Lumby, The Transfer of Power 1942–7, No. 369, 27 June 1947, 681. Also see Begum, The Last Decades of Undivided Bengal, 176–77. See Geraldine Forbes, “Small Acts of Rebellion: Women Tell Their Photographs,” in Anindita Ghosh (ed.), Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women, and the Everyday in Colonial South Asia (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 72–76. Latika Ghose, “Tutamundra,” Calcutta Review, April 1947, 9.

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country and those who were intimately connected by their daily labor with it . . . for I felt that, we, the sophisticated, the upper-caste educated Hindus, had yet to go back in sack cloth and ashes to ask the forgiveness of and serve those whom we had neglected, who our fore-fathers had oppressed before India could attain her much desired goal of true independence.”133 Ghose’s doubts about the Congress’ work were thus born of conversations with the various individuals she encountered in Gopalganj about the means of community welfare, politics, and social conditions. This was what she found: … but I saw that there was in the heart of one and all a bitterness against caste Hindus whom they associated with the oppression of Brahminism and of the caste system and of the Zemindari system under the permanent settlement. The idea was gaining ground (it appeared to be carefully fostered) that the Congress could never stand for their welfare as it was manned by caste Hindus. I felt that there could have been no real welfare work by the Congress amongst them or how could this idea gain ground? … What struck me most was the earnestness of my enquiries. I felt somehow, that in subterranean regions somewhere, the frost of centuries had started melting. They themselves seemed to be dimly aware of a coming change but were uncertain as to its significance. The superficial political propaganda which had reached their ears had not been able to touch their hearts. The sudden veering round of the caste Hindus too – all this social cajoling, with inter-dining was not much trusted by them … a sincerer, a more enduring gesture had to be made before the socially and economically oppressed Namasudra peasant could be convinced of the friendship of the caste Hindu or of the Congress.”134

Such a candid and damning admission, coming from the pen of one so very sincerely devoted to the nationalist cause, offers insight many times more valuable than any statistical analysis about how Congress was actually apprehended in the Namasudra heartland near the very peak of the movement for the Partition of Bengal. Ghose’s remarks suggest without a doubt the profound misgivings those she encountered harbored towards her political party, as well as the discernible impress of the Federation’s critique of the Congress. They should profitably inform judgments about the persuasiveness of Indian nationalism’s appeal among Dalits on the eve of freedom from colonial rule.

133

Ibid.

134

Ibid., 14–15.

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Conclusion The defeat of Mandal’s and the Federation’s project for Dalit political autonomy was coincident with the Hindu demand for the Partition of Bengal. This silencing was not simply the outcome of the Federation’s inadequacies, however, but equally the result of sustained efforts by the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha to ensure that independent political movement found no expression among them. Partition, while undoubtedly turning on the axis of communalism, was also meaningful in its historical present as a moment entailing the retreat of a distinct possibility for the critique of caste inequality in Bengal. Far from being a united Hindu demand in favor of Partition, various coercions were enlisted to convey the impression of unanimity; this chapter has drawn attention to them and in so doing has sought to de-reify claims of Dalit integration. It was the upper-caste Hindus of Bengal who overwhelmingly rallied in support of Partition; the same is not quite true of Dalits. Despite the Federation’s limitations, the Congress deliberately sought to marginalize the sole political organization that posed a threat to its hegemony over Dalits in the 1946 elections, even as it employed means both fair and foul to win their representatives into its fold with far-reaching consequences. And in spite of the Congress’ illegalities, Mandal was able to secure his own legislative victory and subsequently to ensure Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly, an exceptional triumph amid utterly adverse and hostile circumstances. He further became the object of Indian and Hindu nationalist critiques given his continued association with the League both in the Government of Bengal and the Interim Government of India, against the backdrop of the most unprecedented acts of mass violence in modern South Asian history. Mandal’s views on this violence, however, stood considerably at odds with those who saw in them the ultimate justification for the Partition of Bengal. Both for him, and for others within the Federation and League, the riots of 1946 were not easily grasped as a simple matter of irreconcilability between Hindus and Muslims. When the Partition of Bengal became a distinct possibility, Mandal’s and the Federation’s hardly inconsiderable campaign against the move was yet again met with Hindu nationalist opposition. In his view, not only would Partition fail to resolve communal tension, but it also would enact irreversible damage to the Federation’s existence and immanent Dalit political solidarity, leaving them vulnerable to the upper-castes in the contemplated West and Muslims in the East. In such apprehensions, Mandal was not entirely alone. In a little-known

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seven-point public statement published by prominent upper-caste personalities of East Bengal – lawyers, members of the legislative assembly and council, and members of the chamber of commerce – the signatories averred: The Partition of Bengal will seriously affect the interest of the Scheduled Caste Hindus, who form a predominantly large percentage of Hindus in East Bengal. In case of Partition the well to do section of caste Hindus will naturally be inclined to move out of East Bengal and migrate to West Bengal, leaving the poorer caste Hindus and the Scheduled Caste Hindus (who are mostly poor) to their fate in an area, which for all practical purposes will be a Pakisthan [sic]. The very move for the partition will thus widen the gulf between the Scheduled Caste Hindus and caste Hindus at a time when we are seriously trying to do away with all inequalities and caste distinctions.135

Evidently even those who presumably stood to benefit the most from Partition – the caste Hindus of East Bengal – seemed to agree that its enactment would exacerbate the caste divide. The same point found mention once again at a conference Sarat Chandra Bose presided over in Calcutta, which opposed Partition “not only in the interest of East Bengal caste and Scheduled Caste Hindus but in the cause of nationalism in India and of Indian independence itself.”136 The evidence furnished will likely not displace popular memories and understandings of the turn to communalism that so visibly marked public life in the decades prior to Partition. Despite the prevalence of such notions in both history and historiography, this chapter has suggested how Partition’s significance cannot be contained by the story of communal politics and violence alone and by laying too great an emphasis on the displacement of caste by religion in community identifications. Certainly, it is difficult to comprehend Mandal and his Federation within received narratives of Dalit integration and identification with the Bengal Congress’ and Hindu Mahasabha’s aggressive anti-Muslim stance that fed into the Hindu demand for a divided province. To do so adequately however, is to perceive the fragility of the nationalist resolution of the caste question in Partition as a necessary and deep premise of the communal logic structuring this foundational event. No doubt Mandal and the Federation’s marginalization and containment in Bengal may well be traced to their own shortcomings. But there were other explanations as well, of arguably greater significance: namely, the varied attempts of Indian and Hindu nationalist organizations to 135 136

“Move for Partitioning Bengal Condemned – Seven point statement by prominent personalities,” Nationalist, 25 February 1947, in File No. 1128/46(1). “Bengal Partition Opposed,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 March 1947.

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ensure their suppression. These were bound to the Congress’ and Mahasabha’s efforts at constructing a united Hindu community that unanimously demanded the Partition of their province. To the many casualties of Partition, one might add the very possibility for Dalit political autonomy. It is a telling comment that where the last years of colonial rule brought Mandal and the Federation into prominence and power, as we shall see, those of the initial decades of postcolonial India found them incapacitated. Jogendranath Mandal and all that he represented politically, in his own arresting words, “had to be defeated” at the conjuncture of freedom from British rule and communal impasse. Coercion was thus a constitutive element in the hegemony that upper-caste nationalists sought to exercise over the Dalits of Bengal, explaining the necessity of electoral and political violence, bribery, and the fabrication of their support for Partition documented in this chapter. Far from being premised on the strength of persuasive appeals alone, the so-called integration of Dalits was critically reliant on the concerted defeat of the Federation, coupled with the wooing of politicians who emerged victorious from exploiting the skewed mechanisms available under the Poona Pact. Anticolonial nationalism thus entailed the conscious subduing of caste radicalism in late-colonial Bengal; the dissonance of winning freedom and independence alongside such imperatives speaks poignantly to the troubling contradictions of Indian anti-imperialism. What became of this freedom?

5

Betrayed Expectations East Pakistan and West Bengal, 1947–1950

Jogendranath Mandal left Calcutta for Karachi to join the Government of Pakistan on 5 August 1947. He returned just over three years later, after resigning from his ministerial position and declining his Pakistani citizenship, to face both resounding vindication and scathing criticism on both sides of the recently demarcated border. Mandal’s movement between the two new nation-states allows for a point of entry into assessing the consequences of Partition for Dalits in both West Bengal and East Pakistan. As Joya Chatterji has argued: “Partition’s impact on the minorities it created on both sides of the border, who remained where they were and did not emigrate as refugees to the new nation of their coreligionists, has not received the attention that it deserves. Yet studies of independent India and Pakistan are incomplete histories unless they seek to understand what happened to the minorities who stayed on.”1 This chapter shares in the concern to piece together the history of Partition’s minorities, albeit through a focus on some of the immediate implications for Dalits in both East Pakistan and West Bengal. This is necessary primarily because the Partition of Bengal, according to its protagonists, was sought with their best interests in mind. What did Partition mean in its immediate aftermath for the Dalits of divided Bengal? To illustrate the effects of this bifurcation, the first part of this chapter explores Mandal’s tenure as minister of law and labor in the Government of Pakistan. Subsequently, the focus turns to West Bengal to investigate whether the Congress, then restored to power after a decade-long interim, was willing to make good on Dalit demands now that freedom was won (a logic that had long characterized their thinking prior to Independence, i.e., “independence first, social problems later”) through analysis of legislative debate on the draft constitution. The final section examines the circumstances leading to Mandal’s resignation from the Government of Pakistan. These converge on offering insight into how Mandal, and 1

Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 159.

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those whom he as the most powerful Dalit politician in Pakistan was called on to represent, experienced the initial years of freedom from colonial rule. Partition found the Dalits of undivided Bengal in two antagonistic political regimes that in different ways and for distinct reasons pursued policies that fell far short of their expectations and left long-standing promises unfulfilled. In West Bengal, the Congress proclaimed their reluctance to support the reservations policies soon to be established in the constitution; in East Pakistan, Dalits were increasingly apprehended to be but a part of the Hindu minority and subjected to a systematic persecution seemingly condoned by their state. Dalits in East Pakistan thus bore the brunt of retaliatory violence on which the logic of communalism turned. Betrayed in Pakistan, Mandal’s pre-Partition apprehensions for the Dalits of undivided Bengal materialized as his hopes for Dalit and Muslim unity were torn asunder in the east, and the Congress turned on long-standing assurances to pursue social equality in the west. The rationale behind their alliance in the context of undivided Bengal was shattered within the initial years of Pakistan’s existence. Dalits in Pakistan On the verge of Independence, Mandal was convinced that Dalits in Pakistan “shall get their full political rights and privileges of which their unfortunate brethren will be deprived in Hindusthan.”2 Holaram Punjabi, his counterpart in the Sind Scheduled Castes Federation, concurred. Complaining that the “British Government has completely overlooked the claims of the Scheduled Castes,” Punjabi asserted that their economic, social, and political interests “can only be secured in Pakistan and not under the domination of the Caste Hindus.”3 Mandal decided to join Pakistan, not only because of the impossibility of leaving livelihoods, property, and homes in East Bengal for the uncertain migration to and rehabilitation in the West, and the location of the bulk of the Federation’s organization in the East, but also because of assurances extended by Jinnah. Indeed, he repeatedly ventured in various public platforms: “the minorities in the Pakistan Dominion . . . would have protection with regard to their religion, faith, life, property and culture. They would, in 2

3

“Wishes of Scheduled Castes Totally Ignored. Mr. J.N. Mandal’s criticism of British Govt.’s plan,” Morning News, 7 June 1947, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2004), 5. “Scheduled Castes Like to Remain in Pakistan State – Sind Leader on H.M.G.’s plan. ‘Our claims completely overlooked,’” Morning News, 8 June 1947, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 6.

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all respects, be treated as a citizen of Pakistan without any discrimination, but they would also have the obligations of citizenship. The minorities would have to be loyal to the state and owe true allegiance to it.”4 Mandal’s alliance with the League evidently had an effect on others’ decisions to remain in East Pakistan. As one of many Namasudras who stayed on recounted: “The sense of a division that we felt earlier was gone, because of what that minister [Mandal] said. We gained confidence that truly we could live together as brothers.”5 Perhaps most germane, however, was the issue of Ambedkar’s consent, for Mandal had been eager to receive his approval of Mandal’s joining Pakistan prior to his agreement. The day before the announcement of the Mountbatten plan, Ambedkar confided to him in a candid and frank missive: “I have always felt that the British have refused to recognise the Scheduled Castes as a separate and independent entity. The Scheduled Castes were incapable of doing anything precisely with regard to the question of partition. They could neither force partition nor could they prevent partition if it was coming. The only course left to the Scheduled Castes is to fight for safeguards either in a United Bengal or a Divided Bengal.” Ambedkar also took the view that the “Muslims are not greater friends of the Scheduled Castes than the Hindus.” Therefore, if they were destined to minority status whether in Hindu- or Muslim-majority Bengal, “the only one course is to fight for safeguards for every possible emergency. It is possible for the reasons you have mentioned that the Scheduled Castes in Eastern Bengal will elect to stay where they are even when partition comes. I have of course told the Hindus that in case there is partition they shall have to agree to reserve some land in West Bengal for the Scheduled Castes of Eastern Bengal in case [they] express a desire to migrate to Western Bengal. This is however a somewhat remote possibility.”6 Ambedkar clearly misjudged the “remote possibility” that Dalits in East Pakistan would want to migrate west; on the other hand, he was prescient about upper-caste willingness to reserve land for midnight’s unwanted children. Despite his apprehensions about Muslims and the profound loss of faith in his long-time benefactors, he advised Mandal: “In the meantime I agree that you should work in alliance with the League and secure adequate safeguards for them.”7 Another reason for Mandal’s 4

5 6 7

“Treatment of Minorities in Pakistan Dominion. Jinnah Explains Principles. Assurance for Protection of Religion, Life, Property and Culture,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 14 July 1947, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 6. Beth Roy, Some Trouble with Cows: Making Sense of Social Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 42. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17, Part 1 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra Department of Education, 2003), 362–63. Ibid.

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continued cooperation with the League, then, was Ambedkar’s qualified assent to his doing so. Remarkably, it fell to Mandal to deliver the chairman’s inaugural address at the very first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 10 August 1947. Liaquat Ali Khan had apparently approached him at a gathering for the members of the constituent assembly the night before and informed him, to his chagrin, that Jinnah had chosen him to deliver the opening address on that historic occasion.8 Caught unaware, Mandal was thrust into this entirely exceptional role in the founding of the nation-state of Pakistan: the sole Dalit and Hindu representative inaugurating a state founded on the principles of Muslim self-determination. He thus spoke, by default, not only on behalf of the Dalits of Pakistan (a majority within a minority in the context of East Pakistan), but for the Hindu minority as well. Mandal expressed appreciation of this unexpected status, insofar as his election to the first chairman of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly despite being of the minority community “augurs very well with the creation of Pakistan, because Pakistan today is the result of persistent and legitimate demand of the minority community namely, the Muslims of India.”9 Indeed, his inaugural address dwelt at length and optimistically on the existence of minorities in Pakistan. They would be “required to change their outlook and people of all communities living in Pakistan should now trust one

Figure 5.1: Mandal addressing the first meeting of the constituent assembly of Pakistan. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal. 8 9

Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 241. Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, Official Report, Volume 1 (Karachi: Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 1947), 2.

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another. The distrust, hatred, enmity and jealousy should be replaced by trust, love, friendship and mutual co-operation.”10 Mandal’s engagement with the minority form was a complex and confusing one. In the radically transformed political-territorial context of Pakistan, he increasingly presented himself as speaking on behalf of both the Hindus and Dalits of the country, the two commitments jostling uneasily for his identification. This did not mean, however, that he was “torn between two identities” or that the Islamicizing policies of the Pakistani state “collapsed the internal social boundaries” among Hindus.11 Rather, Dalits remained Mandal’s and other Federationists’ primary point of reference, and they continued to be as critical of the Congress as in years past. The Pakistani state’s “anti-Hindu” policies were a betrayal of the Federation’s commitment to Dalit and Muslim unity in particular, indeed to the very vision Mandal believed sustained his alliance with the Muslim League. Note that East Pakistan’s “Hindu minority” consisted overwhelmingly of Dalits as many of the caste Hindus had already left for Calcutta.12 The notion of “anti-Hindu” violence in the east easily glossed over this fact. Although Mandal remained outwardly committed to Jinnah’s vision of a Pakistan where minorities could live in confidence, he evidently harbored misgivings about this promise from fairly early on. By the end of 1947 he had given voice to his disillusionment, as had his counterpart Ambedkar, with the new government of India.13 In a letter to Suhrawardy, Mandal expressed concern that the expectations the Federation had of the Muslim League government in East Pakistan were already being disappointed. Suhrawardy was facing his own difficulties, and Mandal was “wide awake to the fact that you are passing your days in worries and anxieties of multifarious nature . . .” Yet he could not help writing to him with a “heavy heart” to bring some “important matters” to his notice.14 Mandal listed a series of complaints that, given the history of his association with the League in pre-Partition Bengal, placed him in a particularly awkward and compromising predicament. Khwaja Nazimuddin had not as yet included any Dalit member in his 10 11 12

13 14

Ibid., 2. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, second edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 254. By December 1950, the vast majority of “Hindus other than Scheduled Castes,” numbering 1,679,783 in total, had migrated to West Bengal from the east. Report on the Sample Survey for Estimating the Socio-economic Characteristics of displaced persons migrating from Eastern Pakistan to the State of West Bengal (Calcutta: State Statistical Bureau, Government of West Bengal, 1951), 19. “Harijan’s Lot in Pakistan: Mr. Mandal’s Move,” Times of India, 28 November 1947, 6; “Indian Political Notes,” Times of India, 4 December 1947, 6. Letter from J.N. Mandal to H.S. Suhrawardy, 29 December 1947, File No. 153/26(1): Interception of correspondence addressed to Suhrawardy.

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cabinet, and neither had any of their representatives been included among the fifteen designated parliamentary secretaries. Despite his repeated requests, the East Bengal government had failed to appoint a special officer for Dalit education, no declaration emerged regarding the continuance of their past educational concessions and privileges, and Dalit candidates were not being recruited in government employment as was their due. Mandal reminded Suhrawardy of his public statement before Partition that the various concessions Dalits received from the League government of undivided Bengal would continue under the new regime. This had aroused a “sense of security and hope” and he therefore felt they were “morally and legally bound to respect their commitments and promises.”15 Instead, the Nazimuddin ministry “appears to be not only unsympathetic but definitely callous and indifferent to the legitimate interests of the Scheduled Castes.”16 This was especially unfortunate, given the context of Mandal’s and the Federation’s alliance with the League in undivided Bengal and the consequent “adverse criticism and hostile demonstration by the Congress and the caste Hindus” they endured.17 Moreover, he underscored how compromised his and the Federation’s position would appear in public view if in the immediate aftermath of Partition, the League leadership “become so much unsympathetic [sic] and unfriendly to the Scheduled Castes . . .”18 He therefore sought Suhrawardy’s intervention in these matters, as the latter’s “unalloyed sympathy” and “encouraging assurances” had “emboldened the Federation and me to work in cooperation with the League in the teeth of vehement opposition and bitter criticism from all quarters.”19 Mandal was clearly pointing to the specificity of his expectations for Dalits, and not Hindus at large, in Pakistan, and pleading the breach of their understanding. This letter might well serve to confirm that Mandal and the Federation’s alliance with the League had been for naught, and that he gullibly succumbed to the League leadership’s instrumental, yet ultimately hollow, assurances. Yet such a reading insufficiently appreciates the peculiar circumstances in which he was bound. Mandal could not conceivably have chosen to remain in India, given the virulence with which the Congress regarded him; more important, because the majority of the Dalits of undivided Bengal were now in East Pakistan, not to mention that the location of his home constituency, Barisal, was also in East Pakistan. Mandal had little choice but to retain hope that minorities could indeed rest assured of their security in Pakistan, despite acute 15

Ibid.

16

Ibid.

17

Ibid.

18

Ibid.

19

Ibid.

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awareness to the contrary. In a sense, Pakistan came to Mandal rather than the other way around. Mandal pronounced his optimism in an interview with the Globe in mid-October 1947. “I am definitely of the view that the minority has every right to get the protection of the state and no state has got any power or right to oppress and crush a determined, faithful and loyal minority.”20 It was regrettable that minorities of both dominions were still migrating and being evacuated to the country of their co-religionists. Hindus and Muslims had to live in both India and Pakistan, and it was “unfortunate” that the Hindus of East Bengal “are reported to be thinking in terms of migration at a large scale. I do not know ‘why.’ After the restoration of peace in Calcutta, nothing has happened in either part of Bengal to create panic and a sense of insecurity in the minds of the Hindus and Muslims.”21 Such was plainly not the case. In a letter to Baikuntha Chandra Mandal, secretary of the Tippera District Scheduled Caste Federation, written a week earlier, Mandal was “very sorry to learn the sufferings of the Scheduled Caste people in Sylhet.”22 A letter from Nazimuddin to Jinnah referred to the request of Dalit leaders that Mandal come to East Bengal to improve communal relations and attend to their welfare. Nazimuddin alluded to “mischievous elements” trying to utilize Dalits against Muslims: “Jogen’s presence in East Bengal for a couple of weeks will be of very great help in counteracting the activities of the Mahasabha group who are at the back of this movement.”23 Mandal’s own missive to Jinnah in early November sought permission to undertake a tour of East Bengal to broker peace between contending parties in cases filed after the riots of October the year before. Leaders of both communities repeatedly declared that his presence in their localities “would end in the withdrawal of all the cases and countercases,” so Mandal felt he should “go there and save the people from further suffering, hardship and continued bitter feeling.”24 Resolutions that a conference of Dalit leaders passed in Dacca that October illustrate the extent to which they made the effort to explicitly register their fealty to Pakistan, despite evident anxieties and apprehensions about their increasingly insecure environment. Even as the conference of “Scheduled Caste leaders of Eastern Pakistan” reaffirmed 20 21 23

24

“Minorities Have Every Right to State Protection,” Star of India, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 41. Ibid., 42. 22 Letter from J.N. Mandal to B.C. Mandal, in Ibid., 46 Khwaja Nazimuddin to M.A. Jinnah, 26 October 1947, in Z.H. Zaidi (ed.), Quaidi-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers, Volume VI (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 2001), 206–7. J.N. Mandal to M.A. Jinnah, 8 November 1947, in Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 274–75.

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its “unflinching loyalty” and “faithful allegiance” to the Pakistan government and state, it nonetheless called on its leadership to issue a declaration reassuring them of their safety and security and to take measures to allay the prevailing panic. They urged their community as well as other minorities not to leave their homes, and proposed the formation of village welfare committees composed of both League and Federation members “for the promotion of common good and preservation of friendly and cordial relations between the Muslims and Scheduled Castes and other minorities.” The conference also called for the reinstating of those Dalit government employees who sought to join the Indian union to the positions they held prior to Partition, as they were “misguided by the propaganda of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha and undue influence of their superior officers, who were mostly Caste Hindus . . .” Their final resolution sought the inclusion of those excluded from the 1941 census on account of the Hindu Mahasabha’s propaganda, which caused “incalculable loss to the interest of the Scheduled Caste.”25 It is clear that for those who organized this meeting, the primary point of identification remained the Scheduled Castes of East Pakistan, not the blanket category “Hindu” with which they were ambiguously identified. It is simply not true that they grasped the “anti-Hindu” atmosphere of the latter months of the year in precisely those categorical terms. A letter that fourteen representatives of the Federation placed before Jinnah spoke of the “legitimate demands and grievances of the Scheduled Castes of Eastern Pakistan.”26 Another, from the ironically named All Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, spoke of the “mutual relation between the Pakistan Government and its people so far as the Scheduled Castes are concerned . . .”27 During a legislative assembly discussion about statesponsored violence in Sylhet in August 1949, Mukunda Behary Mullick submitted that it was a “great pity for us to find that members of the Scheduled Castes were very severely dealt with.”28 Such statements illustrated the specificity of Dalit expectations of the state. An episode from Mandal’s stay in Karachi poignantly bore out a similar concern in the west. Several Dalit leaders approached him in early October 1947 about how to allay the panic resulting from the Congress’ propaganda among their communities. At their request, he 25 26

27 28

Ibid., 47–49. Dwarakanath Barori et al. to M.A. Jinnah, 21 March 1948, Z.H. Zaidi (ed.), Quaidi-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers, Volume VII (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 2002), 240–44. Bharat Chandra Sircar to M.A. Jinnah, 23 March 1948, in Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers, 260–62. Assembly Proceedings Official Report (Dhaka: East Bengal Legislative Assembly, 1949), 159.

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visited their localities where spokesmen “impressed on me the need for giving them badges so that they might not be ill-treated and molested by anybody and they get all necessary protection and help from the police on duty.” The residents were mostly corporation employees, dock laborers, and servants. On their leaders’ request, the design of the badge was to resemble the national flag of Pakistan so as to “command some respect from the people of the majority community who were apprehended to be aggressive.” Mandal facilitated this desire for specific identification among Dalits in Karachi, intended as it was to grant immunity from antiHindu Muslim aggression.29 Over the next two years, Mandal and the Federation in East Pakistan continued to press for the fulfillment of their various demands at a number of conferences: adequate representation in government bodies, educational stipends for Dalit students, and fostering an atmosphere of communal amity to ensure security. These were studiously ignored. Mandal wanted a minister from the minority community to be included within Nazimuddin’s East Pakistan ministry; on receiving a negative response from Jinnah, he exasperatedly offered to resign his position.30 During this period, his relations with key personnel in government deteriorated. At a meeting of the Minority Subcommittee, Mandal believed he earned the ire of his colleagues on account of his objection to separate electorates for Muslims. In direct contrast to his preferences in undivided Bengal, Mandal supported a joint electorate with seats reserved for minorities in the radically transformed political context of a Muslim-majority Pakistan. On reflection, he believed that it was after this particular heated disagreement that the state’s leadership began to regard him with disapproval.31 As a precursor to sentiments that eventually motivated the struggle for Bangladesh, Mandal opposed the proposition that Urdu be instituted as the language of compulsory primary education at a major education conference in late November 1947.32 His attempts to approach Liaquat Ali Khan to press Nurul Amin, the newly appointed chief minister of East Pakistan, to appoint three ministers from the minority community met little success.33 Mandal thought efforts were afoot to foment divisions among members of the Scheduled Caste Federation and to undermine his leadership among his own 29

30 33

It would appear that the cloak of invisibility that some Dalits discovered during Partition in the west, as described by Ravinder Kaur, was not available to all. See her essay “Narrative Absence: An ‘Untouchable’ Account of Partition Migration,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 42:2, 2008, 281–306. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 265. 31 Ibid., 265. 32 Ibid., 255. “Letter of Resignation,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 181.

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Figure 5.2: Jogendranath Mandal photographed in Sialkot City, 9 November 1948. A portrait presented to him by Nazar Alam, Egyptian Arts, photographers, and photo goods dealers. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal.

constituency.34 Whatever expectations he had for Dalits in Pakistan began to come under strain. If Mandal grew critical of the Muslim League leadership’s stalling with regard to their demands, this did not imply a less critical stance toward the Congress or an attempt to seek an understanding. In July 1948, his proposal to unite the Dalit leaders in the Congress with those in his Federation with the intent of securing better privileges for Dalits in Pakistan was initially accepted, yet it subsequently failed as the Congress’ Dalit leaders “later backed out under influence of the Congress.”35 At a conference held in Dacca in late September 1948, Mandal still “bitterly criticised the caste Hindus for their treatment 34 35

Ibid., 182. “Scheduled Castes in Pakistan: J.N. Mandal’s plea for ‘United Front,’” Star of India, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 69.

Debating the Constitution in West Bengal

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towards Scheduled Castes.”36 He said that their attitude toward them was “responsible for large numbers of the latter embracing Islam in the past and their struggle for separate existence as a political entity.”37 Raisaheb Lalit Kumar Bal, chairman of the reception committee of a conference in Barisal in December the same year, castigated the “past and present activities of the Congress and also accused the Caste Hindus of maltreating the Scheduled Caste community for years and generations in the past.”38 In January the following year at a meeting in Serajganj, Mandal alleged that the migration of minorities from East Pakistan was instigated by elements within India. He “strongly criticized Caste Hindu leaders, especially in West Bengal, for ‘attempting to create a sense of insecurity among the minorities of East Bengal.’”39 Speculation, analysis, and critique of the condition of minorities in the neighboring country was rampant in both the Indian and Pakistani press as both publics scrutinized the other’s treatment of its respective minority, spurring on the retributive nature of contemporary violence and counter-critique. Yet clearly, skepticism with the League leadership did not push Mandal and his associates toward rapprochement with the Congress in the east. How was the Congress in West Bengal, then, responding to Dalit demands? This question must be assessed in light of that organization’s persistent deferral during the late-colonial period of questions they considered internal to Hindu community to the postcolonial, as well as promises extended during the campaign for Partition that social equality would be secured once national freedom was won. Now that freedom from colonial rule and the fear of Muslim domination were achieved, how did they redeem their longstanding assurances? A key debate on the draft constitution of India offers a penetrating view of the matter. Debating the Constitution in West Bengal In September 1948, a little over a year after Partition and Independence, the West Bengal legislative assembly convened to discuss their future constitution. The Congress had resumed control over their newly formed state, the accomplishment of what Mandal saw as its ironic agitation for the Partition of Bengal. A moment of intense introspection and 36 37 38 39

“Loyalty to Pakistan – Scheduled Castes’ Declaration,” Star of India, 29 September 1948, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 71. Ibid. “E.B. Scheduled Castes Conference – Hindus Advised Not to Leave Home,” Star of India, 17 December 1948, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 73. “Pakistan Created For the Poor and Down-trodden – Exodus Caused by Mischievous Propaganda – Pak. Law Minister Addresses Serajganj Meeting,” Statesman, 16 January 1949, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 78.

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Betrayed Expectations: East Pakistan and West Bengal, 1947–1950

aspiration, the debate began with an appreciation of three words: Selfrealization, self-development, self-fulfillment.40 At this juncture, the Congress leadership once more argued for the inadmissibility of the very category Scheduled Caste, as with the Poona Pact over a decade earlier, but now, in newly independent West Bengal. This was the expression of their overt hostility to the exceptional treatment mandated for Scheduled Caste communities that was eventually enshrined in the Indian constitution. The debate thus featured the contemplated passage of laws intended to establish parity, coupled with the declaration that their very potential and implementation would go unfulfilled because of a political culture hostile to their categorical premise. In a stark reversal of decades of nationalist oaths, West Bengal’s Congress leadership effectively agreed to dismantling the entire legal apparatus whereby Dalit politics found meaning. So it was that Sri Kanai Lal De earnestly offered the following restructuring of the system of reservations proposed by the Draft Constitution: “given the current extent of reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, I propose that instead of keeping Scheduled Caste within Hindu society, it is necessary to make all Hindus into one, moreover, those who are currently economically, educationally backward – only they should get special arrangements.”41 De reasoned that since only a few “upper-classes of the Scheduled Castes” enjoyed most of the government assistance even though they were “no less than the Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas of Hindu society,” they ought to be excluded. Only those “really on the lower rungs of society” should be allowed to avail of such benefits. De qualified his recommendations, requesting that his statements not be misinterpreted as an anti-Scheduled Caste stance. Instead, his was a sober and wellintentioned plea for the erasure of their legal and political existence. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, the first chief minister of West Bengal, from 15 August 1947 through 14 January 1948, was far more forthright about the matter: “The sooner this reservation goes the better. This reservation stands in the way of a democratic procedure in the country and it fosters the idea that we are separate. So long as this system of reservation will continue, there can be no one common country for us. (Cries of ‘hear,’ ‘hear.’) Therefore the sooner it goes the better.”42 Referring to the attitudes of those who “prefer to remain backward,” “persons who will ever remain backward” in order to get seats in the legislature and in government services as “neo-Brahminism,” Ghosh advised: 40 41

Extract from the Assembly Proceedings, Official Report, West Bengal Legislative Assembly, Debate on the Draft Constitution (Alipore: West Bengal Government Press, 1948), 1. Debate on the Draft Constitution, 17. 42 Ibid., 21.

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We should better avoid this. I hope all sections of the legislature will be unanimous on this point that this reservation should be abolished. About reservation in services also we should appoint best men in the services; otherwise it is bad for our country . . . I do feel that in some cases injustice has been done. So reservation may continue – not in the legislature but in the services only – but no more than five years in any case. No vested interest should be allowed to grow; otherwise this country will never be able to come to its stature. We are all free now and there should be no reservation.43

Ghosh articulated here a particular reading of the relationship between freedom and differentiated citizenship that condensed a widespread perception that such mechanisms would “stand in the way of democratic procedure” and “a common country.” As the first chief minister, his was presumably the dominant view, a barometer of public sentiment. The most powerful leaders of the West Bengal legislative assembly and Congress party thus shared in the understanding that reservations were inimical to India’s democracy. The freedom Ghosh hailed excluded protective discrimination in the form of reservations, a liberalism “inhospitable to difference.”44 In Pramathnath Bandyopadhyay’s understanding, much like Ghosh’s and De’s, casteism was being perpetuated by those representatives who “in reality did not represent the Scheduled Castes at all, but their own caste . . . The second matter is that since we have accepted the rights of equalities, and since we don’t acknowledge the caste system . . . I consider the removal of Scheduled Caste privilege in employment or elections an absolute necessity, and that the Constitution should have arrangements of this manner.”45 Bandyopadhyay warned that if “we accept this [reservations] just once, it will continue forever, and if it continues forever, society and nation will remain weakened in two parts.” Like other prominent Congressites, Bandyopadhyay issued a meritocratic call for the rejection of the very category Scheduled Caste, wishing away two of the central demands for which their various political movements had agitated over the past decades: some form of political safeguard, and reservations in government services.46 At the birth of postcolonial constitutionality – the horizon that leaders of the Congress had repeatedly hailed over the previous three decades in response to Dalit leaders’ demands during the late-colonial years – they once again professed their refusal to concede their logic. The problem had always been their inability to countenance the notion that Dalits could share common grievances, much less formulate a politics. Nothing they saw in their society justified the 43 44 45

Ibid., 21–22. (My emphasis.) Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 60. Debate on the Draft Constitution, 26. 46 Ibid.

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arrangements proposed by the draft constitution. Theirs was earnest dissuasion of the reservations policy. They perceived falsity in the proposition that policies of compensatory discrimination were necessary to redress deprivations along the axis of caste difference. These were not, of course, the only views expressed regarding the future of policy about Dalits in West Bengal. Banku Behari Mondal’s speech at the debate communicated his distress over the Congress’ perceived hypocrisy. Note that he won his legislative seat on a Congress ticket in 1946. Mondal assailed his upper-caste colleagues for their delegitimizing of reservations policies: “These days when Scheduled Castes get just about one or two jobs why does your skin burn so? Typically Scheduled Castes don’t even get news of jobs. Even if they do, they hear that they’re not suitable, inefficient. Thus, what will happen if they pass B.Sc., B.A. M.A., Law – this is the situation . . .” Mondal responded to the proposal that casteism be “removed” by doing away with the category “Scheduled Caste” with evident sarcasm and anger: Come then, within us. Sit with us and eat on the same platter. Come on then, let’s see this big bravado – he’ll remove casteism. Come with me to the neighbourhoods – there you’ll see that even though I’m educated, they won’t let me sit with them – this is the state of affairs. Untouchability is a crime. In your speeches, “The country’s welfare will not occur if all communities are not equal.” But if you go inside, you’ll be able to see a different situation . . . Kanai Babu, Pramath Babu have said that Brahmin, Kayastha, whoever it may be, that all are given education and given jobs in an equal manner. I request that they go once to Writers’ Building, and opening the civil list, look for how many Scheduled Castes there are and how very many Brahmins, Baidyas etc., caste-Hindus there are – if they see this, they’ll be able to decide. On us receiving two-four good government jobs, your jealousy.47

Such criticisms laid bare the strains within the Congress during the early years of national freedom about the state’s responsibility to redress caste inequalities. Moreover, his personal appeals to Bandyopadhyay and his anecdote that “even though I’m educated they won’t let me sit with them,” suggested how even at this juncture, Dalit MLAs experienced caste discrimination despite the distinction conferred on them by the state. This debate about the draft constitution offers a brief snapshot of the political-cultural context to which Mandal would return following his resignation.48 As was amply clear, the leading politicians of West 47 48

Ibid., 43–44. As Janab Mudassir Hossain fiercely attacked the Congress in his lengthy and impassioned tirade during the debate: “. . . representative of not even 3 percent of the total population, exercising the total powers of the state for the benefit of the so-called self-serving Congress workers to the exclusion of others, specially Muslims. Therefore, Sir, they are totalitarians, Fascists and Nazis and they are even worse.” Ibid., 58–59.

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Bengal, many of whom were seasoned stalwarts of the struggle for Indian freedom, would have preferred the erasure of the category Scheduled Caste, much less ensuring their welfare on that basis. “You will forever stay beneath the feet/legs, isn’t this the shastras law[?]” an anonymous voice reminded Mondal. In their minds, the very idea of reservations was inimical to the national developmental project.49 Reservations were a sign of the nation’s disunity, and by removing them, unity would be restored, or so the upper-caste nationalist logic proceeded. Such policies ultimately were instituted in West Bengal but only because the provisions were ratified by the Constituent Assembly. How they were actually implemented will be addressed in closing chapters. The debate was an unambiguous comment on Congress’ will to give them effect. The Breakdown of Communal Amity Only a few months after Independence, Ambedkar succinctly described the double bind that Dalits faced in both countries in his open invitation for them to migrate to India. By then, his earlier optimism had soured: “the condition of the Scheduled Castes in India is as it is in Pakistan. In India they are being tyrannized by the Caste Hindus in all parts of the country. While in Pakistan they are subjected to forcible religious conversion, in Hindustan they are subjected to forcible political conversion.” Ambedkar noted how they were “compelled to be members of the Congress and if they refuse . . . they are boycotted and their lives made impossible . . .” He nonetheless issued a call to those “impounded inside Pakistan” to migrate to India. “The Congress party has weakened the political safeguards necessary for the Scheduled Castes under the new Constitution to such an extent as to make them worse than useless. Nonetheless, our numbers are so great that if we are well-organised, we cannot fail to influence the Government of the day.”50 Ambedkar’s call for their migration to India directly contradicted the stance Mandal and 49

50

The two readings of equality expressed by the desire to retain or erase the category Scheduled Caste roughly approximated what Charles Taylor calls “two modes of politics.” For one (Bandyopadhyay, Ghosh, et al.), “the principle of equal respect requires that we treat people in a difference-blind fashion.” For the other, “we have to recognize and even foster particularity.” Taylor continues, “The reproach the first makes to the second is just that it violates the principle of non-discrimination. The reproach the second makes to the first is that it negates identity by forcing people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue to them . . . Consequently, the supposedly fair and difference-blind society is not only inhuman (because suppressing identities) but also, in a subtle and unconscious way, itself highly discriminatory.” Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 43. B.R. Ambedkar, National Standard, 28 November 1947, in Writing and Speeches (Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 2006).

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the Federation adopted for the majority of his time in Pakistan. Recall that at this juncture, Mandal was doubtful and ambivalent at best about the prospects for their migration and rehabilitation in West Bengal in public. To be sure, Mandal ultimately did return to Calcutta, but only after spending three years as a member of the Pakistan government engaged in seemingly futile efforts to ensure Dalit security and welfare, even as hostilities against them continued to escalate. During riots in Karachi in January 1948, Mandal had sheltered many of those affected in his own house.51 Yet as a loyal representative of Pakistan, he persisted in his appeal to Hindu minorities, and Dalits in particular, to resist the urge to flee Pakistan in favor of India. To be sure, this placed him in the extremely difficult and compromising position of arguable culpability for the violence endured by them in East Pakistan; moreover, it indicated the utter shattering of his hopes for Dalit and Muslim political unity. By the end of 1950, for instance, a sample survey carried out by the Government of West Bengal indicated that at least 405,260 Dalits had already migrated from East Pakistan to various districts in West Bengal.52 The cracks in Mandal’s public certainty regarding their security in Pakistan began to appear by late 1949. He received letters from Manohar Dhali, East Pakistan MLA and Federation member, narrating the atrocities that occurred in Khulna. In one of these, Dhali confessed that the situation was “so very alarming and serious that I am really unable to write and describe even one thousandth part of the whole matter.”53 He alleged that “hundreds of our women have been ravished, property looted, persons forcibly converted and seven villages have been reduced to deserts.”54 Dhali believed that the local police authorities enabled the rioters to act with impunity. “Whenever I think of it, I feel that I may run mad, but helpless.”55 A week later, Dhali detailed the repercussions suffered by the predominantly Dalit residents of Chitalmari in Bagerhat, Khulna, on account of the death of a policeman: “All sorts of atrocities were committed in that area of Chitalmari Union. Women were criminally assaulted and raped, properties looted, cattle taken away, persons brutally assaulted as a result of which some had already died, women were kidnapped, converted, and married, images of deities 51 52

53 54

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 275–76. Report on the Sample Survey for Estimating the Socio-economic Characteristics of displaced persons migrating from Eastern Pakistan to the State of West Bengal (Calcutta: State Statistical Bureau, Government of West Bengal, 1951), 19. Letter from M. Dhali to J.N. Mandal, 30 December 1949, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 100. Ibid. 55 Ibid.

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broken, cows have been slaughtered and some families have been converted into Islam. All these atrocities are said to have been done by the Muslims of the locality with the help of the Police.”56 Dhali impressed on Mandal the need for judicial redress, and the need to forestall the continued perpetuation of atrocities. Barring that, it would be “impossible for the members of the minority community, especially the Scheduled Castes, to live here.”57 Dhali underscored the duality of their predicament: especially Scheduled Castes, albeit within the minority community. Mandal wrote to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, forwarding several of the representations he received from the aggrieved parties and renarrating the sequence of events that had led to the various incidents of mass violence. He qualified that he was not advocating leniency toward anyone who may have been guilty of offenses that instigated retaliatory acts of violence, but was quick to emphasize that such incidents ought not to be exploited for the widespread violation of innocent parties. He added, “I am of the view that if such widespread oppression and persecution is carried on the Scheduled Caste people irrespective of their fault or guilt, it would only lead to mass exodus of the Scheduled Caste people and creation of a feeling that they are not entitled to get protection of law in Pakistan.”58 Here then, was the first instance where Mandal openly conceded the possibility of their mass migration from Pakistan to its leader. The appeal had no effect. Over the coming months riots broke out in Dacca, Barisal district, and other parts of East Pakistan.59 Mandal toured the region, studied the aftermath of these disturbances, appealed for calm, and provided relief for those affected. Yet it is possible to detect the gradual erosion in his tolerance for Muslim aggression toward Dalits in public pronouncements. At a meeting in Barisal he recalled publicly upbraiding the “Muslim scoundrels” responsible for the violence against members of his community, and strongly criticized the “government’s futility.”60 Mandal had indeed “spoken very frankly.”61 He advised the Namasudras to “fight, literally, against any act or attempt at 56 57 58 59

60 61

Letter from M. Dhali to J.N. Mandal, 7 January 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 102. Ibid., 103. Letter from J.N. Mandal to L.A. Khan, 19 January 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 110. See A.J. Kamra, The Prolonged Partition and Its Pogroms (New Delhi: Voice of India, 2000) and Tathagatha Roy, A Suppressed Chapter in History: The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh, 1947–2006 (New Delhi: Bookwell, 2007) for details about these riots. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 310. “Inside Pakistan: The Proof of the Pudding,” Vigil 1:17, 17 June 1950, 17.

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oppression.”62 News of such criticisms evidently reached Khan; when Mandal returned to Karachi to report his assessment of the East Pakistan riots, the prime minister inquired into his presumably inappropriate antiMuslim rhetoric. Mandal remembered responding that the premier must have only received partial reports of his addresses, as he had also commended those Muslims who came to the aid of those afflicted and urged the latter to remain in Pakistan.63 The Liaquat-Nehru Pact of April 1950 was announced in the context of violence on both sides of the border as a settlement between India and Pakistan to negotiate the problem of minorities and migration consequent on Partition.64 Building on the Inter-Dominion Agreement of December 1948, the Pact notably provided migrants with the right to return to property abandoned under duress, provided they did so by the end of the year. In September, Mandal observed that “the very fact that a considerably large number of Hindu migrants were coming back to their ancestral hearths and homes in East Pakistan indicated the restoration of confidence in the minds of the minority community.”65 Citing the migration figures published by both governments under the aegis of the Liaquat-Nehru Pact, he hoped the Pact would resolve the ongoing disputes about migrants between India and Pakistan. Yet this was to toe a line in public which he clearly had recognized by then as untenable. Mandal’s autobiography reveals the deep-seated reservations he harbored by this juncture about his role in the Government of Pakistan, and allows some insight into the conflict within this man.66 Observing the after-effects of the communal riots in east Pakistan instilled in him grave doubts about the future of Dalits in that state; he also became increasingly apprehensive for his own life on account of his well-known disapproval of and protest against the acts of mass violence his own government appeared to have condoned. He became increasingly agonized over whether it would be appropriate for him to remain a minister when he was incapable of protecting those he represented from the persecution of neighbors. Mandal faced an intractable dilemma: “if he remained a minister in Pakistan he would have to entreat the minorities not to leave Pakistan. Because this was his duty as a minister. But he could not give any assurances about their future security, yet would have to request that they remain in Pakistan . . .”67 He could no longer justifiably bear the 62 64 65 66

Ibid. 63 Ibid., 312. See Chatterji, Spoils of Partition, 171–194, for how Muslims fared at this time in West Bengal. “E. Pakistan Doing Best to Implement Pact,” Dawn, 9 September 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 160. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 312–13. 67 Ibid., 314.

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commitment. Mandal rationalized his resignation because Dalits’ future in Pakistan seemed entirely bleak, coupled with his inability to effect any meaningful change in their insecure circumstances. There were other factors that impelled him to this course of action.68 Following a subsequent series of meetings with the League leadership, Mandal suspected that even if he submitted his resignation, it might not be accepted. He wondered if he could even stay in his village or Barisal town if he resigned against the wishes of the prime minister. His objections to a new bill prohibiting any kind of expression against the state of Pakistan – a bill that he would have had to oversee as law minister – further strengthened his resolve. Neither could he approve the fairly draconian implications of a contemplated “intending evacuee” bill that provided government with sweeping powers to appropriate the property of so-called intending evacuees (a category of migrant that could be established on the slightest of pretexts), as well as joint property, even if only one shareholder departed for India. Mandal was also at odds with Khan’s attempt to retrospectively give effect to the Public Representatives and Officers Disqualifications Act. In all these matters, he believed he incurred the resentment of the prime minister and other members of the cabinet. An unusually sensitive analysis of Mandal’s predicament came from the correspondent of Vigil, a newsmagazine associated with Acharya Kripalani, who described him as a victim of the League’s designs. “The masters of Pakistan are mighty angry with Sri Mandal who had addressed big meetings in the areas where the Namasudra community predominates. Sri Mandal was once Pakistan’s main ally in dividing the Hindus in East Bengal. He was used as a wedge between the caste-Hindus and the Scheduled Castes. He was a big factor in keeping a large section of the Namasudra community, the most important among the Scheduled castes, alienated from the caste-Hindus and the Congress. That position is now changed.” The writer observed that although it was clear that the Namasudras could not be protected from the “onslaught of Pakistan’s policy of Islamisation of the State,” neither could Pakistan eject Mandal in a hurry. “It has first to undermine his position in his community. So Pakistan’s policy now will be to create another schism in the Namasudra community. I think it is with that object in view that they are thinking of appointing Sri Dwarik Barori a Minister of the East Bengal Government under the terms of the Delhi agreement. I know they originally wanted a caste-Hindu. But now, after Sri Mandal’s speeches, they find it more urgent to divide the Namasudras. Sri Barori is a Namasudra 68

Ibid., 315–18.

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and there is no love lost between him and Sri Mandal. It is easy to guess what the game is.”69 Mandal was clearly faced with considerable dilemmas and pressures, both to do with his own future with the Government of Pakistan and his ability to prevent the insecurity that Dalits in East Bengal endured. Resignation Mandal was due to travel to Muri in northern West Punjab to attend a Judicial Subcommittee conference in mid-September 1950. His only son, who was studying in Calcutta at the time, had taken ill, and Mandal decided to cancel official commitments to attend to him. On arrival in Calcutta, Mandal claimed he fell ill himself, and it was at this juncture that he decided not to return to Karachi. From Calcutta, he requested Khan to assign his portfolios to one of his colleagues “at least temporarily,” fueling speculation about his impending resignation.70 His associates in the Federation in East Pakistan sent their fervent requests that he not take such a drastic step and “rather continue serving interests of Pakistan and her minority.”71 He even received a telegram from his office in Karachi urgently requesting his return.72 Mandal’s public letter of resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan brought his career in Pakistan to a close.73 The incidents Mandal described in that letter were a stark confirmation of his apprehensions. He began by saying that it was with “a heavy heart and a sense of utter frustration at the failure of my life-long mission to uplift the backward Hindu masses of East Bengal that I feel compelled to tender resignation of my membership of your Cabinet.”74 Reviewing the context of his association with the League of nearly seven years, Mandal explained how the similarities in Muslims’ and Dalits’ socioeconomic circumstances and interests in Bengal had prompted his cooperation. Recalling the mass violence of the Calcutta riots of August 1946 and thereafter, he underscored at what great cost he had continued his cooperation with the League. On that occasion he had been saved from the wrath of “infuriated Hindu mobs” by his “caste Hindu neighbors.” As remarkably, Mandal admitted that he had “always considered the demand for Pakistan by the Muslim League as 69 70 71 73 74

“Inside Pakistan: The Proof of the Pudding,” Vigil, 1:17, 17 June 1950, 17–18. “Mr. Mandal Wants to Resign – Statement expected soon,” Times of India, 3 October 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 173. Ibid. 72 Ibid., 172. This is the document for which Mandal has been, ironically, most renowned in both India and Pakistan. “Letter of Resignation,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 176.

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a bargaining counter,” and though he felt that Muslims had legitimate reasons for grievance, he believed that the creation of Pakistan “would never solve the communal problem.”75 If temporarily, he had nonetheless invested his full faith in the principles of the Lahore Resolution. He had “presumed that it [Pakistan] would be set up in all essentials after the pattern contemplated in the Muslim League resolution adopted at Lahore on March 23, 1940.”76 He placed great trust in Jinnah’s assurances during the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly about the equality of treatment of Hindus and Muslims in Pakistan.77 These pledges had now been blatantly breached, with the knowledge and approval of the present Pakistani leadership. Turning to narrate the “record of unpleasant and disappointing” negotiations he pursued with Khan, Nazimuddin, and Amin regarding the provision of ministerial positions, Mandal noted how his efforts to safeguard minority and Dalit interests met with annoyance by the Government of East Pakistan and several among the League leadership. After Partition, and particularly after Jinnah’s death: . . . the Scheduled Castes have not received a fair deal in any matter. You will recollect that from time to time I brought the grievances of the Scheduled Castes to your notice. I explained to you on several occasions the nature of inefficient administration in East Bengal. I made serious charges against the police administration. I brought to your notice incidents of barbarous atrocities perpetrated by the police on frivolous grounds. I did not hesitate to bring to your notice the antiHindu policy pursued by the East Bengal government especially the police administration and a section of Muslim League leaders.78

Mandal proceeded to recount, in gory detail, the conditions surrounding and the effects of various incidents of violence that occurred throughout newly independent Pakistan.79 Atrocities committed in Digharkul, Gournadi, Habibganj, Nachole, Kalshira, and Dacca resulted in the large-scale exodus of Hindus from the latter part of March 1950. 75 76

77 79

Ibid., 179. Mandal thus evidently prefigured Ayesha Jalal’s controversial argument about the concept of Pakistan by several decades. Article 2 of the resolution stated, “adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards should be specifically provided in the Constitution for minorities in these units and in these regions for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with them.” Ibid., 179. Ibid., 180. 78 Ibid., 182–83. Interestingly, the perpetrators of anti-Hindu violence apparently distinguished between caste Hindus and Dalits. Mandal reported, for instance: “That the abduction and rape of Hindu girls has been reduced to a certain extent is due only to the fact that there is no caste Hindu girl between the ages of 12 and 30 living in East Bengal at present. The few depressed class girls who live in rural areas with their parents are not even spared by Muslim goondas [thugs]. I have received information about a number of incidents of rape of Scheduled Caste girls by Muslims.” Ibid., 195.

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The flagrant disregard for the terms of the Liaquat-Nehru Pact, far from restoring the confidence of Hindus, only strengthened his conviction that the East Pakistan Government “is still following the well-planned policy of squeezing Hindus out of the province.”80 In a section titled “Pakistan accursed for Hindus,” he concluded: “When I am convinced that my continuance in office in the Pakistan Central Government is not of any help to Hindus I should not with a clear conscience, create the false impression in the minds of the Hindus of Pakistan and peoples abroad that Hindus can live there with honour and with a sense of security in respect of their life, property and religion. This is about Hindus.”81 Did Mandal’s use of the category Hindu mean that he capitulated to the rhetoric of Hindu consolidation and integration, that the category “Scheduled Caste” lost meaning for him? It is true that he increasingly spoke on behalf of the “Hindu” minorities in Pakistan, but his solidarities hardly suggest an easy flattening of difference within that community. In his view, Dalits suffered the consequences of a conflict that wasn’t fundamentally of their own making: the “bloody feud” between the Congress and League in which they had been swept up. In a comparison between conditions in West Bengal and East Pakistan, Mandal wrote that the return of mostly Dalit migrants to East Pakistan was no proof of the restoration of confidence: “It only indicates that their stay and rehabilitation in West Bengal, or elsewhere in the Indian Union have not been possible. The sufferings of refugee life are compelling them to go back to their homes.”82 For some of the earliest Dalit refugees from East Pakistan, then, the pre-Partition promises of the Congress and Mahasabha about rehabilitation in the west proved futile.83 Mandal finally addressed his own “sad and bitter experience” of having to persist in the Pakistan government’s dissuasion of migration as long as he remained a minister. He offered his resignation because he could “no longer afford to carry this load of false pretensions and untruth on my conscience.”84 As he reported to the press in Calcutta: “I resigned because the Pakistan leaders wanted ‘yes men’ only.”85 The decision evidently relieved him of a seemingly unbearable burden, but it also raised as many questions as it answered. Mandal’s resignation thus drew a storm of commentary on both sides of the newly created border, a lightning rod for enraged public opinion. 80 83 84 85

Ibid., 192. 81 Ibid., 197–98. (My emphasis.) 82 Ibid., 193. It is clear, at the very least, that migration to and from the west was hardly insignificant. This is a dimension of Partition’s history that remains opaque. “Letter of Resignation,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda 199. “Hindus and Pakistan,” Times of India, 29 October 1950, 3.

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As The News of India reported, his indictment of Pakistan caused a sensation in Calcutta.86 Amrita Bazar Patrika ran commentary well over a month after his initial statement. In West Bengal and India, his letter was taken as positive proof of Pakistan’s anti-Hindu policies and Mandal’s folly; in East Bengal and Pakistan, he was condemned for his disloyalty, betrayal, and exaggerated testimony. Commentators in both India and Pakistan therefore read in his resignation confirmation of their own suspicions and anxieties. In this maelstrom of opinion, the specificity of Mandal’s personal and political crisis was all but lost. An editorial comment in the Hindusthan Standard, for instance, maintained that his revelations could not simply be taken to be the “malicious fabrications of a frustrated man” as Mandal had risen to the very apex of power in the state of Pakistan.87 “If the lure of power has proved impotent to keep him permanently tongue-tied that shows to what depths he must have been stirred by events in Pakistan to transcend the corrupting influence of power. And he had to blurt out the naked truth because the agonies of his anguished soul had become too much for him.”88 Moreover, given his “intense dislike for the caste Hindus” he was surely the last person to “blow the trumpet of the Union Government.”89 This explained, for this writer, why Mandal’s resignation letter read like an “eloquent defence for India.” In addition, Mandal had “exposed the hollowness of the tall claims made for the Delhi Pact as an instrument of peace.” The statement issued by “the Muslim League’s drummer boy” was therefore conclusive evidence that the “Hindu masses are doomed to be strangers in their own homes.”90 Consider, by contrast, how the news was received in Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan alleged that Mandal had “openly aligned himself with those Hindu militant organisations in West Bengal (India) who seek to bring about war between India and Pakistan . . .”91 Khan had seen Mandal’s letter, and pointed out his duplicity “when after occupying for four years the High office of Minister, first in the Interim Government and later in the Pakistan Government and proclaiming up to almost the last minute of his stay in Pakistan, his unswerving allegiance and loyalty to Pakistan, he sneaks away to another country to disown, abuse and malign his 86 87

88 91

“Mr. Mandal Resigns and Indicates Pakistan Designs,” News of India, 8 October 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, 175. “Window on Pakistan,” Hindusthan Standard, 10 October 1950, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2004), 5. Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 7. “Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan Prime Minister’s Statement on Mr. Mandal’s Resignation from Pakistan Parliament,” Pakistan News, 16 October 1950, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 25–26.

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motherland.”92 He had betrayed their trust, and his letter was “nothing but a rehash of the nauseating propaganda which has unceasingly been put out by the Hindu militant organisations in West Bengal – same combination of exaggerations, half truths and downright lies, now familiar to us.”93 Khan refuted Mandal’s charges that conditions in East Bengal were impossible for Hindus, alleging a recent net influx of 87,125 Hindu migrants returning to their homes in East Bengal, not having found succor in the West. Dwarka Nath Barori, the East Bengal minorities minister who took over Mandal’s leadership of the eastern Federation, acerbically reminded readers in a five-page statement that, “Sri Mandal began his political career as a Hindu Mahasabhaite and ended it as such.”94 Another statement by the East Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation asked, “Is it too much to say that he has betrayed the Scheduled Castes of Pakistan whose salvation (he so loudly professed) was at his heart?”95 On the other hand, and far more charitably, the general secretary of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, P.N. Rajbhoj, welcomed Mandal’s resignation, and hoped that it would “serve as an eye-opener to the India Government as to real situation obtaining in East Pakistan and especially the ill-treatment meted out to the Scheduled Castes, who forms the bulk of the minority community there.” Rajbhoj added that those who “unnecessarily prejudiced their minds against Shri Mandal, would now realise their mistake.”96 There was little agreement about what his resignation actually signified. In an especially revealing interview with the Leader, Mandal disclosed why he had “reluctantly” stayed on in Pakistan for as long as he had. This particular explanation, curiously, did not find its way into his letter of resignation, which seemed carefully constructed for consumption in India: “According to my own plan I should have come out as early as October 1947. But if I continued to be in the Pakistan Government it was entirely against my will and better judgment and only to oblige Hindu friends including Dr. Hemnadas Wadhwani, ex-Sind Minister, who thought that I should not forego the opportunity of at least learning at first hand the Pakistan move to exterminate the Hindus.”97 Mandal 92 94

95 96 97

Ibid., 28. 93 Ibid. “Barori Defends Delhi Pact: Mandal’s Statement Criticised,” Hindusthan Standard, 19 October 1950, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 39. “Unofficial Note” (Dacca, Director of Publicity, 1950), Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 17. “Eye-opener to Nehru Govt.,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 11 October 1950, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 14. “Mr. J.N. Mandal’s Tale of Woes: Detailed Statement in a Day or Two,” Leader, 22 October 1950.

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continued: “Without being guilty of divulging confidences I may say that some of the respected top-ranking Indian leaders had also advised me not to give effect to my decision to sever my connection with Pakistan earlier this year. I shall leave it at that for the present.”98 Mandal apparently stayed on in Pakistan for as long as he had on the advice of Hindu and Indian counterparts. Even if he was perceived as having betrayed both Pakistan and the Dalits in that country, there is another question worth pondering, one that did not easily lend itself to public discourse in West Bengal arguably until several years later: what steps did the government of India and West Bengal take to accommodate Dalit refugees from East Pakistan in particular? This, after all, was one of the main promises made by the leaders of the movement to partition Bengal in early 1947 to Dalit leaders to garner their support. Yet, the amnesia on this count was a notable feature of public commentary. Chief Minister of West Bengal Dr. B.C. Roy remarked in connection with Mandal’s resignation that the development had not triggered an influx in the number of refugees entering West Bengal. In Roy’s candid estimation, the figures indicated that “more people were returning to East Bengal ‘preferring the comfort of their homes to the hardships of refugee life.’”99 Then came Nehru’s frank admission, in mid-October 1950, that the previous month had witnessed a marked change in migration figures with migrants returning to their homes “in much larger numbers than before.”100 While previously about an average of 1,000 more Hindus returned to East Bengal than those who had come away, in the last month “20 to 30 thousand extra Hindus had gone back. There were many reasons why they went. One of the reasons might be that they had not been rehabilitated here and had not got facilities they hoped for.”101 The point is as follows: the strength of the Dalit population as Hindu was enlisted to make the demand for the Partition of Bengal. One of the assurances extended was that if Partition eventuated, those migrating from East Pakistan would be welcomed and rehabilitated in West Bengal. Undoubtedly efforts were under way to 98 99 100

101

Ibid. “Refugee Influx into West Bengal: No Increase since Mr. Mandal’s Resignation,” Statesman, 16 October 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 31. “No New Light on East Bengal Situation: Pandit Nehru on J.N. Mandal’s resignation,” Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 October 1950, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, pancam khanda, 34. Ibid. A 1950 report on the working of the Ministry of Rehabilitation noted that during that year, an estimated 36.4 lakh Hindus migrated to India from East Pakistan. According to its calculations, 17.7 lakh returned. These staggering numbers suggest just how many migrants returned disappointed with what they found in the west, even if one accounts for the government’s investment in reporting such large numbers. Report (New Delhi: Ministry of Rehabilitation, 1951), 1.

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honor these promises. The extent of reverse migration at this juncture serves as a clear indication of their initial success. Conclusion The dilemma of Partition for Dalits in 1946 thus acquired its expression by 1950: in West Bengal, they arrived as migrant “refugees,” and in East Pakistan, they were understood to be minority Hindus. As Mandal put it during the period when Partition was seriously being contemplated by its proponents, they would be “at the mercy of the Muslim majority in Pakistan, and subject to the perpetual slavery of the caste Hindus in West Bengal.” To make the point clearer, consider Syama Prasad Mukherjee’s speech in the Lok Sabha on 15 November 1952 regarding the refugee crisis of “Harijans” (the term used by Mukherjee) being squeezed out of East Pakistan to West Bengal. Several of their representatives met Mukherjee, and described their “pathetic conditions.” They told him: “We came to India for rehabilitation. We have got it. Our children have died. We are going back, what is the crime we have committed? We did not want Pakistan. You asked us to live there and it is only because we are Hindus we are facing this crisis. We will embrace Islam – we will surrender ourselves.”102 Their representatives’ cry, “it is only because we are Hindus we are facing this crisis,” suggests the extent to which their Hindu being became a liability, so much so that they were willing to return to Pakistan and convert to Islam. Faced with the prospect of supposedly remaining Hindu in India, or converting to Islam in Pakistan, several among them apparently chose the latter. Neither country seemed to offer hospitable refuge. Indeed, it is true, as P.C. Ray assumed about the refugee colony Jirat in Dr. B.S. Guha’s remarkable Studies in Social Tensions Among Refugees from Eastern Pakistan, that “caste prejudices began to break down when the Hindus were forced to unite together and made a common front to fight the Muslims, who were threatening their life and honour.”103 These refugees were rehabilitated between September 1950 and February 1951, contemporaneous with when Mandal resigned and turned to West Bengal himself. 102

103

The emphases are mine. Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series: Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1990), 136–37. Mookerjee, as is well known, was a vocal critic of the government’s policies toward refugee rehabilitation, who at the Constituent Assembly repeatedly “spoke vehemently about the problems of refugees in West Bengal, fiercely criticising the Congress government’s failure to rehabilitate them.” See Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition, 269. P.C. Ray, “Social Distance Scale,” in Dr. B.S. Guha, Studies in Social Tensions Among Refugees from Eastern Pakistan (Delhi: Manager of Publications, Department of Anthropology, Government of India, 1959), 47.

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Crucially, however, these anthropologists distinguished caste groupings in the following manner: “Caste I comprising of Brahmin, Kayastha and Baidya and Caste II comprising the other Hindu Castes.”104 Such a ready distinction suggested a clear analytical separation. Their research also revealed that while caste restrictions were certainly relaxed in refugee colonies (as having made common communal cause), they were far from being absent from refugees’ social relations. Communal violence and the amalgamations of refugee living certainly did not extinguish the attachments to caste belonging. Mandal’s rapid disillusionment with the Pakistani state offers a window onto the consequences that immediately followed Partition for Dalits on either side of the newly created border. This chapter has illustrated how sorely his attempts to secure their welfare in Pakistan were disappointed. The League’s leadership not only failed to adequately fulfill Mandal’s and the Federation’s demands for Dalit rights but seemingly enabled forces given to the destruction of their lives, exploding expectations born of theories of Dalit and Muslim political-economic solidarity. But theirs was not a failure bound to the imperatives of Hindu unity. Whereas the Congress and Mahasabha perceived Dalits as internal and integral to the Hindu body politic, in its gradual drift toward the widely remarked Islamicization of their country, the League regarded them as external to their own, and but a component of the communal other. This was a distinct shift from provincial autonomy. Yet in both cases the specificity of Dalits as a political community was effaced as a consequence of their respective majoritarian impulses. Looked at from the vantage of the immediate post-Partition context, neither national project seemed amenable to the vision of Dalit politics that Mandal had helped imagine but a few years prior. This predicament, which Mandal and those he represented faced, lends itself to comparison with the impossibility that Toba Tek Singh confronted in Saadat Hasan Manto’s celebrated allegorical and absurdist short story about the exchange of members of a lunatic asylum in Lahore several years after Partition in 1947.105 The inmates do not understand why they must go to either Pakistan or India, and have no inkling of this “India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India rigmarole.” A Sikh lunatic named Bishan Singh, who people called Toba Tek Singh, begins asking where his hometown, also called Toba Tek Singh, would go in the ensuing division – “But nobody seemed to know where it was.” As the moment of exchange 104 105

M.K. Nag, “A Note on the Selection of Sample,” in Guha, Studies in Social Tensions, 15. Saadat Hasan Manto, “Toba Tek Singh,” http://www.sacw.net/partition/tobateksingh .html, accessed 9 March 2016.

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approached, which Singh resists, Manto closed his story with the following crescendo of memorable words: “Just before sunrise, Bishan Singh let out a horrible scream. As everybody rushed towards him, the man who had stood erect on his legs for fifteen years, now pitched face-forward on to the ground. On one side, behind barbed wire, stood together the lunatics of India and on the other side, behind more barbed wire, stood the lunatics of Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.” Manto’s story captured the cruel and arbitrary sundering of peoples’ relations to territorial space in both Punjab and Bengal wrought by Partition’s clinical divide. He thus allowed Toba Tek Singh to refuse the stark choice between the lunatics of India and the lunatics of Pakistan in his literary remaking of their creation: a piece of land in between the two countries. Such refusal was impossible, either for Mandal or for those whom he spoke, who left their homes in the east for refuge in the west, or those who sought refuge in the west, only to return. They were forced to choose between two antagonistic entities whose leading politicians seemed only too happy to enroll them in support of their respective political agendas, only to cast them off once they had served their purpose. Mandal’s resignation from the Government of Pakistan thus signified the utter fragility of assumptions underlying the Federation’s alliance with the League in the context of undivided Bengal, once the implications of Partition became clearer. The theory of Dalit and Muslim unity crumbled against the backdrop of retaliatory violence on both sides of the newly created border, and the Pakistani leadership’s rejection of assurances Mandal believed were guaranteed to Dalits and minorities. A project born of the circumstances of provincial autonomy in undivided Bengal, such solidarities lost meaning in the irrevocably transformed conditions of the province following from the divide. Evidently agreed upon with their best interests in mind, the Partition of Bengal found Dalits facing statesponsored violence in Pakistan and legal erasure in India. Both India and Pakistan secured Dalit representatives – Ambedkar and Mandal, respectively – at the helm of the law at the dawn of freedom from colonial rule. Both began in good faith, yet they resigned their offices within a year of each other, dismayed by the insincerity of those they served. Their resignations offer a sorry comment about the early years of postcolonial law and governance in both nation-states. While the story of Ambedkar’s withering critique of Nehru’s cabinet, his resignation, and turn to Buddhism are well-studied, comparatively less is known of his counterpart’s tenure in independent India. What became of Mandal and his struggle for Dalit political existence in postcolonial West Bengal is the focus of the following two chapters.

6

“A Caste Hindu State” Jogendranath Mandal and the Forced Removal of Dalit Refugees, 1950–1964

Over the first two decades of postcolonial rule, West Bengal’s Congress government forcibly removed, by conservative estimate, at least one million refugees from within its borders to rehabilitation sites as far afield as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, to Dandakaranya in Madhya Pradesh. Its representatives pleaded insufficiency of land and proceeded to dispatch those whose numbers helped make the case for Partition beyond their territorial jurisdiction. Despite his vocal and sustained opposition to this process, for which he was imprisoned on multiple occasions, Mandal’s role in the refugee movement that emerged in protest of such territorial eviction remains obscured not only by a spare historiography, but also by the very beneficiaries of that struggle: the future communist rulers of West Bengal. Mandal looked on the decision to squeeze out primarily Dalit refugees from West Bengal as the comprehensive betrayal of promises of rehabilitation that he envisioned for them and that, indeed, had been extended many times over. Far from relying on persuasion, however, the government resorted to unprecedented coercion to resolve the human crisis born of its leaders’ demand for Partition. There was certainly truth to Mandal’s conviction that both state and central governments were reneging on expectations born of the assurances extended to the Dalits of late-colonial Bengal. This chapter examines Mandal’s efforts to ensure the Dalits’ rehabilitation within West Bengal’s borders, and the gradual weakening of his will to do so. For although Mandal played a critical leadership role in the refugee mobilizations of the late 1950s, he ultimately gave up such initiatives, following a protracted series of repeatedly frustrated and failed negotiations with various members of both central and state governments; he was helpless to prevent the dispersal of Dalit refugees from East Pakistan. This was the slow and prolonged bludgeoning of his will and, indeed, his ability to secure Dalits’ rehabilitation within West Bengal. As we shall see, along with those for whom he struggled, Mandal perceived their forced removal as premised on the fact that the majority of them were Namasudras. 211

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In light of the concerns this book has pursued, the almost exclusively Dalit expulsion from the territory of West Bengal was absolutely critical to the post-Independence decline of the caste question. By removing predominantly Namasudra refugees from the territory of West Bengal, the policies of Congress and, later, Communist governments effectively struck at the very possibility of the Namasudras’ political reconsolidation in that state. The policies were thus a dramatic reversal of the hasty assurances about rehabilitation that upper-caste nationalists had extended to the Dalits of undivided Bengal in a bid to win their support for a Hindu homeland, and effectively worked against their consolidation. After Partition, the Congress marshaled any number of explanations to obfuscate and deny the case for the refugees’ rehabilitation within West Bengal, and when this no longer worked, resorted to using police violence to disperse them.1 Having been cajoled into supporting the Partition of Bengal by upper-caste leaders who swore by their rehabilitation in the west prior to the division, Dalits endured not only persecution in the east but also found that their coreligionists were only too willing to invoke the specious and convenient remonstrance of viability, and subsequently to visit a reign of police terror upon them in efforts to expel them on arrival in the land they had been promised. Partition’s aftermath in West Bengal is thus precisely the context in which the defeat of Dalit politics took place. As we shall see, Mandal bore witness not only to the violence of Congress’ anti-Dalit refugee policies, but also contended with the ascendancy of various left-leaning organizations whose intentions and conduct, as he would discover, proved as dubious as the regime they sought to displace. Mandal’s Emergence in the Refugee Movement In late 1950, Mandal returned to Calcutta an exhausted and defeated man. Once the clamor surrounding his resignation had subsided, he found accommodation, with some difficulty, as a subtenant at 64 Southern Avenue. In later years, he moved to a slum. Several times in his autobiography he mentioned the need to stay at home and out of public affairs. His life was apparently in danger, as the police advised he maintain a low profile, even so far as avoiding proximity to the windows in his house.2 Various organizations from all over India, including the Hindu Mahasabha, apparently, repeatedly approached Mandal, inviting 1

2

See Statement of the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry, West Bengal for a useful account of the rehabilitation process. On his resignation, Mandal received an anonymous letter that read: “Mr. Jogendra Mandal is herewith warned that should he ally with the Congress rulers of New Delhi

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him to speak about the condition of Hindus in East Pakistan. His response, in every case, was to decline the offer, not wishing to risk inflaming the simmering communal tensions.3 There were additional reasons for his introversion. Mandal had suffered a grievous personal loss; he had lost face, in a manner of speaking, with respect to his political commitments, and had to contend with the animosity that many, including those of his own community, harbored toward him. Mandal, or so the argument went in the mainstream press, was in large part responsible for the partition of Bengal, and thus many Namasudras who had migrated to West Bengal held him accountable for their plight in having risked hearth and home to arrive to an inhospitable state. Against historical fact, Mandal became a lynchpin for the gruesome consequences of decisions he had warned and, indeed, had rallied against. Troubled by such patently false allegations, in the latter years of his life Mandal penned a chronicle of the event, taking care to show the falsehoods behind claims of his culpability. For Mandal, Partition became reality only when the Congress conceded the League’s demand. To be sure, the case for Mandal’s unique culpability conveniently obviated the need to locate cause with those politicians, both Dalit and upper-caste, who in fact had mobilized in its favor and were thus the primary advocates of the divide. As important was his defeat during the first general elections in 1952. Mandal was urged by several “caste Hindu friends” to stand in this very first election of independent India.4 He agreed, against his will and his preference for a quieter existence. On his loss, the first of many to come during the rest of his life in West Bengal, “he passed his time unoccupied within his home.”5 Mandal spent his days reading newspapers, observing and discussing political developments with those who remained close to him, and pondering what he could do about the crisis brought on by the swelling ranks of refugees from Pakistan, 70 percent of whom were Namasudra.6 Despite his evident inactivity, official circles remained concerned to ascertain the activity and influence of the Federation in West Bengal. A central intelligence investigation in late 1955 revealed none.7

3 4 5 6 7

and conduct propaganda against the Muslim League and the Government of Pakistan, you will have to be dealt with according to law. If this warning is not heeded, you will be shot by our tribunal in accordance with the international rules of extermination of spies changing sides. Remember, we hear what you say and watch your movements. Beware.” “Mr. Mandal’s Tale of Woes,” The Leader, 22 October 1950. Jogendranath Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 324–26. Ibid., 326. Mandal’s use of these categories suggests that even in his late 1960s memory, friendship required the use of caste-descriptive qualifications. Ibid. Prafulla K. Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal (Kalyani: Lumiere Books, 1990), 180. File No. 191/46: Scheduled Castes Federation, West Bengal State Archives.

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The two main refugee organizations that emerged during the early 1950s were the United Central Refugee Council (UCRC) and Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan (SBBS), affiliated with the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), respectively.8 The Communists sat in opposition to the Congress in the West Bengal legislative assembly, and over the course of the first two decades of independence, gradually gnawed away at the Congress’ political machine.9 During the early years of their activity, these organizations did not invite Mandal to attend and address the meetings they held at refugee camps surrounding Calcutta. Visitors with whom he was acquainted prior to Partition, and who subsequently migrated to these camps, told him that when they approached the leaders of these organizations to request Mandal’s presence, they would be informed that he had indeed been invited, when this was not the case.10 Mandal’s very person thus seemed to elicit unease among the leaders of these political fronts. As Gautam Ray put it in an article in Ananda Bajar Patrika many decades later: “The contempt and impatience of upper-caste parties and leaders was so relentless, that when Jogendranath resigned against the oppression of Scheduled Castes and minorities in Pakistan and wanted to join the refugee movement upon coming to Calcutta, he was ostracized and kept subdued for a long time. But since the majority of the refugees were the displaced Namasudras of eastern Bengal, it was not possible to keep Jogendranath outcast from their movement for rehabilitation for too long.”11 The caste affiliations of the leaders of these movements, especially given the preponderance of Namasudras among the refugee populations, was thus a critical issue. No doubt they included many prominent Namasudra leaders such as Apurbalal Mazumdar, Hemanta Biswas, and, later, Mandal himself; the leadership was thus composed of uppercaste Hindus and Dalits alike. But it would be a mistake to ascribe a happy unanimity to their motivations and the ends they wished to achieve. 8 9

10

11

Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men, 162–207. See Marcus Franda, “Electoral Politics in West Bengal: The Growth of the United Front,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn 1969), 279–93, and “The Political Idioms of Atulya Ghosh,” Asian Survey, Vol. 6, No. 8 (August, 1966), 420–33, for contemporary accounts of the process; and Myron Weiner, Party Politics in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 117–63. Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, shashtha khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2004), 17–18; Lok-kabi Surendranath Sarkar, “Praner Debata Jogendranath,” in Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajnitir Svatantra Adhyay (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2003), 130–32; Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 303–4. Gautam Ray, “Jogendranather prayajan bampanthi Banglay phorayni,” Ananda Bajar Patrika, 11 February 2006.

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Despite the presence of Namasudra leaders, these organizations were predominantly led by upper-caste men committed to the success of the political parties with which they were affiliated, and to the overthrow of the extant Congress regime. The leadership of the refugee movement of the 1950s was thus far from agreed on tactics and strategies; indeed, Prafulla K. Chakrabarti’s thesis regarding the importance of the refugees to the Left’s struggle for, and rise to power in, West Bengal certainly bears mentioning.12 There were fairly significant differences between what these leaders wished to accomplish and their respective motivations. Chakrabarti noted, for instance, how Namasudra leaders such as Mandal, Hemanta Biswas, and Apurbalal Mazumdar were faced with the dilemma of losing “influence over their flock” if they allied with organizations such as the UCRC.13 Biswas had experience with this manner of functioning: “It usually threw an administrative cover over them as soon as it established contact with a new group of refugees and the leaders of the group soon lost all personal control and became mere functionaries of the U.C.R.C. The U.C.R.C. had absorbed the preoccupation with organization and the aggressive acquisitive instinct of the CPI. But the Namasudra leaders wanted to maintain their leadership position among the Namasudras.”14 Considerations of power clearly influenced Namasudra leaders’ engagements with those who sought to mobilize their community to their own ends. During the 1957 Bettiah camp satyagraha for instance, when thousands of its inmates deserted that camp (located in the neighboring state of Bihar) and came to Calcutta, Mazumdar developed serious differences with the UCRC leaders. He thought they were being used as “pawns,” and accused the CPI of trying to “use the deserters for starting a food movement.” They “did not view the cause of the deserters as a human problem. He could not allow the movement to be a protracted one or the starting-point of a political movement, for in that case the movement which was launched to save the deserters from starvation and official repression would end by destroying them.”15 No surprise then, that Mazumdar joined Mandal’s own refugee organization several years later. The Communists’ intentions were far from transparent and sincere. A Times of India report on the Bettiah satyagraha sheds light on the discontents prompting the refugees’ desertion of their camp and return to 12

13

Emerging from conversations with his youngest brother, Chakrabarti sought to establish “the importance of the refugee population in the Left’s struggle for power in West Bengal. The exaggerated Leftist leap into prominence and power, he argued, cannot be explained by the partial Communist hold over the working class. The peasantry did not come into the picture at all before 1967. The refugees, he added, were the striking arm of the Communists and of the Marxist Left.” Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men, xxiii. Ibid., 180. 14 Ibid., 180. 15 Ibid., 173–74.

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Calcutta. The settlement in Bihar was established in June 1955 when the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appealed to the chief ministers of neighboring states to “lend a helping hand to East Pakistani refugees.” The Congress government in West Bengal argued it could no longer “absorb” them, and Bihar agreed to take 25,000 refugees. Twenty-nine thousand refugees eventually arrived in Bettiah – yet, by late April 1957, an estimated 11,000 had abandoned the “salubrious climate” in which the camp was located for the “squalor and misery” of the Howrah maidan and Sealdah train station in Calcutta. Inquiries revealed that a “particular group of Scheduled Castes – the majority at Bettiah are Namasudra – exploited caste differences amongst the refugees.” A matriculate refugee who claimed to be a relative of a former minister of East Bengal and Pakistan formed a group called Parliament, and was alleged to have started a “strong agitation to make Scheduled Caste refugees return to West Bengal.” The “casteism he preached” met with a strong following and led to scuffles between contending parties. This “squabble between the Caste-Hindus and the Scheduled Castes” came to a head when this particular leader expressed his desire to marry a Brahmin girl, to which the authorities responded by relocating her family to another camp.16 The refugee leader continued his agitation, and collected a rupee from every family for the movement to return to Calcutta. Agitators circulated rumors that if refugees went to Calcutta before the elections, they would find rehabilitation within West Bengal. The episode illustrates, in short, how fundamentally caste considerations informed the management of the refugee crisis. Like Mazumdar, Mandal too became the proverbial one-man party, but with a storied political career and reputation preceding him. Although initially held at bay by the UCRC and SBBS, Mandal was eventually drawn into these mobilizations at the initiative of several camp-level refugee leaders, including the folk poet Surendranath Sarkar, who allegedly threatened to hold up a meeting called by the SBBS in Bagjola camp if Mandal was not present. Following invitations from Hemanta Kumar Biswas and Mahadev Bhattacharya, the secretary and president of the 16

Such instances of the rejection of inter-caste unions trouble commonplace notions that the humiliation and togetherness of refugee life eroded caste consciousness. As to the wider context, a 1964 study of marriage regulations in Bengal, for example, revealed that of 708 Brahmin marriages studied, only two inter-caste marriages were identified. The author concluded: “The usual answer of the elderly people when questioned about their views regarding inter-caste marriage, was – ‘Oh! now it is a very common practice, and these educated boys and girls bother little for old customs and tradition.’ This shows that there is [sic] good deal of disparity between the verbal response and the actual fact.” See Bela Gangopadhyay, Marriage Regulations Among Certain Castes of Bengal (Poona: Deccan College, 1964), 65–66.

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meeting, respectively, Mandal emerged from his partly self-imposed exile in December 1957. From the very start, calculations began about capitalizing on the allegiance he commanded among the refugees. Mandal was slated to speak last at that particular meeting, according to him, so those assembled would not depart after hearing his address but before listening to the other gathered PSP leaders.17 Much of this finds corroboration in Sarkar’s own recall, especially in his account of SBBS leaders’ wariness of Mandal, although they nonetheless made attempts to harness his mass appeal. Past organizers, evidently, had printed leaflets and handbills in his name to draw audiences, without actually having invited him.18 Such maneuvering was implicit acknowledgment of Mandal’s considerable hold over Namasudra refugees, despite the resentment felt toward him because of the timing and manner of his resignation from the government of Pakistan. Some of Mandal’s concerns are preserved in recently declassified intelligence reports, corroborating, in turn, his autobiographical reminiscences.19 From late 1957 onward, it is clear he became actively involved in the SBBS’s various meetings and plans. In late February 1958, for instance, he delivered a lengthy speech at the Number 2 Uttar Tilpara Camp in Sainthia, where he “first requested the audience who were almost all scheduled caste Hindus of East Bengal and among whom he worked in pre-partition days to cast away their suspicion that he was responsible for the partition of their country.”20 Using quotations and cuttings from newspapers published before Partition, he made the case that it was “the Congress stalwarts who made this partition and not Jogendra Nath Mandal who sacrificed all for their cause. The Congress leaders did so for love of power and to take the reign of administration in their own hands and thus brought untold miseries to them. He dreamt of a sovereign Bengal state. But he was opposed by the caste Hindus who were then dominating the Congress organization. He had now come again – amongst them and he was prepared to do all for them again.”21 Mandal criticized the government’s food, textile, development, and foreign policies, arguing that it was because of their follies that the common people suffered as they did. Government was now “refusing to fufill their pledges” to the refugees for 17 18 19

20 21

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 303–4. Sarkar, “Praner Debata Jogenranath,” 132. I should mention for the record that my several months’ long efforts in 2009 to secure the release of the intelligence files on Mandal (which I know, for a fact, existed) met with failure, despite trying channels both legal and otherwise. Although the files on other refugee leaders and politicians have been released, Mandal’s files have not been. Perhaps they have been destroyed, or contain materials deemed too sensitive for public review. I. B. Officer’s Report, 25 February 1958, File No. 1483/32: Pran Krishna Chakrabarti. Ibid.

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shelter and gainful employment, and sought, on the plea of the nonavailability of adequate lands, to “send them in dense forests, in horrible deserts, and to other remotest places where everything was foreign to them with an ulterior motive for their total extinction.”22 It was only the SBBS, he opined, that had taken the initiative to resist such a move. Mandal “doubted whether the UCRC would finally take up this vital cause of the refugees. They might fall back at the critical time.”23 Mandal’s suspicions of the UCRC found confirmation in Hemanta Kumar Biswas’ speech at the same meeting. Biswas told how, although he began as a member of the UCRC, he was “much disgusted” by the CPI cadre, citing examples of how refugees who had once settled in various parts of 24 Parganas had been uprooted again by the local kisans on the instigation of CPI leaders.24 Biswas felt that the UCRC was not up to the task of direct action in face of refugee removal from the state of West Bengal – they would “fall back and would not resort to direct action at the critical time.”25 While opinion regarding the undesirability of sending Namasudra refugees to rehabilitation sites in states outside West Bengal was near unanimous among the various refugee organizations, even if for differing reasons, Mandal was quite clear in his speeches about what social and political forces lay behind the move. An Intelligence Bureau officer noted how, in meetings at Bolpur and Uttar Tilpara in late February 1958, Mandal was “spreading class and caste hatred openly in camps.”26 He “openly accused caste Hindu employees and caste Hindu people” of sending refugee families to Madhya Pradesh; furthermore, he accused the government of trying to convert West Bengal into what he called a “caste Hindu state.”27 Clearly, for Mandal, the government’s policies toward the refugees were shot through with discrimination on the basis of caste. This was not mere rhetorical bluster designed to agitate. How many upper-caste refugees and their families, for instance, were forced beyond the territory of West Bengal? The various, seemingly caste-neutral, categories the government deployed in its rehabilitation policies worked to mask the fact that in the overwhelming majority of cases it was Dalit migrants who were forcibly removed from the state. Rather than an unmarked refugee identity having taken precedence over caste identities, Mandal’s address suggested the fundamental distinction between upper-caste and Dalit experiences of the refugee crisis. 22 26 27

Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. I. B. Officer’s Report, 15 March 1958, File No. 1483/32: Pran Krishna Chakrabarti. Ibid.

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Dandakaranya and the Refugee Movement Removing Dalit refugees to regions outside West Bengal was the product of extended debate between the central and state governments about how best to provide relief to, and rehabilitate, the staggered stream of migrants fleeing persecution in East Pakistan. By March 1958, 41.47 lakh refugees had entered eastern India; another 60,994 refugees followed between then and 1963; and a “new influx” swelled the numbers by another 8 lakhs by the end of 1965.28 Over its first two decades, then, West Bengal saw the migration of approximately 5 million individuals into its territory. It is well known that the bulk of refugees coming immediately before and after 1947 were the more prosperous upper-caste Hindu families from the east; only after the riots of 1949 and 1950 in East Pakistan did Dalits begin migrating in significant numbers.29 Yet this was also when the refugee crisis assumed such “desperate proportions that Government officials were at a loss to find accommodation for their rehabilitation.”30 The key explanation was that a paucity of land prevented the West Bengal government from allowing refugees to settle permanently within that state. It is also true that the government feared that their swelling numbers, if sufficiently mobilized, would remove the Congress from power (a not unfounded apprehension, as subsequent developments would prove). Neighboring states had already extended a helping hand, yet there were limits to their generosity. It was in this context – the drain on West Bengal’s financial resources to maintain the already existing camps and their inmates on highly sought and essential relief measures, a brewing food crisis, and the supposed impossibility of finding land – that the Dandakaranya Plan was proposed. This plan would offer, in Rao’s words, a “veritable paradise” to refugees inured to a existence parasitic upon government doles and provisions.31 An area of approximately 80,000 square miles, the Dandakaranya region extended over the Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh, the Koraput and Kalahandi districts of Orissa, and the Agency Tracts of Andhra Pradesh. S.V. Ramamurthy, an advisor to the Planning Commission, was the first to propose Dandakaranya as offering “ideal facilities for large-scale resettlement” in a report he submitted in 1956, although it was almost entirely untouched by existing railway networks.32 Over the next few years, the Dandakaranya Plan was increasingly sold as 28 29 30 31

Statement of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation, 24. This difference alone should give pause to assertions that all Hindus of undivided Bengal desired Partition and the presumed succor a Hindu homeland would provide. U. Bhaskar Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation (Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1967), 199. Ibid., 221. 32 Ibid., 199.

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offering a feasible solution to West Bengal’s refugee crisis. The plan finally emerged as a distinct possibility at the Calcutta conference of central and state ministers in early July 1958, where the decision to close down all refugee camps within a year was initially conceived.33 The main refugee organizations, however, had swung into action well before the formal statement of intent at the conference of July 1958. For Chakrabarti, the “civil disobedience movement of March-April 1958 may be regarded as the biggest stir of the refugees in West Bengal.”34 Mandal’s role in this particular upsurge requires emphasis, not only because of Chakrabarti’s thesis about the Left having piggy-backed the refugee movement into power, but also because the details of his activities have largely remained marginal to the story.35 Consider, for instance, the article titled “Refugee politics” published in Yugbani, a weekly edited by Debjyoti Barman: “Jogen Mondal’s advent in refugee politics is a major event. At present, more than three-fourths of the camps’ refugee residents are people of the Namasudra community. Jogen Mandal’s influence over them is extraordinary. Outside the camps nearly 20 lakh Namasudras have come to Bengal. Even they follow Mandal unreservedly.” He was the reason the SBBS gained a mass presence: “It is indeed he who has gathered the satyagraha’s fodder.”36 Not only does Barman allude to Mandal’s exceptional hold over the predominantly Namasudra camp refugees, but speaks to the absolutely central role he played in their mobilization. It would appear that Mandal, rather than Communist or PSP leaders, was the primary point of contact with the camp refugees. As Sarkar noted when Bagjola camp became the nerve center of the refugee movement: “Behind it all was mahapran Jogendranath.”37 Resolving the conflicting compulsions of political mobilization was precisely what motivated Mandal to seek a separate organization. Indeed, not only were there differences about the precise nature of tactics to be deployed – Mandal, for instance, at several coordination and planning meetings, advocated increasingly violent means to resist the government’s policies toward the camp refugees, much to several of his colleagues’ disapproval – but there were other reasons for his suspicion of the Communists’ motivations. In a letter written in 1954, in his capacity as president of a social service organization called Namasudra Samaj Sangha, Mandal informed the 33 35

36 37

Ibid., 160. 34 Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men, 180. Chakrabarti’s excellent and unsurpassed research, for instance, indexes Mandal only three times. Joya Chatterji’s accomplished study of the consequences of Partition in Bengal and India does not do so at all. “Udbastu Rajniti,” Yugbani, 31 May 1958. Sarkar, “Praner debata Jogendranath,” 133.

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recipient of a resolution passed unanimously at a Namasudra conference held in the Calcutta University Institute Hall in December that year. The conference “learns with deep fear and apprehension a strong rumour that a move is going on for the exclusion of this Community from the list of Scheduled Castes. This move is believed to have been inspired by the mischief-makers, possibly the Communists, whose aim is to disrupt the Scheduled Classes and to use them against the present Govt . . .38 For Mandal, and other Dalit leaders, the Communists’ mobilization of Dalit refugees did not communicate sincere intent. The alleged displacement of the discourses of caste by those of class was by no means a smooth process, rooted in the autonomous logic of Namasudras’ political engagement.39 Mandal was reportedly against a joint movement with the UCRC as he feared “that the Communists will gain over some of his supporters if they are allowed to penetrate into his organization.”40 There indeed seemed to have been a certain instrumentality in Communist efforts to rally the refugees.41 One of the assumptions informing Mandal’s involvement in the refugee movement in late 1957 and early 1958 was that the proposal to rehabilitate camp refugees in locations outside West Bengal was a grievous betrayal of assurances extended by the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha prior to Partition that Hindus in East Bengal would find a welcome home in the West. At a SBBS meeting at Raja Subodh Mallick Square on 6 February 1958, Mandal “charged the government with the breach of the promise given to the East Bengal Hindus in the wake of the partition of the country,” adding that they would “drag down these satans from power before they were dispatched outside the state.”42 To be sure, the contemplated removal of Namasudra refugees from West Bengal’s territory was no part of the pre-Partition discourse and project of Hindu unity, and therefore presumably yet another one of the consequences of Partition unforeseen by the upper-caste leadership of late-colonial Bengal. Over the following weeks, Mandal toured the refugee camps that the government had opened throughout rural West Bengal, particularly those 38 39

40 41

42

Jogendranath Mandal to anonymous “Sir,” December 1954. It may be of special interest to note that, in conversations with surviving members of Mandal’s retinue, this writer was informed of their abiding suspicion during the refugee movement of the efforts abroad to exploit Mandal’s mass appeal among camp refugees while simultaneously seeking his marginalization. I.B. Officer’s Report, 14 November 1958, File No. 329/27: Hemanta Kumar Basu. This certainly finds confirmation in their party’s treatment of Dalit refugees once the party’s political ascendancy had been secured, particularly in the Marichjhanpi massacre of 1979. S.B.D.N., 6 February 1958, File No. 353/24: Sibnath Banerjee.

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in the districts of Bardhaman, Haora, Hooghly, 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Bankura, and Medinipur.43 These were the first of many excursions in the years to come throughout the state to mobilize support for the movement to rehabilitate Namasudra refugees within West Bengal. At a meeting under his presidency, the SBBS working committee and representatives of the camp refugees decided to submit a memorandum to Chief Minister B.C. Roy listing their various demands, and if government failed to accept them, they would undertake satyagraha. This decision, he wrote, sparked a tremendous excitement within the refugee camps of West Bengal, and those involved began to anticipate the meeting with government and its resulting consequences with each passing day. On the designated date, Mandal, along with the various other representatives of the UCRC and SBBS, went to meet B.C. Roy, and discussed their many grievances and demands. Yet Roy refused to concede their primary object – rehabilitation within West Bengal. The “ritual of satyagraha,” as Chakrabarti termed it, became routine.44 Refugees and their leaders would gather at Wellington Square and chanting slogans expressing their demands, proceed to the administrative center of the city. Outside Writers’ Buildings these processions were met with police barricades, and as refugee leaders and their followers attempted to force their way through in order to deliberately court arrest, they would be duly arrested, packed into waiting police vans and buses, and sent to one of the several jails in Calcutta. The bulk of those arrested, however, were taken to the remoter outskirts of the city by night and forcibly dumped; a tactic designed to prevent their reconsolidation, and one which Mandal and many other leaders in the SBBS found particularly objectionable.45 Mandal was arrested the day he participated, and spent the better part of the following month in jail. In the days to come the growing tide of courting arrest and subsequent imprisonment gradually forced the government’s hand, till B.C. Roy wrote to the imprisoned refugee leaders to assure them that refugees would not be taken outside the state against their will; that the doles on which camp refugees who refused to be transported outside West Bengal subsisted, and which had thus been stopped, would be reinstated; and that all the imprisoned satyagrahis would be released. The assurances were short-lived. Mandal’s time in prison, however, impressed on him the need for an organization unfettered by the compulsions of party politics. He recalled 43 45

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 309. 44 Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men, 172. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 312–13. These were tactics that bore close resemblance to those deployed by the colonial state to disperse activists who engaged in public demonstrations at various stages of the anticolonial nationalist movement, especially when it began to involve larger numbers of satyagrahis.

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how during the satyagraha and his imprisonment, his acquaintance with SBBS leaders’ attitudes left him with little reason for confidence in that organization. Their “narrow-mindedness” was on “such naked display” that upon their release, many youth leaders among the camp refugees repeatedly pressed him to establish an independent refugee organization. “Even Jogendranath realized that there was a need for a free and independent refugee organization unencumbered by party politics for the refugees’ interests. Because SBBS was run by the PSP leadership, in all matters the party’s interests took precedence. There existed the possibility that the refugee’s interests were overlooked by those of the party.”46 Mandal thus established the East India Refugee Council (EIRC) which subsequently emerged, in his view, as “the sole organization of the camp refugees. The SBBS and UCRC had to wind up any trace from all the camps.”47 A notable feature was the appointment of N.C. Chatterjee as president. Chatterjee, now a member of the Indian parliament, was one of the leading figures in the movement to partition Bengal in 1947 and was a key representative of the Hindu majoritarian political ideology against which Mandal had spoken quite caustically on many prior occasions. The rationale behind the choice was thus not entirely clear. One could surmise that because Chatterjee and the Mahasabha insisted that East Bengali Hindus would be welcomed in the West during the Partition agitation, Mandal’s reaching out to him was one of the few remaining avenues available to Mandal within the broader political context of the late 1950s to make good on such promises. A pamphlet announcing the formation of the “free, independent and non-political” organization thus described its “paramount goal” to be the rehabilitation of refugees from the east within West Bengal.48 The following were the EIRC’s principal objectives, which convey a sense, if read against the grain, of the kinds of conditions refugees encountered. They advocated a national resolution to the crisis, free from the constraints of party politics; helping refugees and government with the work of refugee rehabilitation as fast as possible; redressing the rehabilitation department’s administrative mismanagement and corruption; answering the camp- and colony-resident refugees’ needs and complaints; establishing special facilities and opportunities for business and agriculturalist refugee families in the second five-year plan; establishing medium, small, and micro industry with the central government’s economic assistance in the vicinity of refugee camps and colonies; 46 48

Ibid., 328. 47 Ibid., 330. Purbabharat Bastuhara Samsad (Kalikata: Shri Manojanjan Basu, sadharan sampadak kartrk prakasita, date unavailable).

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transforming uncultivated and cultivation-worthy lands; forming a land committee with refugee and government representatives; consolidating permanent liability families in the appropriate camps; streamlining opportunities and facilities for refugees; promptly providing food and shelter for those refugees presently at Sealdah station; rapidly legalizing forcibly occupied colonies; increasing the amount of cash dole; enabling and assisting the migration of Hindus westward; replacing the present central minister of rehabilitation with a member of parliament originally from East Bengal; and organizing either an exchange in population or the addition of the two westernmost districts of East Pakistan to India because of vast differences in the number of Hindus and Muslims who had migrated in and out of West Bengal, respectively. Over the next three years, the EIRC, at times independently, and at times in cooperation with the UCRC and SBBS, led delegations to government to seek reprieve for the refugees for whom they struggled; they received assurances, only to be subsequently betrayed. Mandal’s persistent letters to the various dignitaries of the state reflects this tiring sequence of events and suggests the scale of coercive governmental power brought to bear on Dalit refugees to induce their removal from West Bengal. In mid-January 1959, Mandal wrote to Chief Minister B.C. Roy as a follow up to a meeting they had held the previous December. His letter sought to bring to Roy’s notice the availability of various uncultivated wastelands that had escaped government’s attention in its making the case about insufficient land. Of particular interest is his gloss on their recent conversation: “With some pain I feel constrained to let you know, what struck me most during our discussion was that you were not prepared to pay heed to other’s view points and suggestions not to speak of giving any consideration to them. You appeared to be obsessed with some ideas and opinions from which you are not prepared to budge an inch. Your appeal, therefore, for cooperation hardly carries any appeal.”49 He perceived a Roy far more uncompromising than in standard depictions of his benign benevolence. Mandal was responding to the government’s recently published Some Notes on Refugee Rehabilitation, which itself was a reply to the UCRC’s memorandum arguing for the feasibility of rehabilitating all camp refugees within the state. He began by pointing out that the 365,315 acres of forest land were excluded by the government from the total cultivable areas available. Had they been included, as indeed was suggested by 49

Jogendranath Mandal to B.C. Roy, 15 January 1959.

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another section in the government’s own report, “the area of culturable waste lands would have been much larger. The argument that the possession of most of the forests has been taken by the Forest Directorate of the State Government should not be made to prevail against the requirement of the state for the purpose of refugee rehabilitation.”50 Mandal could not understand why culturable waste lands totaling 26,936 acres in Hooghly and Howrah, as per the DLR’s latest survey and confirmed by Roy’s own statements, were excluded from the estimates of total available land. The two major districts of Nadia and Murshidabad (and the available land within them) were also excluded from consideration. The bainanamas (claims filed by refugees on the state for the cost of land sought and purchased at their own initiative, which remained within a prescribed price ceiling) filed in Nadia had been rejected because these agreements, unjustifiably, no longer had sanction in that district. In a case in Murshidabad, where one Syed Kazemali Mirza and twelve others had 347 acres they were willing to give to refugees under the bainanama scheme, proceedings were pending since 22 August 1956. In 24 Parganas, where government found a mere 1,865 available acres, Mandal listed 47,578 including fisheries and 24,912 excluding them. Perhaps the most consequential of Mandal’s suggestions was that the six acres assumed to be the necessary amount for each refugee family was an overestimate. Roy’s proposal for making such an allotment was “neither feasible nor desirable, because no refugee family is capable of managing properly the cultivation of more than 3 acres i.e. 9 bighas of land. If they are allotted 6 acres each half the land will remain uncultivated. Kindly think over it and consult, if considered necessary, some good, experienced, and honest cultivators – both displaced and local on this point.” By Mandal’s calculations and the government’s own figures (that is, excluding all the additional available lands he listed in the appendix to his letter, which had been ascertained by the EIRC’s activists), 34,700 agriculturalist families could be provided rehabilitation within the state. By contrast, several months prior at the meeting of both central and state ministers about the refugee crisis, government had decided that of the 45,000 families then awaiting rehabilitation, only 10,000 could plausibly remain within the state; the remaining 35,000 would be transported elsewhere.51 50 51

Ibid. United Central Refugee Council, An Alternative Proposal for Rehabilitation of Camp Refugees in West Bengal (Calcutta: 93/1A Bowbazar Street, 1958), 3.

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The Forced Removal of Dalit Refugees From the first half of 1959, until March 1960, the first contingents, amounting to nearly 1,500 families, were transported to Dandakaranya. There were many who went “willingly,” unable to endure the indignities of camp life and hopeful of what rehabilitation government had in store for them. Just as many, one imagines, went because they had no choice. A reporter from Jugantar visited the region in December 1959 and described a “symbol of misery” in the “rough, naked earth.”52 The reporter met an elderly man who asked him where they would be given land, as he had left his camp in West Bengal because he thought coming to Dandakaranya meant precisely that. He seemed a “little dejected.”53 When he heard that there was no railway within 200 miles, it was as though he became “further depressed.”54 In late December 1959, Mandal wrote to Meher Chand Khanna, who had assumed ministerial command of the Central Rehabilitation Department, recently relocated to Calcutta. Khanna became the target of the various refugee organizations’ mounting rage, as it was under his command that refugees began to be relocated to Dandakaranya in earnest. On behalf of the EIRC and SBBS, Mandal wrote that it was “not for sentimental or emotional reasons” but “definite and practical advantages” that they demanded refugee rehabilitation in West Bengal.55 Such an effort, he argued, was not only conducive to the welfare of the refugees themselves but would provide employment to refugees and nonrefugees alike, help allay the ongoing food crisis by increasing agricultural production, and would cost no more than a third of the anticipated expenditure in Dandakaranya. Mandal asserted that lands were, in fact, available for such settlements. Recent reports published in “responsible newspapers” on the state of affairs and the condition of fertility and productivity of the lands cleared of forests only further confirmed their view that “the prospect of Dandakaranya project is gloomy and it is sure to end in failure.”56 Khanna’s decision to close down the camps within 90 days was not only “impracticable” but “inhuman” and a betrayal of government’s responsibility to rehabilitate the refugees.57 Khanna appeared to want to “scare away” the refugees by stopping the doles of many who were infirm, blind, and paralytic on the basis of reports of screening 52

53 55 57

Staff reporter, “Dandakaranye Bangla haite sata sata mail dure nutan jibaner sandhane,” Jugantar, 5 December 1959, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, shashtha khanda, 84–86. Ibid. 54 Ibid. Jogendranath Mandal to Meher Chand Khanna, 22 December 1959. 56 Ibid. Ibid.

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committees surveying the camps.58 Mandal thus accused him of “flagrantly violating the solemn assurance” given by Chief Minister Dr. B.C. Roy, and endorsed in the assembly by State Rehabilitation Minister P.C. Sen, that no refugee would be sent to Dandakaranya or outside West Bengal against their will and that refugees’ doles would not be stopped if they were unwilling.59 Because of Khanna’s policies, refugees were confronted with reduced cash doles for children up to three years old; with curtailed financial help thus far extended to refugee students; with the stoppage of special diet and treatment for tuberculosis patients both past and present; with the stoppage of doles to refugees accused in criminal cases (doles went unrestored even in cases of acquittal), and doles of entire families were stopped if the head of the family stood accused; bainanamas lay pending with state authorities (the majority of which presumed an initial outlay by the cash-starved refugees themselves); finally, bans imposed on the bainanama scheme in the crucial districts of Nadia, Murshidabad, and 24 Parganas made the option a “farce.”60 Reports on life in Dandakaranya, moreover, were acting as a deterrent. Even Mandal was willing to concede that refugees would be willing to go provided the following conditions were met: central administration of the project, the settling of at least two thousand families in a particular area, and completion of all rehabilitation preparations upon the refugees’ arrival. Failing these measures, it would not serve the purpose. Khanna had aroused hopes, but had “totally disappointed and disillusioned” the refugees and Mandal; not only had he failed to ease, but he had added to the refugees’ suffering.61 His ultimatums were “not only unwarranted and reckless but also inhuman and treacherous.”62 Calling for Khanna’s resignation, Mandal submitted his own suggestions and demands for proper rehabilitation.63 The question of will thus lay at the heart of interactions between the postcolonial state and its Dalit refugees, and the movement of these years increasingly contended with the iron arm of the law forcibly removing refugees from West Bengal.64 The closure of camps, stoppage of doles, and the capacity to shunt people around were the techniques deployed to garner assent to relocation. Yet by all accounts, certainly Mandal’s, and the numerous other petitions submitted by various refugee organizations, there was no dearth of land, and with considerable effort, refugees could 58 63 64

Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. “How and Why Agriculturalist Refugees Should Be Rehabilitated Inside West Bengal,” in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, shashtha khanda, 77–84. Richard Bessel and Claudia B. Haake (eds.), Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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indeed find homes in West Bengal.65 A passing sentence in Mandal’s autobiography is of particular interest with respect to the government’s view on the alleged unavailability. Reflecting on their recent meeting, he wrote: “Even if Chief Minister admitted that there was a lot of uncultivated land in West Bengal, he was not willing to distribute it amongst the refugees.”66 This was thus “forced removal” of a special kind: the predominantly Dalit refugees were promised rehabilitation prior to Partition, endured persecution in East Pakistan, migrated to the West in hope of succor, and were now being compelled to leave the homeland despite the suspicion that if the proposals various organizations submitted were investigated in good faith, their rehabilitation within the state might indeed stand a chance. In late November 1959, Mandal wrote to Roy once again about the widespread stoppage of doles under way throughout the province. Government believed the measure would compel refugee families to throw in their lot with Dandakaranya. Mandal found the actual reasons marshaled by the government’s screening committees, with some justice, appalling. The doles of the entire family of a camp inmate had been stopped for more than six months because he had a criminal case pending against him for his alleged mistreatment of the camp compounder. Mandal’s repeated appeals on their account failed. Similarly, the doles of other families had been withheld on account of convictions against individual members for violence consequent on their collecting the potatoes from a field near their camp. Doles were stopped if a family member completed any technical or vocational training. “One of such families is the family of Binode Bain aged 21 years of Bagjola Camp No. X whose grandmother committed suicide by hanging on 11.10.59 being unable to bear the suffering of starvation.” They were stopped if an immediate relative of the father in the family in question arrived in India several years after, or if one’s adult children lived outside the camp. “Dole of C.D.C. No. 248 of the said camp is stopped as his sister’s daughter is within his card while her father is not a camp refugee and is in East Pakistan.” Families whose members left the camp, abandoned them, or had gotten lost had their doles rescinded. “Sri Madhab Dhali’s dole stopped because his eldest has turned mad and has gone away remained untraced for 2 years.”67 Mandal tallied that 24 families’ doles were completely stopped and 35 of those received were reduced by 5 to 45 rupees per month. The majority of these cases were “not only unfair, 65 66 67

This was the essential thrust of Mandal’s own statement, “How and Why Agriculturalist Refugees Should Be Rehabilitated Inside West Bengal.” Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 335. Jogendranath Mandal to B.C. Roy, 20 November 1959.

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unjust and irrational but simply cruel, oppressive and tyrannical.”68 Referring to the 10,000 cases of stoppage of doles reported to him by Khanna – who, evidently to draw attention to the small size of the problem, said that it was “only in the case of about 10,000 persons who have been considered ineligible that orders for the stoppage of doles have been passed” – Mandal warned Roy that “very serious unrest is likely” failing the reversal of these measures.69 The escalation of tension between the state administration and the refugee organizations resulted in Mandal’s detention on 6 January 1960 on grounds of “acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order due to conduct in breach of sub-clause (ii) of clause (a) of Sub-Section (1) of Section 3 of the Preventive Detention Act, 1950 (Act. IV of 1950).”70 The reasons for detention included the following charges: his presidency of a meeting at Bagjola Camp on 20 November 1959 where he had declared that if refugees’ demands remained unfulfilled, a movement would be launched from the following January by forcible squatting on others’ lands; his presidency of a meeting at Cooper’s Camp on 29 November 1959, where he “abused the Administrator of the Camp in filthy language for stopping doles to those refugees who refused to go to Dandakaranya.”71 Mandal had demanded explanations for why the Namasudra refugees – “well-known for your martial spirit and bravery” – had spared the administrator, and incited them to assault, kill, demand, and force the administrator’s resignation. He had bitterly abused Meher Chand Khanna and incited refugees to “give a good lesson to this oppressive dishonest Government.” He had asked them not to go to Dandakaranya, but to pressurize the government for rehabilitation within West Bengal. During a subsequent procession, while passing the administrator’s residence, some participants abused the said officer and his family in filthy language and pelted the house with a few stones. Mandal stopped at Cooper’s Camp for a meeting in late November, and incited the “scheduled caste criminals” of the camp to bring about a “chaotic condition, murder the Administrator and assault the staff.” Following the meeting, stray young men had pelted the administrator’s residence and some of the darwans [security guards] of the camps were threatened by a few refugees as follows: “Shalara tora dutyte theke o par pabina, toder kete phelle o kichhu korte parbee na etc.”72 Mandal also took the presidency of a meeting at the Maidan monument in Calcutta where the government’s rehabilitation schemes were bitterly criticized and refugees 68 71 72

Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, shashtha khanda, 99–101. Ibid. “[Untranslatable epithet of abuse, perhaps ‘fuckers’ or ‘bastards’] being on duty is of no use, even if we kill you, you won’t be able to do anything.”

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were incited to court death “like Khudiram.” Union Rehabilitation Minister Shri Khanna was issued a warning that he would be removed from his chair and the chief minister of West Bengal was also warned that he would not be spared. An effigy of Khanna was burned at a subsequent procession, and the assembled refugees were told “that a day would come very soon when Shri Khanna, instead of the effigy, would be burnt alive in the public street and other so-called leaders would have to follow suit.” It was stated at the meeting that those prepared to die were equally prepared to take life; camp authorities should be dragged from their seats if they had no remedy. Mandal clearly had become too much of an obstruction to the government’s plans to relocate the refugees. The ratcheting up of Mandal’s rhetoric, his incitements to violence, and his repeated imprisonment is one measure of the compulsion the government of West Bengal brought to bear on the refugees. Their emotive slogans in the countless rallies of those months in reply to the state’s enticements included: “Dispatching refugees outside Bengal will not work, not work!” “Will give blood, will give life, but won’t leave Bengal, won’t leave!”73 The rehabilitation authorities did not respond to Mandal’s or others’ recommendations, nor to the refugees’ plain reluctance to accommodate their plans, and remained determined in their policy of targeted mass eviction. Refugees not only rejected the prospect of Dandakaranya, but when they offered their own alternative proposals, were rebuffed with the arrest of one of their main leaders. Mandal spent thirty-five days in Dum Dum Central Jail as a state prisoner.74 The EIRC and SBBS organized meetings protesting Mandal’s and Hemanta Biswas’s arrests, demanded their release, and condemned the Central Rehabilitation Department’s various efforts to send refugees outside West Bengal by stopping doles.75 Refugees began to enlist another tactic to extract their demands, which briefly seemed to have an effect: the hunger strike. From 4 February 1960, 12 refugees of Bagjola Camp No. 9 began such a demonstration outside the superintendent’s office. In a little over a week, Maya Banerjee, the deputy minister of the Relief and Rehabilitation Department of the state, was sent to visit the camp in order to concede their demands and negotiate the temporary halting of the refugee movement. Mandal was duly released. Yet, as in so many other instances, the promises Maya Banerjee extended were under duress and were only to be retracted shortly 73 74

It is near impossible to do justice to the rhythmic chanting of these slogans in translation. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 335. Ibid., 349. 75 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, shashtha khanda, 102–3.

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thereafter. Even as Banerjee sought to garner confidence, the police forces in Haroa and other camps descended on the refugees. Mandal had accompanied Banerjee to Haroa to quell the police’s “oppression”; despite her assurances, as he wrote in a letter to P.C. Sen, the state rehabilitation minister, indiscriminate arrests had resumed a month after the police lathi charge and retaliation on the eve of his release, which had injured elderly women and children, refugees, and policemen alike.76 Mandal accused Sen of flagrantly violating his commitment that doles would be restored and refugees would not be forcibly relocated; in fact, doles had been stopped in the thousands. Citing the central rehabilitation minister’s recent statement in the Lok Sabha, where he revealed that about 1,000 families had already been taken to Dandakaranya and that 3,000 would be transported in 1960, Mandal objected that the minister also stated that notices had been served on 11,400 families (or 18,000 as published in the day’s newspaper). It was further stated that in total, government hoped to settle 12,000 families in Dandakaranya, yet nothing had been planned for the remaining families – in no case were there fewer than 18,000 remaining families. The camp refugees were no longer willing to tolerate the “mis-rule and bungling” of the central rehabilitation minister and West Bengal rehabilitation commissioner. Mandal exclaimed in utter frustration: “Arguments exhausted, reasons fatigued but obstinacy is yet not conquered.”77 In less than two months after his release, he wrote to alert Banerjee that failure to address or attach importance to the refugees’ concerns could lead to their losing control over the situation, as the aggrieved refugees might undertake a hunger strike en masse. Doles were indeed being restored for refugees who had been served notices for Dandakaranya; but they remained unrestored for those who hadn’t received such notices in the first place. Moreover, such notices continued to be served, creating “doubt and suspicion” about the authorities’ intentions regarding dole restoration in the first place.78 Families with members accused in criminal cases were not receiving any doles and repeated petitions had failed. Cases existed where, despite acquittals, the accused had been fined 900 rupees, depriving that family of not only the 900 rupees to have been received during the year and a half of the trial and its aftermath (at 50 rupees per month), but further burdening the family with the identical amount in the fine. Our appeal to the Rehabilitation Minister against these barbarous actions of the Commissioner has failed to produce any result. Even the Chief Minister has 76 78

Jogendranath Mandal to P.C. Sen, 18 March 1960. 77 Ibid. Jogendranath Mandal to Maya Banerjee, 5 April 1960.

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turned a deaf ear to such appeals. Many refugee families have been ruined by this barbarous method. Their doles were stopped, they had to contest the case for about a year by selling all their belongings and when doles were not restored to them even after their acquittal they were compelled to leave for East Pakistan but were arrested and jailed for crossing the border and were sent back to West Bengal by the Pakistan authorities.79

Another letter to P.C. Sen two months later depicted a deteriorating situation.80 Non-restoration of doles continued to be an issue for a variety of different reasons, and there even existed cases where doles were stopped again after having been restored. Headmasters of schools were reportedly informing students that they would no longer receive stipends and could continue attending schools only if they paid the required tuition fees. Students in some schools had been prevented from attending classes. Although doles, with arrears, had been restored in many cases, others in the same camp were being asked to submit written pledges that they would leave the state yet would not receive arrears. Mandal submitted, “We know Government are all powerful to behave and act in any manner they like. But we, as an organization, are to face the camp refugees and are unable to explain the reasons for such invidious distinction.”81 Mandal and his colleagues in the EIRC had persuaded some refugees to call off their hunger strike on the basis of governments’ assurances. Now, those had been “dashed to the ground.”82 The mass hunger strike proposed as the course of action at the EIRC’s second annual conference in mid-May, failing discernible government initiative to redress the refugees’ desperation, was going into effect and was likely to spread. It was becoming “almost impossible to persuade the starving refugees to keep quiet for an indefinite period.”83 “Determined to Crush the Namasudra Community” The final extinguishing of Mandal’s struggle for refugee rehabilitation within West Bengal came in 1961. He wrote his letters, and the EIRC and SBBS held their meetings: the tedious monotony of satyagrahas, hunger strikes, police beatings, the extracting of hasty commitments followed by their retraction. The repeated dispersal and recongregation of Dalit refugee protesters in Wellington Square led Mandal to observe: “Day after day, this continued to happen . . .”84 In the meanwhile, government persisted with all its powers, coercive and otherwise, to sell Dandakaranya to its intended if reluctant inhabitants. An exceptional (and indignant) 79 83

Ibid. Ibid.

80 84

Jogendranath Mandal to P.C. Sen, 7 June 1960. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 348.

81

Ibid.

82

Ibid.

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letter from Khanna to Mandal in early July 1961 spoke of the utter failure of Dr. Roy’s proposal in September 1960 to continue the system of “voluntary movement” that had in any case “not worked very well in the past,” and thus registered the shift in government policy to the involuntary. Noting that the system of voluntary movement met with little response despite various types of official inducements, including the observation of a propagandizing “Dandakaranya Week” that November, Khanna informed: “It was, therefore, decided in December, 1960, in consultation with the Chief Minister of West Bengal, that the voluntary system of movement had failed and that notices should be issued to camp families to move to Dandakaranya, fixing definite dates for such movements. In spite of this, the pace of the movement to Dandakaranya did not improve.”85 Moving to Dandakaranya then was quite simply not a voluntary act in any meaningful sense of the word. Refugees remained unconvinced in face of official suasion that the relocation would be to their benefit. Mandal recalled 14 August 1961 as a memorable day in the refugee movement because of the immediate if temporary success in wresting demands from Chief Minister B.C. Roy. The movement’s leadership had decided that if Roy refused their demands, on 15 August, India’s Independence Day, they would take out a black-flag demonstration to shame and bring the city to standstill. Despite the plan’s secrecy, government was duly informed, presumably through the network of intelligence officers that appeared to have infiltrated the EIRC and SBBS.86 Intelligence thus visited Mandal prior to 14 August to ascertain the matter, and to ask in particular, how the government might prevent the black-flag demonstration from taking place. The humiliating of Indian independence would be called off, Mandal informed, if B.C. Roy met with him and the other leaders on 14 August when their procession arrived at the police cordon around Raj Bhavan, and if Roy were willing to accept the refugees’ demands. As the procession arrived at Raj Bhavan on 14 August, much to Mandal’s disbelief, police jeeps arrived and took 85

86

Meher Chand Khanna to Jogendranath Mandal, 7 July 1961. Khanna’s letter further suggested that financial imperatives informed the adamant will to relocate refugees to Dandakaranya. “On the one hand, large sums of money were being spent in Dandakaranya for the settlement of the camp families, and if the reclaimed lands were not taken charge of by the settlers in time, there was bound to be wastage of considerable funds. On the other hand, heavy expenditure was being continued to be incurred on relief assistance to the families in camps in West Bengal. Nearly Rs. 48 crores has been spent on the maintenance and upkeep of the camps in West Bengal alone. There could be no justification for such heavy expenditure in Dandakaranya as well as on relief in camps in West Bengal.” Intelligence reports suggest that informants were present at many of the meetings conducted by the UCRC, SBBS, and EIRC.

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the deputation to meet with Roy. Roy had never done so on innumerable prior occasions, and most significantly, accepted nearly all of the deputation’s demands. The black-flag demonstration was duly called off. Thereafter, however, Roy began to “quibble” over standing by his promises. “Within a few days it was understood that Chief Minister had given assurances under pressure, he had no desire to observe them.”87 Against this increasingly desperate situation Mandal wrote to Dr. Rajendra Prasad, received discouraging letters from Meher Chand Khanna, and finally appealed to Jawaharlal Nehru, reminding him that the security and rehabilitation of the refugees was the moral duty of Indian government; moreover, that he, as prime minister, on many occasions had heartened them as such. The gist of Nehru’s reply was: “I accept the responsibility of giving shelter and rehabilitation to the refugees. Arrangements for their rehabilitation in Dandakaranya have been made because it was not possible to give agriculturalist refugees rehabilitation in West Bengal. Now if they don’t go there for rehabilitation then what else can I do?”88 Upon hearing of this last vanquishing of hope from the prime minister of India, in sheer desperation refugees began to forcibly court arrest to escape the crippling hunger consequent to withholding doles. Some of them were imprisoned for a handful of days, then subsequently released, until the receiving police parties resorted once again to tactics refined several years earlier: the dispersal of refugee satyagrahis all over suburban Calcutta. A deputy commissioner of the police informed Mandal during one such scripted progression that while he would certainly arrest those refugees who deliberately violated Section 144, they would decide whether or not to imprison them, and whether or not they would be sent to court, or simply released.89 By effectively withholding the function of the law, their acts of disobedience would be rendered futile. Mandal called the EIRC’s refugee movement to an end a few days prior to festival season in 1961, having considered the authorities’ attitudes and conduct toward the refugees over the course of his engagement with them.90 He maintained that he tried with all means at his disposal to secure refugee assistance and rehabilitation, to little avail. His last letter to P.C. Sen reminded him of the various subjects about which they had spoken several weeks earlier and regretted the inaction regarding four families of Bagjola Camp whose family heads were killed during the police firing in June.91 He had information from various camps of the nonrestoration of doles for those families that had in fact agreed to go to 87 91

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 345. 88 Ibid., 346. Jogendranath Mandal to P.C. Sen, 5 October 1961.

89

Ibid., 348.

90

Ibid.

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Dandakaranya – and that they were not being taken there. Contemporary news reports indicated that the state government had recently dispatched 200 families to Dandakaranya before the Central Rehabilitation Department approved and accepted them. “It is really heart-rending to think and find that a few thousand camp refugees who were the worst victims of the partition of our country will go without food and clothings with their children during the Durga Puza festival when millions of people of this state will pass their days in all merriments in celebration of this National festival.”92 Mandal appealed to Sen “in the name of humanity and good conscience” to restore doles to camp refugees, at least for a fixed period. A restoration at this critical stage would encourage the will to go to Dandakaranya. Even Mandal seemed to have realized the futility of his efforts to seek rehabilitation within West Bengal and reluctantly capitulated to throwing in grudging support of the scheme. Several years later, Mandal reflected on the rehabilitation of Dalit refugees in his autobiography with evident bitterness: But because of government’s deluded policy, capricious and obstinate predisposition, the smooth rehabilitation of the refugees was not possible in any land; certainly not in West Bengal. The Dandakaranya Plan has been terminated in near failure. Even today thousands of refugees spend their time in endless sadness in uncountable camps. It does not seem as if government has even a spot of sympathy for these ill-fortuned and uprooted refugees. Because of government’s unreasonable and heartless conduct towards the refugees, there is no end to an afflicted Jogendranath’s sadness and grief.93

Even P.R. Thakur, long-standing Congressite and MLA, parted ways with his political benefactors over their policies toward Dalit refugees. At a meeting of the Civil Liberties Committee in Habra on 28 March 1964, Thakur criticized his own government for their “wrong policy” in connection with the minorities in East Pakistan.94 While the prime minister pledged responsibility for them during Partition, his government displayed a “step-motherly attitude” despite the “barbarous atrocities meted out to them by the Pakistan Government.”95 The chief minister of West Bengal was a “third-class man” from whom the people would derive no benefit and Thakur had withdrawn from the Congress on this account.96 Thakur referred to the West Bengal police forces’ “most 92 93

94

Ibid. Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 349. Mandal was certainly vindicated by Sri Saibal Kumar Gupta, ex-chairman of the Dandakaranya Development Authority, in his caustic letter of resignation of late August 1964. See Saibal Kumar Gupta and Alok Kumar Ghosh, Dandakaranya: A Survey of Rehabilitation (Calcutta: Bibhassa, 1999), 77–88. I.B. Officer’s Report, File No. 352/24: Sibnath Banerjee. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.

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barbarous treatment” – especially against Namasudras of several colonies in Habra – and criticized the chief minister for his “alleged support of the police personnel who were responsible for committing rape on two Namasudra girls, viz., Mamata Pal and Swati Biswas some time ago.”97 Thakur’s resignation from the Congress and Mandal’s resignation to the forced removal of Namasudra refugees bespoke the profound disillusionment with the contemporary political dispensation across both poles of Dalit leadership: those like Thakur, whom the Congress had coopted, and those like Mandal, whom they sought to neutralize. As the latter had written to N.C. Chatterjee several months earlier: “The administration and the police of West Bengal appear to be determined to crush the Namasudra community.”98 Conclusion Let down by the spokesmen of Indian nationalism in a truncated Bengal, the consequences of Partition for Dalits indubitably revealed its supporters’ truest intentions: security for the upper-castes of Bengal at the Dalits’ expense. The mid-1960s formed a juncture in the entire rehabilitation process when the West Bengal government declared the state was “totally saturated and would not be able to absorb the new multitudes of displaced people” and “feared that the burden of absorbing a new mass migration might impose grave and intolerable strains on the whole economy and administration of the State . . .”99 This translated into the transportation of approximately 800,000 “new migrants” to locations throughout the union. In the clinical recall of the government’s response to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry about those who migrated after 1964: “Those who needed relief and rehabilitation assistance from Government and were willing to go outside West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura for resettlement, were questioned and issued with Relief Eligibility Certificates to qualify them as bonafide migrants. The migrants generally stayed at the reception centers for a few days till arrangements for their movement by special trains to the transit camps set up in other States were completed.”100 Such then, had become the conditions for migration from East Pakistan by the mid1960s: the willingness to settle outside West Bengal, Assam, or Tripura. 97 98

99 100

Ibid. Jogendranath Mandal to N.C. Chatterjee, 26 February 1964, in Jagadishchandra Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2006), 39. Statement of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabiliation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry, West Bengal, 2. Ibid. (My emphases.)

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After Mandal died in 1968, a self-described “earnest follower,” one Dhirendra Nath Sarkar, produced a pamphlet in his memory. Likely read out as a public address, Sarkar’s audience would have considered Mandal “our leader.” The writing was intended, then, for a sympathetic Dalit public who perceived him as a source of moral authority and evidently drew on extensive conversations between Sarkar and Mandal himself. Confronting the reasons why his efforts for their rehabilitation within West Bengal eventually failed, Sarkar explained: It didn’t happen precisely because of several conspiring Congress and Leftist leaders. This is a clear example of the effort to prevent the consolidation of the powerful Scheduled refugees of East Bengal in West Bengal. Solely because of this, uprooting them, you’ve settled them in Bharat’s distant mountains and forest areas in the name of rehabilitation. This is the abominable rehabilitation preplanned by several so-called caste Hindu political parties of Bengal.101

Those for whom Mandal agitated thus looked upon their rehabilitation as fundamentally mediated by the fact that they were Scheduled Castes, while those who planned their relocation were caste Hindus. There was no displacement of caste identity into a broader refugee identity in this instance. In Sarkar’s understanding, what lay behind their second dislocation from West Bengal to elsewhere in the country – having already endured the first, from east to west – was the caste Hindu effort to prevent their consolidation. Unsurprising, then, that he noted to rhetorical effect that not a single one of “our families” were included among the thousands rehabilitated within Calcutta.102 Whether the Congress rehabilitated Namasudra refugees outside West Bengal in order to prevent their political regrouping is a question to which many will undoubtedly rush to object; while being entirely plausible, it is beside the point at hand. For this was precisely how Mandal and his affiliates, such as Sarkar, looked upon their collective predicament. Irrespective of intentions, the forced removal of Dalits from the territory of West Bengal indubitably contributed to the diminution of their collective numerical strength and indeed hindered their potential political influence. In no other region of India were they faced with systematic dispersal and rehabilitation in quite the same manner over the first decades of Independence, with consequences lasting to the present day.

101

102

Dhirendranath Sarkar, Deshbarenya Neta O Jatir Janak: Svargiya Jogendranath Mandal Mahashayer Prati Shradhhanjali O Shesh Jibaner Kayekti Katha (Kalikata: date unavailable). Ibid.

7

The Decline of the Caste Question The Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal, 1952–1968

The preceding chapters of this book have described some vicissitudes of the struggle for the Ambedkarite sensibility in Bengal’s political history. As we have seen, Mandal’s efforts to cohere Dalit politics over these turbulent decades met with sustained opposition from various quarters for reasons both structural and agential. This history is not complete, however, until one is assured of the manner and accomplishment of his defeat, in both figurative and literal registers. This final chapter documents the upper-caste will to marginalize Mandal and, to be sure, his politics, in the last decade of his life. It offers an account of Mandal’s political failure in postcolonial West Bengal, in stark contrast with his late-colonial fortunes. To ask why Dalit politics never took hold in postcolonial West Bengal is in effect to ask why Mandal’s struggle to bring about such mobilization – his lifelong ambition – met with such abject failure. This study comes to conclusion through an examination of the reservations policy in West Bengal, followed by an analysis of Mandal’s attempts to seek political office in West Bengal and the circumstances surrounding his death, as these related issues illustrate the central argument of this book with special clarity. With some justice, Mandal looked upon the very existence of these policies with a certain sense of proud ownership, given his critical role in enabling Ambedkar’s election to the constituent assembly in 1946. The Congress’ as well as the Communists’ opposition to reservation policies for Dalits therefore confirmed in his view their long-standing reluctance to implement constitutionally enshrined privileges, which in turn effectively served to constrain Dalit presence in government institutions, as we shall see, to a far greater extent than elsewhere in India. In addition, Mandal’s repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to reenter legislative politics suggested both the Congress’ and the Communists’ opposition to accommodating him, while nevertheless seeking to capture his popularity for their own political and electoral ends. Most revealing, as we shall see, was the timing and manner of his death. 238

Reservations Policy in West Bengal

239

The snuffing out of Dalit politics that Mandal represented was thus in part a consequence of the resumption of upper-caste overrepresentation in the public institutions of the state that persisted well into the transition to Communist power in the later 1970s, despite fundamental differences over politics and ideology with the Communists’ Congress predecessors. The first decades of West Bengal furnished a kind of invisibilization of the Dalit; that is, the relegation of a certain optic of social justice to the political unconscious. My argument is efforts that were familiar as deeply sincere, progressive, and radical – indeed, the hopes and passions of the traditional protagonists of Bengal’s mid- and late–twentieth-century political history – shaped Mandal’s political paralysis and death, and ultimately the inability to achieve Dalit political selfhood in West Bengal. The defeat of Dalit politics in the 1960s instantiated the complex ideological refusal to “see” and “hear” caste in both the nationalist and the communist upper-caste mind, a foreclosure epitomized by Mandal’s containment and the considered undermining of Dalit constitutional rights. Although it was undoubtedly true that upper-caste Congress and Left represented fairly distinctive approaches to negotiating caste, their votaries nonetheless converged in mutual incomprehension of Mandal’s politics. Even if the Left’s class-based policy emphases might have mitigated some of the more uncompromising forms of upper-caste domination in subsequent decades, this was nonetheless accompanied by their leadership’s ideological and practical opposition to Mandal’s attempts in the last years of his life to revive Dalit political mobilization. The ascendancy of the upper-caste Left coincided with the defeat of Ambedkarism in West Bengal. Reservations Policy in West Bengal Along with his activism in the refugee movement, and his various efforts toward election in West Bengal, Mandal remained concerned to monitor the implementation of constitutional provisions, themselves the product of a struggle in which he had played a critical, even if all too modestly assessed, role. His engagements with the matter help throw into relief the gap between the Congress’ and the Communists’ democratic rhetoric and those parties’ actual conduct regarding reservations in the services and special educational facilities for Dalit students. This is an aspect of West Bengal’s political history that cannot be bracketed in any meaningful attempt to understand the aporia of caste in that state, given the absolute centrality of such measures to Dalit political struggle. A brief statistical portrait of the Congress government’s efforts in the 1960s to observe constitutional

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enjoinders offers a useful framing of Mandal’s own initiatives in this regard.1 A curious feature of legislative debate in the first two decades of postcolonial West Bengal was the relative irregularity of questions about communal ratios and expenditures on Dalit students’ education that, by comparison, were prominent during provincial autonomy. While one might interpret this relative quiescence to indicate the satisfactory progress of these compensatory measures, this was clearly not the case. In a study of the Scheduled Castes in Indian politics, for instance, Annapurna Sanyal concluded of West Bengal: “It has been alleged that quotas in educational institutions in the State are often not maintained, rules and regulations pertaining to services and posts are often flouted, while funds earmarked for the different schemes for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes are often misused or left unutilized.”2 As we saw in Chapter 5, the leaders of the West Bengal Congress expressed their deep reluctance to give effect to constitutional safeguards for Dalits while debating the draft constitution. There is good reason to believe that a similar disinclination lay at the root of these persistent shortfalls. Indeed, gathering the data about the various schemes state governments were meant to pursue was an administrative activity about which authorities in West Bengal seem to have been fairly recalcitrant. That is to say, the refusal to maintain governmental data about caste was a political choice. The data presented below are thus almost entirely compiled from reports by the constitutionally appointed central authority – the office of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – to elicit a reluctant response from the relevant state agencies. Needless to say, this central body was far from impressed with the indicators emerging from West Bengal in particular. Indeed, the state was quite exceptional, compared with other states, on a number of counts, especially given that in 1961, West Bengal’s Scheduled Castes population stood at 6,890,314, amounting to 19.7 percent of the total population. This was the thirdhighest percentage of the major states after Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, and the second-largest Scheduled Castes population of all Indian states. The welfare programs that the central sector administered in West Bengal saw resounding success: of the Rs. 28.22 lakhs outlay over the first two years of the third five-year plan (1961–1962 and 1962–1963), 12.92 and 12.44 lakhs were allocated in the first and second years, 1

2

See A. Mitra, The Tribes and Castes of West Bengal (Alipore: West Bengal Government Press, 1953), 9–10, for the articles in the Constitution of India pertaining to the Scheduled Castes. Annapurna Sanyal, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Indian Politics (Calcutta: Minerva, 1991), 81.

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respectively, and 14.38 and 12.66 lakhs were the actual expenditures incurred. The state sector programs, however, presented a notable contrast: of the Rs. 149.89 lakhs outlay, 18.74 and 23.41 lakhs had been allocated in the first and second years, respectively, whereas actual expenditures were 10.79 and 14.08 lakhs.3 The report further noted that although every state government and union territory administration exempted Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students from tuition payments at various stages, Scheduled Caste students in West Bengal did not receive the same exemptions. The state had recently started making them available, but only among the most backward castes among the Scheduled Castes. “It is hoped,” the commissioner added, “that it would be possible for that Government to gradually extend [the] scope of this scheme to cover all deserving Scheduled Caste students, thus falling in line with the policy followed in this regard in all other states of India.”4 Again, by contrast, a central sector scheme providing housing subsidies for Scheduled Caste sweepers and scavengers in West Bengal both allocated and expended the Rs. 2 lakhs provided. All states – except West Bengal – reserved seats (according to population proportion and otherwise) for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe representatives in municipalities, notified area committees, and other local bodies. “In West Bengal no provision has been made for the reservation or representation of the Scheduled Castes in the local bodies.”5 Enrollments of Scheduled Caste students as a percentage of total students in all educational institutions in West Bengal surprisingly declined between 1960–1961 and 1964–1965 from 15.7 percent to 13.4 percent.6 Despite the decline, however, the figure of 15.7 percent was extremely high, especially given the state’s large population. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra lagged behind, at 13 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.7 In institutions for higher education, universities, and colleges of general education during the same period, their strength increased from 4.4 percent to 5.7 percent.8 In 1964–1965, they accounted for 3.6 percent of total enrollment in colleges of professional education.9 The percentage of Scheduled Caste students was therefore highest at the primary and lower levels of education, and gradually tapered down as the educational standard rose. To be sure, these were far from discouraging figures. Most impressive were the numbers of applications received for centrally administered post-matriculation 3 6 7

Ibid., 38–39. 4 Ibid., 54. 5 Ibid., 153. Progress of Education of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (New Delhi: Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, 1971), 9. Ibid., 9. 8 Ibid., 21. 9 Ibid., 23.

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scholarships, the number of scholarships sanctioned, and the number of students paid.10 Despite such increases, a survey initiated in 1967 that ran for more than two years in fifty-seven villages of nine districts in West Bengal – a survey designed to gain a socioeconomic profile of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes –concluded of the data gathered that “a cursory glance would provide a comprehensive idea about the very poor achievements” in comparison with the non-Scheduled population in the educational and economic spheres. “The wide gap that prevails in between Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes on the one hand and the non-Scheduled communities on the other in the educational and economic fields is something that deserves special attention. Though there are variations and extent of achievements and prevailing gaps among different sectors of population in different spheres of activities, one cannot deny the fact that these wide disparities are [a] strong indication of unequal sharing of developmental benefits.”11 A Government of India Department of Social Welfare Report of 1969 recorded the following instances of the everyday life of caste prejudice: Yogesh Biswas, General Secretary of the Congress’ own Depressed Classes League, claimed that Dalit government employees were unable to secure rental accommodation.12 In a hotel in Chempadani, Hooghly, a resident was “manhandled and insulted” the moment the owner learned that he was a Namasudra. The matter was referred to the police, who didn’t take any action; yet when the Untouchability Offences Act was invoked, the hotel owner “approached the social workers and the matter was settled amicably.”13 One Goloke Bauri informed the investigating committee that individuals of several castes were not served tea in cups in villages in his district of Bankura. The tea-stall owners told them to bring their own utensils or to clean those available at the stalls themselves.14 Other observations included that Scheduled Castes couldn’t perform puja directly – they had to give money to shopkeepers for prasad, the foodoffering to deities, as pujaris didn’t accept offerings from them directly. In some instances, even after receiving invitations to public functions, several of those interviewed complained of segregation and humiliation.15 The same report noted that, although the Scheduled Castes population of the state was 19.84 percent, the state government had reserved 15 percent of positions for them and that too only in certain specified services and posts. Unlike almost all other states, West Bengal’s Congress 10 11 12

Report (Delhi: Government of India, Department of Social Welfare, 1969), 235. Amal Kumar Das et al., Intercommunity: A Comparison Between Different Sectors of the Population (Calcutta: Cultural Research Institute, 1975), 6–7. Report, 30. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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government still refused to extend reservation orders in local bodies or in the services under the panchayat samitis and zilla parishads. None of the three members of the state’s public service commission, moreover, was a Dalit. Even in those positions to which the reservations policy did apply, the relative absence of their employees was “glaring.”16 As of 31 March 1966, of 7,743 gazetted employees, they accounted for 126, or 1.63 percent; of 1,65,760 nongazetted superior employees, 5,909, or 3.57 percent; and of 81,563 nongazetted inferior employees, 11,513, or 14.12 percent.17 More than a decade later, Scheduled Castes accounted for 96 of 5,297 Class I posts (1.8 percent), 690 of 26,884 Class II posts (2.57 percent), 15,905 of 241,840 Class III posts (6.57 percent), and 1,277 of the remaining 17,908 posts under the state government’s control (7.13 percent). The practices of discrimination these figures reflected thus continued through United Front and early Communist rule.18 Comparatively speaking, West Bengal ranked unusually low among other states in the union with respect to Dalit welfare. R.A. Schermerhorn’s study of the efforts of state governments in improving the condition of the Scheduled Castes in the journal Economic and Political Weekly revealed that, of the fifteen states he studied, West Bengal ranked the very lowest in terms of number and rank of ministers assigned to such duties proportional to Scheduled Caste population, and fourth lowest in terms of per capita expenditure combined with level of affluence. In both cases, the following states, many of which were long thought, in the upper-caste Bengali mind, to be those most prone to caste discrimination, ranked higher: Madras, Mysore, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan.19 The foregoing portrait of the institutionalized discrimination in West Bengal should inform perspectives on why caste was not, rather, could not, be politicized in the way that was possible elsewhere in the union. Such data suggest that those Dalit MLAs who joined the Congress (in the majority of reserved legislative seats) largely failed, or were unable, over the course of the first two decades of their rule, to convince their party leaders to fully implement their communities’ constitutional entitlements. Were these MLAs largely acquiescent in a regime unwilling to implement the constitutional measures from which their own 16 18 19

Ibid., 387. 17 Ibid. Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the year 1978–79 (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1979), 162–63. R.A. Schermerhorn, “Scheduled Caste Welfare: Public Priorities in the States,” Economic and Political Weekly 4 (1969): 397–401.

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communities would benefit?20 Was their political inclusion contingent on remaining restrained about the abuses of the own communities’ welfare? Ramananda Das, a Congress member of Parliament, while addressing a meeting of the West Bengal Depressed Classes League in Kanchrapara on October 28, 1956, exclaimed in regret that “even now in various offices of the West Bengal government the reservation of seats had not been sufficiently arranged.”21 Das was no Ambedkarite. He found Ambedkar’s political ideology objectionable and retained fealty to idioms of organic Hindu unity, as did many other Dalit leaders (albeit elected under a set of electoral conditions markedly different from the late-colonial context and even more inimical to the possibility of Dalit self-determination). Yet even Das could not help but observe that the opportunities at their disposal were not the same as those in other states. As noted above, Mandal remained abreast of how the West Bengal government attended to constitutional provisions alongside his activities in the refugee movement. As president of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes Welfare Council of West Bengal, he convened a meeting at the Calcutta University Institute Hall on 8 December 1963; his address consisted of a detailed evaluation of the state government’s efforts in this connection.22 Like Das, he informed the meeting that West Bengal was the only state that didn’t exempt Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes students from tuition costs over the course of their schooling. As long as disbursals were controlled by the central government, college students indeed received their due. But difficulties began once control devolved to the state government, as their students began to encounter “deception” in the receipt of scholarships.23 Funds allocated for various aspects of students’ education – books, hostel rents, examination fees, tuition – remained unused and schemes were dropped. Although other states reserved employment opportunities in their government services for members of Scheduled Castes, West Bengal had done so only minimally, under the C group of its civil services; to make matters worse, confirmation and promotion procedures seemed to work against Scheduled Caste employees. Of deepest regret, Mandal added, was the 20

21 22 23

This is a question that requires far more attention. Specifically, there is a need to better understand the role of Dalit MLAs within the Congress, and later, the Left. Did these parties, as Christophe Jaffrelot has described of the contemporary North Indian context, use the “reservation of seats in the assemblies to its own advantage by co-opting docile Untouchable leaders?” What were their efforts, if any, to consolidate a Dalit movement? Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 8. Ramananda Das, Abhibhashan (Calcutta: Sri Krishna Art Press, 1956), 5. Jogendranath Mandal, Sabhapatir Abhibhashan (Kalakata, no publisher, 1963). Ibid., 4.

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local authorities’ “injustice and misconduct” regarding employment and promotions in the central government’s offices within the state: East and South-East Railway, Supply and Disposal, Central Excise, Central Food, Customs, Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Income Tax, Chittaranjan Locomotive Workshop, A.G. Bengal, and All India Radio. “Non-Scheduled Caste employees” deprived Scheduled Caste employees of their privileges, despite enjoying employment themselves. “The local authorities are primarily responsible for this. One will not receive any type of response if one submits a letter or petition complaining about anything. It’s such that if the central ministers are alerted to any such allegations and they request a report from the local authorities, they rarely send it.”24 Mandal’s address, delivered to an audience presumably unable to visit repercussions on the administration and thereby innocent of embellishments one might suspect in other circumstances, offers ample illustration of the habitual subversion of constitutionality within the administrative apparatus of West Bengal, as well as the sense of impunity conveyed by the collective behavior of state officials to an observer such as Mandal. He detailed the various strategies deployed whereby Dalit applicants and employees were systematically overlooked in matters of employment, confirmation, and promotion, despite having the requisite qualifications and, in many cases, years of service, in favor of less experienced and junior upper-caste prospects through multiple instances brought to his attention. These included the invocation of the old discourse of “suitability” in matters of recruitment, the subsequent classification of once-reserved posts as nonselected, the often blatant and unaccountable passing over and refusing to employ Dalits, and the deliberate failure to maintain employment data regarding initial employment, seniority, confirmation, and promotion for Scheduled and non-Scheduled employees, as required by a central government circular issued in 1955. Mandal proclaimed that the “unwillingness” to support nationalist leaders’ spirit to draw near those who were backward was the source of this “injustice, neglect and chaos.”25 Note the specificity of his critique: “The conduct, perspective, and attitude of the leading and prosperous classes which led to creating a separate class called Scheduled Castes have not been expelled in many areas today. Their ever so slight welfare has not been cause for contentment for many.”26 It was not that welfare was absent in entirety; rather, that the miniscule implementation in their favor was resented. 24

Ibid., 8.

25

Ibid., 14.

26

Ibid., 15. (My emphases.)

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Over the course of the late 1950s and 1960s, Mandal corresponded with various central dignitaries about reservation policies, in West Bengal and in other states as well. In 1957, for instance, he wrote to Nehru, appealing that his government and authorities in Nagpur should reinstate the facilities Dalit students had availed themselves of, but had been subsequently denied, because they had converted to Buddhism.27 There was a deeper significance to this concern; many of these students had converted to Buddhism along with Ambedkar, who passed away shortly thereafter, in 1956. In 1962, Mandal wrote to C.B. Gupta, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, seeking his intervention to allow the Namasudra refugees settled in that state to find inclusion in the list of Scheduled Castes.28 Mandal remained concerned about the constitutional provisions available to displaced Namasudra persons, and challenged the notion that such privileges lapsed because of conversion. Of particular interest is a letter to A.K. Sen, minister of law and the Department of Social Security, in response to the recommendation of the Lokur Committee that the Namasudra community, on account of its relative advancement, should be descheduled from the list of Scheduled Castes in West Bengal.29 The committee convened in accordance with a policy drafted in the early 1950s that declared that castes that had benefited sufficiently from governmental reservations policies would be struck from the list of Scheduled Castes in each state. In his letter to Sen, Mandal objected to the recommendation that Namasudras be removed because of their supposed increase in literacy rates; the committee had given unreliable evidence for the proposition and they had not consulted the Namasudra leadership. The censuses of 1951 and 1961 inaccurately enumerated the total number of Namasudras in West Bengal because, for instance, the 1961 enumeration sheets contained no column for ascertaining caste and Scheduled Caste status. The onus was on the individual to disclose if he or she belonged to a Scheduled Caste for the enumerator to note as such in a column for “remarks.” Out of ignorance, many had not done so. Additionally, “in many cases the enumerators were reported 27

28

29

Jogendranath Mandal to Jawaharlal Nehru, 14 August 1957. The exchange between Mandal and Nehru is utterly fascinating for what it reveals of the two men’s conceptions of conversion. Jogendranath Mandal to C.B. Gupta, 19 July 1962. Mandal’s access to various nationallevel and centrally situated leaders such as Rajendra Prasad, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, stood curiously at odds with his lack of political traction within West Bengal. Jogendranath Mandal to A.K. Sen, 30 November 1965. Sen apparently once offered Mandal various opportunities, including authority over the Dandakaranya project, in exchange for calling off his refugee movement, which the latter refused. Sarkar, Deshbarenya Neta O Jatir Janak, 3.

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to have shown their disinclination, for reasons known to them, to record any one as belonging to [a] Scheduled Caste even when it was disclosed to them.”30 In other instances, both literate and illiterate individuals “who were and are anxious to hide their caste because of their fear of being looked down upon if their caste became disclosed to the neighbors, had not disclosed their caste to the enumerators.”31 Cumulatively, these factors resulted in inaccurately low figures for the Namasudra population, which consequently indicated literacy rates deemed sufficient for descheduling. Mandal estimated a Namasudra population of no less than 15 lakhs within West Bengal. There was, in addition, the issue of Namasudra refugees throughout the Indian union. If Namasudras were struck from the Scheduled Castes list in West Bengal, they would be ineligible for educational assistance elsewhere. As relevant were Mandal’s observations that Namasudras continued to endure forms of caste discrimination despite the constitutional ban on untouchability. Notions of their pollution continued to hold sway. Namasudras were denied service by barbers and washermen in rural and a few urban areas, and prevented from taking water from public water-taps and tube-wells. Mandal knew of two Namasudra clerks who were recently insulted and abused in “filthy language such as ‘chhotalok’ ‘chandal’ and untouchable etc.”32 In various districts of the state, individuals of even other Dalit castes treated Namasudras as untouchable. Mandal thus asserted, with evident dismay: “The people of the Namasudra community still suffer from social disabilities.”33 This was brought home to him in the considerable number of Namasudras who were hiding their caste and introducing themselves with Kayastha surnames. Such changes in nomenclature were “clear proof that they intended to hide their caste for fear of being hated and looked down upon by the people of other communities.”34 In addition, since almost all the Namasudra students attending college in West Bengal were refugees, and thus wholly dependent on government stipends for education, descheduling the community would be disastrous and counter the “little educational progress” made.35 Mandal’s letter speaks to the 30 31 32 34 35

Ibid. Such enumerative practices, as previous chapters have shown, were hardly innocent of a political agenda. Ibid. The hiding of one’s caste was thus rooted in fear, and thus hardly indicated willing rejection of one’s caste identification, as some analyses have implied. Ibid. 33 Ibid. Ibid. Mandal was quick to note the irony of their not being recorded as Namasudra in the census, while disclosing as much to the appointing authorities in government services. Ibid. According to N.B. Roy, it was due to Mandal’s intervention and meeting with Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastrithat the descheduling was forestalled. Roy, A People in Distress, 242.

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varied ways in which Namasudra “progress” was in actuality a function of the failure of enumeration: not only the form of the act, but the enumerator’s politics, besides the fear of recognition itself, worked to diminish their true numerical strength. Another letter he received from one S.N. Mandal, evidently an acquaintance in New Delhi, about the Lokur Committee Report sheds light on the circumstances whereby the proposal to deschedule the Namasudras emerged. Wondering how the report could have been so “shallow,” his correspondent told him that the committee hadn’t recommended their exclusion on its own. The whole question was raised by the following “interested persons,” neither of whom was a West Bengal Government official: J.C. Biswas and Kali Charan Das of the Congress’ Depressed Classes League, and a member of parliament, one B. Mandal.36 Regarding Namasudra refugees, Mandal believed the committee’s argument was obviously motivated by political considerations, as that explained for him why the state government granted consent. “It is a fantastic nonsense to say that the Namasudra refugees ‘have been settled in agricultural colonies,’ that ‘social disabilities are practically non-existent’ for them in their new places, and that they are ‘receiving substantial benefits under rehabilitation scheme.’”37 In the context of the Namasudras’ unsatisfactory rehabilitation through the joint enterprise of central and state governments over the preceding decade, he felt sure that this latest recommendation for descheduling was “undoubtedly part of a big political design. One can discover in it the basic reasons for why the West Bengal Government has consistently opposed any scheme to resettle the new refugees in West Bengal – who are mostly Namasudras.”38 For this acquaintance then, the opposition to Namasudra refugees’ rehabilitation within the state and the contemplated removal of Namasudras from the list of Scheduled Castes was linked, and part of a larger pattern of conduct. Mandal’s various attempts to highlight the abuses of reservations policies thus reflected a political culture wherein constitutional provisions were minimally observed at best – a society whose political leadership and administration exhibited a pronounced reluctance to implement the safeguards available to Dalits, despite a nominal assent to the terms of the exception in the first place. As the preceding analysis suggests, various techniques were devised whereby these could be effectively bypassed. Ranging from the deliberate refusal to maintain basic data regarding caste, to the erasing of Scheduled Caste numbers from the census (a practice with substantial precedents and expertise), to the socially 36

S.N. Mandal to Jogendranath Mandal, 7 January 1966.

37

Ibid.

38

Ibid.

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diffused fear of recognition as Dalit, or the seeming requirement of silence as the basis for political inclusion – such learned habits worked to diminish and dissuade any initiative toward independent political activity. It is difficult to believe that such conduct was yet another of Partition’s unintended outcomes, a regime seemingly unable to help the overwhelming dominance of upper-caste Hindus in its services. The systematic exclusion of Dalits from the state’s administration over the first couple of decades of Independence, especially when compared with other states in India, thus restricted their access to one of the major domains from which their political formations might have emerged (as indeed they did elsewhere in the union), and effectively constituted the overrepresentation of the upper-castes in the public institutions of West Bengal.39 Political Defeat While the subversion of reservations policy offers an important vantage on the decline of the caste question in West Bengal, Mandal’s own efforts to reenter the domain of formal legislative politics allows a finer appreciation of the matter. For the problem that calls for explanation is why a politician of his stature and ideological proclivity was quite simply unable to secure election to any of West Bengal’s or India’s major legislative bodies by capitalizing on his evident popularity among Dalits in West Bengal. What explains Mandal’s apparent political untouchability, this “refusing” of his politics? An answer to this question goes some way toward grasping the conundrum posed by caste in postcolonial West Bengal, for his incapacitation occurred within a political-cultural context intent on stifling the critique he posed of its leadership and indeed, the very possibility of specifically Dalit political power. As we shall see, his death and suspected political murder occurred at a juncture when he had begun to pose distinct obstacles to an ascendant left, and seemed on the verge of reviving the possibility of Dalit politics under the banner of the Republican Party of India. Following his first failed attempt in the first elections of independent India as an independent candidate in 1952, Mandal momentarily allied with the Congress in May 1955, his second and even briefer flirtation with that party. He presided over a meeting where Chief Minister B.C. Roy was chief guest a few months prior in January, since he perceived no 39

A major point of comparison might be Kanshi Ram’s All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation. See Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

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difference between Congress and government.40 Mandal was all praise for the organization to which he had been so viscerally opposed over the previous decade: they handled the refugee crises with “admirable courage and appreciable success,” both central and state governments were spending a “considerable amount of money” for the Scheduled Castes’ educational and social progress, and, in view of the impending conclusion of reservations policy within five years, it was “high time for them to shake off mental reservation and put in their joint efforts in co-operation with the Government and the National Congress . . .”41 The possibility of Congress supporting him during the 1957 state elections emerged, but failed to materialize, and the relationship snapped.42 Mandal’s followers rallied around him, and he stood as an independent candidate once again, and lost, once more. This time around, however, Mandal’s electoral appeal was explicitly directed at Dalits, unlike five years previously.43 Mandal’s rise to prominence within the refugee movement, his subsequent deep criticisms of government, and his imprisonment the following year effectively confirmed the end of his second, and even briefer, affiliation with the Congress. In June 1961, along with various leaders of different Scheduled Castes (including ex-minister Mukunda Behari Mullick and Manohar Dhali), Mandal founded a “socio-economic organization” called the Krishak Praja Parishad, which, while short-lived, indicated the gradual shift in his own thinking on mobilization within the political geography of West Bengal. While remaining independent of any political party, the stated objectives of the Krishak Praja Parishad included the unity of all classes of agriculturalists, irrespective of caste. Questions of reservations, education, and rehabilitation found their place, yet the object here was the krishak, and the krishak’s economic conditions. They remained, according to the Parishad’s statement, unaware of their rights. “Even today they think of themselves as tributary subjects. None of the ruling communities want that a real god of the people should arise. They are afraid to awake the people’s god.”44 Those elected on the rural vote rarely, if ever, followed through with their pre-electoral assurances. Mandal ran in the 40

41 43

44

“Jogen Mondal Joins Congress: Decision to Serve India in Wider Field,” Hindusthan Standard, 3 May 1955, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda (Kalakata: Caturthha Duniya, 2006), 108. Ibid., 109–10. 42 Ibid., 112. Ibid., 113. He was supported by representatives of a number of different Dalit associations, including Rabidas, Patni, Rajbangshi, Byagrakshatriya, Paundra-kshatriya, and Jaliya-kaibartas. It is clear that he was keen to garner support from other Scheduled Castes besides Namasudras. Krishak Praja Parishad, Pascimbanga, Uddeshya, Karyasuci, o Gathan-pranali (Kalakata: Bibekananda Biswas prakasita, 1961), 4.

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following year’s elections as a Parishad candidate in two different constituencies, only to be defeated yet again by two Congress Dalit leaders, P.R. Thakur in Hanskhali and Manindrabhusan Biswas (who had defeated him once before in 1957) in Bagdha. The disappointment of such multiple rejections led to his decision at this juncture to no longer seek office in the state.45 Revealingly, it was outside West Bengal where Mandal was received with great enthusiasm by the leaders and activists of the Republican Party of India (RPI), the organization re-formed out of the Scheduled Castes Federation before Ambedkar’s own death in 1956. While staying at the Ambedkar Bhavan in New Delhi in 1963, Mandal met local branch members of the RPI who invited him to join their organization in order to “help bring Dr. Ambedkar’s mission to fruition.”46 A subsequent visit to New Delhi and a meeting with the RPI leaders B.K. Gaikwad, B.D. Khobragade, and B.P. Maurya convinced him to join. Mandal was feted by the RPI, began to play a role in the party’s activities and meetings as invited, and addressed their conferences in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Punjab over the course of late 1963 through 1965. There was “hope that a party unit would grow in Bengal” under his leadership.47 The general secretary B.D. Khobragade’s report of 1966 thus included West Bengal among the list of states in which the party had units.48 According to a party spokesman, Mandal was to have contested the general election that year from Bhandara, as with Ambedkar, several years prior.49 The RPI held him in particularly high esteem because of his ultimately successful efforts to secure Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal despite Congress opposition. Despite the catastrophic effects of Partition on what he once called the “growing solidarity of the Scheduled Castes,” Mandal evidently recommitted himself to revitalizing Dalit politics in West Bengal. As he put it in a roughly contemporary interview with Eleanor Zelliot, he had joined the Republican Party at their request, and left retirement “to finish Ambedkar’s work.”50 Mandal informed her that he was a “devoted follower of Ambedkar” and believed that he could work only with the RPI in order to lift the downtrodden. He described Namasudras as “big, active, 45 47

48 49 50

Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 351. 46 Ibid., 351. Owen M. Lynch, “The Politics of Untouchability – Agra,” in Milton B. Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (eds.), Structure and Change in Indian Society (New Brunswick: AldineTransaction, 2007), 232. B.D. Khobragade, Republican Party of India: Report of the General Secretary, 1966. “Jogendranath Mandal,” Times of India, 1 March 1966, 8. Eleanor Zelliot, Interview with Jogendranath Mandal (private collection of Eleanor Zelliot).

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Figure 7.1: Jogendranath Mandal with Naranbhai Solanki, N. Shivaraj, B.K. Gaikwad, B.D. Khobragade, and Karshandas Parmar at the national conference of the Republican Party of India in Ahmedabad, January 1964. Photograph courtesy of Jagadishchandra Mandal.

as intelligent as Mahars or more so . . .”; they were “strong, owned land, educated,” yet no other community had suffered as much from Partition. Mandal envisioned that the end of the caste system was possible as “things are moving so fast,” but a socialistic government was necessary to solve the population’s problems. At present however, under Nehru, the country experienced “dictatorship of the worst form . . .” Mandal had been considering conversion to Christianity or Buddhism if it would bring help to his people, but his object was to “rectify, not destroy.” Clearly, he remained committed to thinking through the appropriate course Dalit politics ought to take. Mandal’s renewed contact with RPI led to the foundation, along with members of the Krishak Praja Parishad, of the West Bengal branch of that party on 16 October 1963, in an effort to appeal to wider constituencies. They realized that as “non-agriculturalist political leaders” were unwilling to join the Parishad, what was required was an entirely non-communal organization that invited the membership of those interested irrespective of community, caste, or religion: “The Republican Party is

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against communalism and is devoted to democratic socialist ideals.”51 This was evidently an attempt to broaden their horizons and, as in western India, an appeal to engagement with the ascendant Left. Their statement emphasized that their organization was explicitly “non-communal,” and indicated that as elsewhere in India the RPI was composed of leaders who were Dalits, upper-castes, and Muslims. Mandal’s next attempt at political office came in late 1964. P.R. Thakur, arguably one of the more influential Congress Dalit MLAs at the time, vacated his seat in the assembly and dissociated himself from his party in protest against the police excesses visited on Namasudra refugees earlier in the year, and how he was treated by a party to which he had remained loyal for so long. Both Mandal and Thakur were arrested and imprisoned because of their activities under the aegis of the Save the Minorities of East Pakistan Committee that April, which included advocating the economic blockade of Pakistan.52 Yet another series of antiHindu riots in East Pakistan, brought on by the Hazrat Bal affair, compelled another influx of refugees to seek asylum in West Bengal. Some were received in West Bengal with police brutality. Upon release from prison, Mandal tried his hand once more in the by-election for the Hanskhali assembly from which Thakur resigned, and this time, his son explained, with the personally extended support of not only Thakur himself, but also of another candidate in the same election, existing MLAs, and Mukunda Behari Mullick, ex-minister and long-time associate; once again, came his defeat at the hands of the Congress-supported Ramendra Kishore Mallick.53 What explains Mandal’s repeated failure to secure his election against Congress-supported candidates under conditions of postcolonial mass democracy? It is inexplicable, somehow, that despite his considerable following among Dalits, besides his experience, he was unable, despite multiple attempts, to win public confidence, while countless other Dalit candidates who were far less credentialed and experienced than he were able to secure the same. The sharp discrepancy suggests the conditions placed on political acceptability. To be sure, the joint-electoral structure, which no longer provided for a primary election among Scheduled Castes alone, initially assured the Congress’ ability to with even greater ease than before, a near guarantee that the candidates it chose to nominate would prevail electorally. In the absence of any primary election, it was never a question of which leaders Dalits themselves wanted to elect, 51 52 53

Bharatiya Repablikan Parti Pascimbanga Shakha: Adarsh, Uddeshya, o Gathan-pranali (Kalakata: Ashutosh Das sadharan sampadak prakasita, 1963). “J.N. Mandal Arrested,” Times of India, 1 May 1964, 1. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 124.

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but which of their leaders the Congress and Communists were willing to support. The joint-electoral structure effectively enabled greater control over the candidates eligible for the seats reserved for Dalits. Perhaps this is why, according to his biographer Kiran Talukdar, the veteran Namasudra leader since the early decades of the twentieth century and minister during the first government of Bengal, under the provincial autonomy of Mukunda Behari Mullick, refused to even try his hand in politics because he knew that a Congress party led by predominantly upper-caste representatives – against whom he had spoken for the better part of his late-colonial career – sat in government. Talukdar wrote: “The so-called oppressors now rose to power. Which was why for devoted leaders like Mukunda Behari this was a test of fire. He grasped well in advance that the consideration of genuine justice was very weak in present society. Where extortion in the name of government, receiving justice is especially hard.”54 Mullick’s refusal to even consider joining politics again suggests his resignation to insurmountable and impossible circumstance. As he described in a speech to the Legislative Assembly in late February 1947, the “future of the Scheduled Castes is hopelessly gone.”55 The Congress’ activities had “struck at the root of the political existence of the Scheduled Castes.”56 Presumably, Mullick perceived little prospect in legislative politics, despite his own storied career. In the last pages of his autobiography, Mandal presented a reckoning of sorts, with his rise to political prominence in late-colonial Bengal compared with his contemporary penury and political impotence since arriving in the west, and how he was perceived by the state’s upper-caste political intelligentsia. The exercise was undoubtedly an especially selfconscious moment in his narration and offered important clues about his inability to re-enter legislative politics. Mandal noted how he reconciled himself to his poverty despite the opportunities he had as a minister in several governments to seek his future material comfort. “So people understand that I have not become wealthy through the untruthful acquisition of wealth despite being born into a persecuted and poor community and having occupied high positions many times over – this is my wish.”57 It is indeed true that Mandal spent the last years of his life in a slum in Tollygunge, living in a carpenter’s workshop.58 54 55 56 58

Kiran Talukdar, Jananayak Mukunda Behari Mullick: Jiban o Sadhana (Kalikata: Dekas Prakasani, 1988), 121. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 26 February 1947 (Alipore: Bengal Government Press, 1947), 461. Ibid. 57 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 409. N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, 235–36.

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Three matters in particular troubled him even when he wrote at the age of sixty-two in 1966. One was the idea that he was responsible for the partition of Bengal in 1947; second, that he was a reactionary; and third, that he was “communal.” He could not see what was reactionary about his work and policy: I was born into the family of agriculturalists of an extorted and oppressed community. I have never had, nor do I have, any relations with vested interests. I have tried to do whatever possible for oppressed human communities and poor farmers and workers’ economic and social prosperity and my work has been limited by the attainment of that object. I have never worked for the preservation or expansion of wealthy vested interests, landlords or industrialists. Neither have I ever worked against the interests of farmers, workers or extorted classes. Therefore I do not understand why I should stand accused of being reactionary. I do not know what logic lies behind the accusation of those who do so.59

Mandal was aware that people thought of him as “communal.” There were, however, two meanings to the term, one positive, another negative. Of course, the accusations leveled against him were of the latter sort. But if “loving one’s own community and working for its welfare” made him guilty of communalism, “then I accept that I am guilty of that offence.”60 Mandal recounted experiences in his youth and college days as a result of which he “revolted against untouchability.”61 In high school he realized the community into which he was born was perceived with disgust, particularly by those upper-castes that considered his own untouchable. The water they touched was undrinkable. They could not enter their homes. He endured the abuse of his upper-caste peers in school. “I had no choice but to tolerate this.”62 During his college years, Mandal recalled how he and his Namasudra peers were not allowed to eat in hostel dining halls. He came to believe that they were regarded with disgust because of their poverty and lack of education; transforming these conditions was thus essential. Once elected to the assembly in 1936: “I realized that if education were spread amongst my community and arrangements were made for government employment for the educated, illiteracy and poverty would be somewhat removed.”63 Government-sponsored education and employment, he felt, might deliver them from thousands of years of untouchability. The strategy had indeed worked, if partially. Mandal was aware of his zeal and enthusiasm for this manner of seeking freedom from untouchability, “but for this should I be hooted at as a communalist by political and social leaders and educated and thoughtful people of the upper-castes, or should I be considered worthy of respect?”64 59 64

Ibid., 410–11. Ibid., 416.

60

Ibid., 413.

61

Ibid., 414.

62

Ibid., 413.

63

Ibid. 415.

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Reflecting on the leftist parties’, and even the Congress’, desire to establish socialism, Mandal asked whether the justice, equality, and welfare that he understood that ideology to represent was intended only for a few communities, or for all irrespective of their community, religion, or caste. For this indeed, was one of its central contradictions as manifested in West Bengal.65 Did those who labeled him a communalist, he asked, wish that untouchables would forever remain thus? “If anyone tries for their welfare, they would be hooted – is this consistent with reason?”66 Mandal exclaimed, with evident irony, that where Gandhi had undertaken to remove untouchability he was hailed as a “mahatma” (great soul); by working for the same ideals, Mandal was accursed a communalist. He was “amazed when I think how a socialist or communist leader can accuse me of being communal?”67 Clearly, these were accusations that weighed heavy on his conscience. Mandal came closest to confronting his own political marginality when he noted that it was a matter of “great sadness” for those who remained close to him that his extensive experience was not put to use in the service of independent India.68 In his view, his obsolescence was largely the consequence of the negative publicity generated about him and, in particular, his alleged culpability for the partition of Bengal. Having found no other reason to accuse him, Mandal believed that an unidentified “group of conspirators” attributed such entirely false accusations to him because they “want to keep him entirely restrained”69 – so much so that many among his own community held him accountable for the great divide and the horrors it brought in its wake. For the skeptical, although this may well sound like an embittered man grasping for an explanation for his political impotence, the proposition was not entirely amiss. As previous chapters have shown, there were sustained efforts to manage the emergence of a largely compliant and subservient Dalit leadership. Mandal clearly did not fit the bill, and was especially vulnerable to the consequences of an upper-caste-dominated press harping on his culpability for Dalit suffering following Partition. I return to the conversations between Dhirendranath Sarkar and Mandal discussed in the previous chapter to gauge how he looked on possibilities that inhered in his present, shortly before his untimely death. 65

66

Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 155, 209–11. Also see the memoirs of Kanti Biswas, arguably the Dalit politician who went furthest within the CPI(M)’s governments, for a revealing look at prejudices he encountered over the course of his career: Kanti Biswas, Amar jiban: Kichu katha (Kolkata: Ekus satak, 2014). Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 418. 67 Ibid., 418. 68 Ibid., 419. 69 Ibid.

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While discussing the state of their community, Mandal remarked that many Dalit youth had “stood up” after receiving the opportunities provided by the state and the chance to mix with “respectable society.”70 “In this limited opportunity they have forgotten their past and become bhadrolok. They are feeling embarrassed or disgusted to disclose their caste.”71 In so doing they failed to think of their own communities, which, if they did, would not be so degraded. Mandal thus touched on an aspect of crucial importance to the problem of this book: the indifference of the gradually growing socially mobile elite among the Dalits toward their own. Yet, Mandal nonetheless felt it was foolish to expect those who presently governed to think of their “servants’ welfare.”72 How could they? “Why should they accept the leadership of the lower castes?”73 Replying to Sarkar’s question about which political party he believed they should support, or which policy they should accept, Mandal maintained that while others might not agree, he believed that except for the policies articulated by Ambedkar – the “priest of democracy” – there was no other ideology available to them. Mandal himself identified with no other “ism” besides Ambedkar’s opinions and path. That aside, there were two “weapons of democracy” of assistance: the right to vote and personal freedom. He saw “no point in this class of people sacrificing themselves in bloody movements at the repeated orders of other parties. The responsibility for governing the country can come into our hands within five years by means of the vote. Because 80% of the people are of the backward classes . . . If political power does not come into our hands this community’s freedom and development is not possible. We have to acquire the strength to survive by ourselves.”74 Mandal was aware that several of their youth had joined the Communists on their leaders’ persuasions. But he saw no peaceful future by means of a “bloody politics borrowed from other countries.” Of particular significance were his bitter experiences with the Left: Last year the leftists particularly the CPI(M) had supported me and made me stand from Barasat and even I helped them a lot in the last election. But at the end of the vote it emerged that except for Scheduled Castes I had not received any votes from anyone else, and had I done so, would not have lost; this is their preplanned, eternal policy. Then during the time of the united front government, so much happened to take on a Scheduled Caste minister. They revealed at that time if taking a Scheduled Caste minister went beyond the limit the communists would leave the group. So much so that communist leader Biswanath Mukherjee [CPI leader] answered Scheduled Caste leaders by saying that the Scheduled Castes 70 73

Dhirendranath Sarkar, Deshbarenya Neta O Jatir Janak, 5. Ibid. 74 Ibid., 5–6.

71

Ibid.

72

Ibid.

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were no more than a mere sentiment . . . Then in the mid-term elections the United Front once more gave me assurances that they would extend complete support to me in one constituency of the legislative assembly but where their candidates were nominated in 280 seats they did not even bother to call me and ask, rather they told one or two of our communist boys that this time it was not possible to support Mr. Mandal. When there are deserving people amongst so many elected Scheduled Caste members it is not possible to take one as a minister, our firm conviction is that they are even more devilish than the Congress. They are destroying the community by taking some of the Scheduled Castes youth in with sweet words on the speech dais. They are entirely determined that a collectivity does not develop amongst these 80 percent backward classes. You all should be careful. Be vigilant.75

Mandal’s and Sarkar’s conversation spoke to his anxieties and frustrations on the eve of his death, the abiding disregard the comrades exhibited toward Dalit concerns, as well as his electoral betrayal by the CPI(M). Over the course of the later 1960s, the center of political gravity irrevocably began to shift leftward and he sought a foothold within the emergent regime. Yet even here, far from finding any genuine accommodation or solidarity, he appeared to have been deceived. The Left’s engagement with Mandal must thus be seen in light of the view that class-based mobilization pursued in service of its land reform agenda worked to “. . . bring an end to untouchability and other forms of caste-based discrimination in rural West Bengal.”76 For, despite their alleged concern with such matters, its leaders appear to have been entirely dishonest and deceitful in their dealings with Mandal. N.B. Roy, an advocate in the Calcutta high court who knew Mandal personally, thus glossed his repeated electoral failures as follows: “The successive defeats of Mr. Mandal in elections in West Bengal since 1952 had made him a bitter man. Gradually he realized that the caste Hindus would never vote for him even if they promised to do so at the time of the election.” This was the case during the Lok Sabha elections in 1967. Prior to that election, Mandal reached an understanding with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that each would support the other in their respective constituencies. In keeping with this compact he canvassed support for the CPI(M) candidates, earning them electoral dividends, “but the C.P.I.(M) workers betrayed Mr. Mandal by not asking the caste 75 76

Ibid., 6. Aparajita Bakshi, “Contextualizing Land Reform in West Bengal: An Interview with Bejoy Konar,” Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, July–December 2014. http://ras .org.in/contextualising_land_reform_in_west_bengal_an_interview_with_benoy_konar, last accessed 24 November 2016. For a drastically different and critical take on Communist policy in West Bengal, see Ross Mallick, Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal Since 1977 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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Hindu voters to vote for him. In fact, allegations were then heard that the C.P.I.(M) workers had secretly instructed the caste Hindus not to vote for Mr. Mandal in the election.”77 Mandal had indeed secured the support of the CPI(M) in 1967.78 Yet, as Jatin Bala, a Dalit refugee leader and one of Mandal’s supporters, retrospectively confirmed of their “understanding”: “Many have expressed suspicions about what upper-caste CPI(M) workers actually did, despite verbally agreeing to support him.”79 The duplicity of the upper-caste Left in their engagements with Mandal found further corroboration the following year. As suggested by his letters of 1 August 1968 to both the Joint Conveners of the United Front and Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee, ex-chief minister and leader of the Bangla Congress, Mandal had continued to support the United Front of West Bengal in various public meetings (despite his awareness that only Dalit voters seemed to have voted for him in 1967). In March that year, he met with Jyoti Basu and Biswanath Mukherjee, leaders of the CPI(M) and CPI respectively, about their supporting him as a RPI candidate in the mid-term elections. They had evidently agreed. Mandal exclaimed: “I now find from the lists of United Front candidates published of different dates that my name does not appear. I do not know what has happened in this connection.”80 His exclusion, following the promised support, as he wrote to Mukherjee, “has made me and my innumerable supporters of different parts of the state, specially 24 parganas and Nadia districts, extremely surprised and disappointed.”81 It was hardly the case, then, that Mandal did not try to adjust himself and the RPI to the far-reaching political transformations of the late 1960s. His failure to win inclusion in West Bengal’s politics was therefore as much a comment on the Janus-facedness and priorities of those who in the final analysis determined its course than his party’s obvious organizational limitations, or his electoral appeal. It was the Left that instrumentalized and deceived Mandal, and not the other way around. This should give 77

78

79 80 81

N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, Being a Connected Account of the Namas from 1812 A.D. Down to the Present Day Together with a Study of Their Antiquity, Volume 2 (Calcutta: B. Sarkar and Co., 1992), 238. Roy’s analysis thus corroborates Mandal’s understanding of why he had fallen short during the 1967 elections above. “Left Reds Opposed CPI in Bengal,” Times of India, 6 January 1967, 3. Also see his pamphlet Amar Du-carti Katha, which clearly states that he was contesting the Lok Sabha elections as an RPI candidate with the support of the United Front. Jatin Bala, “Akarshan karten cumbaker mata,” in Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal: Bharatiya Rajnitir Swatantra Adhyay (Kalakata: Carurthha Duniya, 2003), 142. Jogendranath Mandal to the Joint Conveners, United Front, West Bengal, 1 August 1968, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 159. Jogendranath Mandal to Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee, 1 August 1968, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 160.

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pause. For the historical opportunity to initiate meaningful political collaboration and dialogue between Ambedkarite and Marxist concerns in West Bengal was forgone by the upper-caste leadership of that state. Mandal had proved useful to them during the refugee movement, and during electoral campaigning, but when it came to sharing power, they seemed only too content to pass him over, in obvious breach of prior understanding. Mandal was aware, nonetheless, that his dreams of Dalit political unity were also being compromised from within. He told Sarkar to remind their youth not to fall to “allurement” and thereby “destroy the community.”82 He warned: “They must not chain the community to slavery. Since over twenty years ago I tried to bring about a powerful movement in this community but it has not been possible.”83 This was advice born from a lifetime of unrequited struggle, but one he nonetheless wished to see prolonged. Mandal clearly harbored reservations about the consequences of various leftist parties’ gradual wooing of Dalits into their fold. The decades to come only seemed to have justified his skepticism. The circumstances of his passing must therefore be seen in view of this checkered history of his engagements with the Left. Political Murder? Mandal died on 5 October 1968 while preparing for his latest effort at election in Bongaon, a stronghold of Namasudra refugees in 24 Parganas, amid circumstances that appeared suspect.84 By then he clearly had given up any hope of understanding with the United Front. Earlier that year, he apparently formed an organization called the National Association for the Backward Classes with other Dalit leaders that tried to reach an electoral understanding with the local Muslim League.85 Mandal intended to run under the banner of the Republican Party of India, as is clear from an angry letter to the Election Commissioner of India in late September complaining of the RPI’s exclusion from the list of contending political parties in West Bengal and the consequent failure to supply them with copies of voters’ lists in the assembly constituencies they intended to contest.86 By then, in the recall of one of his supporters, Mandal had indeed been able to revive interest in Dalit political mobilization under 82 84 85 86

Sarkar, Deshbarenya Neta O Jatir Janak, 7. 83 Ibid. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 156–62. Roy, A People in Distress, 239. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, 162. In Mandal’s understanding, the exclusion was especially perplexing in view of the “insignificant” parties that appeared on the list and the fact that parties that did not exist during prior elections were included, whereas the RPI, which contested seats in both the previous Lok Sabha and West Bengal legislative assembly elections, was not.

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the aegis of the RPI.87 As Jatin Bala likewise noted, while the movement behind the party may not have been especially strong as yet, “the number of its supporters was by no means insignificant.”88 An article in the October 5 issue of Jugantar thus nervously described the last of the “Three Problems facing the United Front”: “An understanding has to be reached with Sri Jogen Mandal. He wants to stand by himself in Gaighata and will send forth five more candidates. If Jogenbabu sends these six candidates to the centre, it will be difficult for Bangla Congress, CPI(M), CPI and Forward Bloc.”89 The Ananda Bajar Patrika of the same day helpfully elaborated the implications of the last of the aforementioned “problems” in greater detail: The third problem is a little complicated. This is the problem with Sri Jogen Mandal. Srijukta Mandal had campaigned with the stamp of the CPI(M) for a seat in the fourth general election to the lok sabha. This time he is not in the front. Moreover he has said that he will send candidates to Barasat, Basirhat and Nadia, and will himself stand in at least two constituencies. The leaders of the front are very concerned with this matter. They were hoping for more non-Congress seats in these areas. But they know if Jogenbabu stands apart, many in the scheduled communities will turn away from the front. That will harm the candidates of the front. There are many who are scheduled in those localities.90

Such then, was the news on the very day Mandal died, according to subsequent reports, of a heart attack. As the United Front leadership’s anxieties suggest, he was almost certainly poised to make a political breakthrough after nearly two decades of electoral disappointment in West Bengal, in the process upending the United Front’s ambitions for political power in the constituencies he intended the RPI to contest and their imperative to construct an anti-Congress front. Was it merely coincidence that he passed away at this particular juncture, on the exact same day he was declared a “problem” for the leaders of the front? On seeing his father dead for the first time, less than twenty-four hours after his passing, Mandal’s son immediately sensed there was foul play involved. As he later recalled: “Foam was coming out of Jogendranath’s mouth. The face seemed unrecognizable to me. The face was blackened – as if singed. The stomach was swollen, the whole body damp.”91 Several among those who saw him the day he died and thereafter, as well as those who subsequently reflected upon the manner of his passing, believed it to 87 88 89 90 91

Interview with Jnanendranath Haldar, 19 February 2016. Jatin Bala, “Akarshan karten cumbaker mata,” in Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal, 139. “Juktaphronter samne tinti samasya,” Jugantar, 5 October 1968. “Bakeya samasya niye aj phranter baithak,” Ananda Bajar Patrika, 5 October 1968. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 175.

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have been an unnatural death.92 Jatin Bala, who saw Mandal on his last day, concurred: “Many people had questions about Jogendranath Mandal’s sudden and unexpected death. Even I was unable to consider this death a normal one.”93 To be sure, there is no conclusive evidence beyond reasonable doubt as regards the specific manner, motives, and actors behind his death, and we will likely never know of these circumstances with a legally verifiable degree of certainty. Mandal’s son evidently wished to pursue a post-mortem examination, but was strongly advised against doing so for fear of retribution, itself a valuable datum. Whatever the case may be, and in spite of various inconsistencies and contradictions, the available testimonies do indeed suggest unnatural death due to poisoning.94 In more than one account, several supporters of Apurbalal Mazumdar (Mandal’s one-time associate in the East India Refugee Council and the Federation) had threatened Mandal with his life against contesting elections a number of days earlier. Mazumdar had found patronage by then with the Forward Bloc, a partner in the United Front. The mere fact of his involvement – a trusted and much younger affiliate from Federation days – is suggestive. In other accounts, Mandal was apparently fearful for his life. He was in the process of setting up a party office of the RPI in the area in preparation for the coming elections. Several concur that on the day he died another group of Mazumdar’s workers forced Mandal to drink tea with them at a tea-shop in the bus-stand in Bongaon. This was where and when testimonies agree he was poisoned. In the memory of those who cared to remember, West Bengal’s leading Ambedkarite was ultimately silenced under the guise of ca-khaoano at a tea-stall, that venerable act of affection, locus of adda, and renowned site of sociality. The same newspapers that warned of the “problem” he posed to the future of the United Front carried brief and matter-of-fact write-ups about his life the following day, and how he always received the affection and respect of the people of “his community.”95 Not a word about B.R. Ambedkar, his various imprisonments, his prominent role in the refugee movement, his championing the Dalit cause, nor any great detail about the manner of his death. Was it simply an accident of history that his death came timed with the very real prospect of his electoral breakthrough as the 92 93 94

95

Ibid., 169. Jatin Bala, “Akarshan karten cumbaker mata,” in Amar Biswas (ed.), Jogendranath Mandal, 143. Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, saptam khanda, 165–74. I must add that community lore rests responsibility with the very man who would go on to become the icon of West Bengal’s politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century, who in the historical present seemed so keen to earn the dividends of Mandal’s janapriyata. “Parloke Jogendranath Mandal,” Jugantar, 6 October 1968.

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representative of the Republican Party of India in West Bengal, after nearly two decades of exile from formal politics? Or that he was quickly forgotten and remained unmemorialized by those who surely benefited from his timely demise?96 The historian is left with the only evidence of which one can be certain: namely, that during the dusk of his life, when he seemed to have generated a new political momentum among the Dalits of West Bengal under the banner of the RPI and was potentially stalling the advance of his upper-caste Leftist adversaries, Mandal had come to be regarded as a “problem.” From the vantage of the United Front’s leadership, one imagines the news came as a most fortuitous coincidence. Jugantar reported the day after: “There was no discussion today about the differences in opinion between Sri Jogen Mandal’s Republican Party and the Front.”97 Conclusion The first two decades of independent rule in West Bengal gave rise to political forces in which Mandal was refused any meaningful participation time and again. His death and suspected assassination thus came about in a state whose predominantly upper-caste leadership initially promised the rehabilitation of all migrants from East Bengal in the West in the politically necessary context of Partition, yet ended up forcibly removing thousands of Dalit refugees from the state; a leadership whose assurances of social justice with respect to the constitutional rights of Dalits in West Bengal went singularly unfulfilled in his lifetime, even if he was aware that modest changes were under way in particular domains; and a leadership that seemed adamant on refusing him even the slightest semblance of political power. Indeed, Mandal was evidently eliminated. As suggested throughout this book, his trajectory illuminates a central complex of reasons for why a political formation structured by questions of caste inequality did not, rather could not, emerge in postcolonial West Bengal. As should be amply clear, this was not for any lack of his trying. The materials consulted over the present and past chapters suggest that of critical importance in this regard was that neither Indian nationalist, Hindu nationalist, or communist parties, which were all led by uppercaste men, could countenance the notion that the Dalits of Bengal evolve 96

97

Mandal’s absence from the built environment of Calcutta and West Bengal remains a curious one. To the best of my knowledge, barring the Nahata Jogendranath Mandal Smriti Mahavidyalay in North 24 Parganas, there is no other public monument, street, school, or park named after him. Anecdotally, efforts at public display have on occasion met with violent contention. “Phranter purna prarthhi talika prakash,” Jugantar, 6 October 1968.

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an independent political presence. This negative and dissuasive political sentiment – their misrecognition – was rooted in the logic of their own political desires and mobilizations, which grasped this particular community (thus determining the terms of their engagement) as the historical agent of ideologies in which considerations of caste played little role – they were mobilized as Indian citizens, Hindus, refugees, peasants, but never primarily as Dalits. They would have much preferred the effacing of the entire manner of sensibilities required of the latter’s categorial logic. The history of reservation policy briefly examined in this chapter, and the failure of Mandal’s repeated efforts to secure political power in West Bengal, constitute particularly germane instances of this upper-caste refusal. How might Mandal have answered the problem framing this study? Why did his most cherished aspiration – the formation of a Dalit movement in Bengal – elude him? One imagines he might have pointed to the defeat of the Federation’s bid for Dalit political autonomy in Partition, or the ironic displacement of the consequences of that divide on him, and that as a result, so many of his own community turned on him; or, the forced removal of thousands of Dalit refugees endured thereafter, from East Pakistan to West Bengal, and then, against their will, from West Bengal to all over the Indian republic. Mandal may have invoked the modicum of constitutional privileges of which Dalits availed themselves, or the subsequent apathy and indifference of the few who did, or the elusiveness of their unity, for reasons he would likely trace to those intent on ensuring as much. Mandal might have spoken to his anxieties about the rise of various Leftist parties in which he saw little reason for hope, or that leadership’s hypocrisy and Janus-facedness in their engagements with him. For what was socialism, he seemed to be asking, when it failed to accommodate his concerns, indeed, when it was so resolutely blind to his political sensitivities? Taken together, Mandal may well have underscored the sheer impossibility of constituting Dalit politics in West Bengal, and the seemingly anonymous inhibitions that held his efforts in check. As N.B. Roy, a legal acquaintance, once overheard him exclaim in the later years of his life: “I have felt what it is to be buried alive.”98

98

Roy, A People in Distress, vii.

Conclusion: “The Most Casteist Society in India”

In his analysis of the 2009 general elections in India, Ashis Nandy wrote that despite the Communists having been in power for more than three decades, “the truth is that the kind of revolutionary changes in social structures that have swept across India have not even touched West Bengal. Everything there is still controlled by the upper-castes, and in some senses, it is the most casteist society in India. West Bengal is one state in India, for instance, where you cannot even dream of having a dalit chief minister.”1 Two years later, after the watershed elections that toppled the Left from power in the state, the newly appointed ministerin-charge of the Backward Classes Welfare Department, Upendranath Biswas, summed up what he inherited as follows: a backlog of 1,36,000 pending cases for the issuance of caste certificates; the disregard of the reservations policy in the majority of government departments; and the effective nonfunctioning of various wings within his own department, including the Cultural Research Institute. The institute had ceased work with 55 posts lying vacant; a vehicle purchased for field research junked through desuetude and the signboard of the premier research institute lying on the ground displayed the “dismal state of affairs” in an organization that Biswas thought might well have served as an example in the national context.2 How was it that a society whose political elites were among the forerunners of nationalist idealism and revolutionary zeal in modern India, and the sincerity of whose good intentions might admit no doubt, gave rise to a political culture seemingly at odds with the full implications of its democratization? This is a question that troubles to this day and looms 1 2

Ashis Nandy, “The Hour of the Untamed Cosmopolitan,” Tehelka 6 (2009), http://www .tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne300509the_hour.asp Backward Classes Welfare Department Government of West Bengal, Annual Administrative Report, 2010–2011, http://www.anagrasarkalyan.gov.in/pdf/bcwd-annual -report-10–11.pdf. Also see the following interview with Biswas for his revealing views on the situation of Dalits in his state: S.N. Abdi and U.N. Biswas, “Bengal hasn’t produced a Jagjivan Ram or even a Mayawati,” Outlook, 10 August 2012, http://www.outlookindia .com/website/story/bengal-hasnt-produced-a-jagjivan-ram-or-even-a-mayawati/281957.

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large over the course of Bengal’s modern political history. Dipesh Chakrabarty once alluded to the “contradiction that inhabits the disjuncture in our everyday life between our political ideologies and an undemocratic, hierarchical culture in which the politics of the left are no less caught that those of the right.”3 This book has attempted to make sense of how a salient dimension of this paradox – the façade of castelessness – came into being. Looking back over the course of Mandal’s political life, one is struck by how it confirms, even if negatively, one of the central claims of recognition theory: that subjectivity depends, in part, on the manner in which one is recognized. If West Bengal could not give rise to the kind of Dalit politics one observed elsewhere in India, this was not due to any lack of trying on the part of the individual who represented its foremost possibility. Rather, as the preceding chapters have described in extensive detail, despite the significant accomplishments born of Mandal’s efforts to propagate an Ambedkarite agenda in eastern India, these were repeatedly met with and ultimately overwhelmed by practices of coercion and dissuasion rooted in the complex of attitudes I have called caste Hindu misrecognition. Arguably of greater consequence to understanding the decline of the caste question than an emphasis on persuasion, it is to the culture and economics of misrecognition that we must turn for explanation regarding the silence about caste in Bengal. Set against available historical explanations for how and why caste receded from the political agenda over the transition to postcolonial rule, this book has sought to substantiate how Mandal’s efforts to articulate Dalit politics were defeated because of the sustained opposition, indeed, the upper-caste will to thwart Dalits’ self-determination. Such refusal was rooted in their incomprehension of the fundamental categories assumed by such a project, let alone the actual structuring and mobilization of political desire. The upper-caste bhadrolok who led the Congress, the Mahasabha, and, later, the communist parties of Bengal were consistently dissuasive of Mandal’s efforts at independent Dalit political organization on the one hand, yet persuasive of their enrollment in the service of ideologies in which the distinctiveness of their political and social identification and interests were subordinated to broader collectivities, on the other. The analyses of various aspects of their relations over the previous chapters have thus illustrated their prolonged resentment toward and rejection of the category “Scheduled Caste” and the social and political dynamics it named, their repeated efforts to deplete 3

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), xv.

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that population’s strength in decennial censuses, their disapproval of communal ratios in government services, the deliberate manner in which they sought to marginalize Mandal and the Federation in the 1946 elections even as they aimed to determine its outcome by recourse to fraud and violence, their fabrication of Dalit support for the Partition of Bengal, their management of the refugee crisis (which entailed the forced removal of predominantly Dalit refugees from the territory of West Bengal), the comparative failure of reservations policies in postcolonial West Bengal, the manner of Mandal’s effective debarring from the political process in that state, and indeed, his death. A wide range of upper-caste coercions operating in several key domains – their decisive interventions in various institutions crucial to government and administration that effectively occluded the possibility of Dalit political critique – played an important role in invisibilizing the salience of caste in Bengal’s political discourse. By relating the defeat of Dalit politics to the imperatives of upper-caste nationalism and its Communist variants, this book has sought to reframe the transition to postcolonial rule as coeval with the considered foreclosure of radical anti-caste possibility. The caste question, in short, was forcibly driven from the domain of politics. If various observers, such as those surveyed at the start of this book, have remarked on the uncanny absence of caste in Bengal, this was because, as I have argued, there was sustained political will to ensure as much. The historian Tapan Raychaudhuri once recollected how his uncle, the distinguished leader of the Congress party Kiran Shankar Roy, “made no bones about one fact: the independence he was working for was intended to transfer power to people of his own class. The best that the hoi polloi could expect was to be treated decently and assured a reasonable livelihood. It was absurd to expect that the masses should actively share power.”4 This was a vision of self-determination starkly opposed to Mandal’s own; the ideals he had striven for with limited success were precisely those Roy and his compatriots found anathema, and worked to restrain, as during the Federation’s campaign to secure Ambedkar’s election to the constituent assembly. Mandal nonetheless remained hopeful that the structures of parliamentary democracy in independent India might enable the emergence to power of a political party with its leading representatives drawn predominantly from those communities constituting the bulk of West Bengal’s population. Yet his own experience at attempting such a formation over the previous decades revealed the studied will of the upper-caste right, center, and left, to stymie the 4

Tapan Raychaudhuri, The World in Our Time: A Memoir (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2011), 176–77.

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formation of such a party. What is striking are the similarities in his encounters with such disparate political individuals when it came to the matter of justice for Dalits per se, all the more so given the anti-caste bona fides of these positions. Mandal was thus convinced toward the end of his life that nothing short of the Scheduled Castes’ attaining political power on their own strength could adequately secure freedom. He arrived at this conclusion over roughly thirty years of observing and participating in a variety of parties and movements that in effect spanned the entire political spectrum of his era: from his early association with the Nationalist Party, to the Congress under the Bose brothers, with his own Scheduled Castes Federation and collaboration with the Muslim League in both undivided Bengal and Pakistan, as an independent candidate in the first elections of the Indian republic followed by fleeting rapprochement with the Congress, as a refugee leader initially associated with the Praja Socialist Party’s Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sansad and later, his unaffiliated East India Refugee Council, the Krishak Praja Parishad, and finally, the Republican Party of India. Reviewing such varied initiatives, it would seem that that Mandal was palatable to the upper-caste political classes just as long as he wasn’t too insistent on justice for those with whom he vested his deepest political solidarities and convictions, and remained subservient to their dictates. It is certainly true, as Mandal seemed aware, that many Dalits were increasingly drawn to the dominant political platforms of his time, as suggested by their electoral support for the Congress, and from the late 1950s onward, the leftist parties. Yet precisely how and why this electoral loyalty was gained and sustained, what it actually signified, and what was earned by it, remain open questions requiring far deeper consideration than available at present. The evidence considered above does not suggest any easy consensual acquiescence nor meaningful inclusion. There is no doubt that, as happened elsewhere in India, a socially mobile elite emerged among Dalits, those who indeed benefited from the limited reserved educational and employment opportunities that were observed. Additionally, as incidents from Mandal’s own life testified, “practices of proximity and identity” between the upper-castes and Dalits were a quotidian feature at times of both heightened tension and otherwise.5 Mandal acknowledged with gratitude, for instance, the fact that he was saved from the wrath of infuriated Hindu mobs by his upper-caste neighbors at the peak of the Calcutta killing of 1946. On occasion, he recollected with affection in his autobiography the pleasantries and goodwill he 5

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), 140.

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shared with leaders of parties whose collective behavior and policies he otherwise deplored. Mandal’s entourage in the 1940s included a small number of upper-caste Hindus, although this was resented by some among his own community.6 There were those he acknowledged as his “caste Hindu friends,” and when looking for literary inspiration in his autobiography, he turned to Rabindranath Tagore and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. There indeed emerged a society far less caste-conscious than in earlier decades, a mishran samaj, or mixed society, as Jagadishchandra Mandal, Jogendranath’s son, once described it to me; a society where human potential and interaction were no longer held hostage to the community of one’s birth with the same tenacity as before. Neither such modest relaxing of casteist norms, nor upper-caste Communists’ alleged caste-blind ethos, however, seem to have had much effect in the substantial overcoming of caste-based social inequality and discrimination. There is, besides, the continuing legacy and significance of the political will to exclude Dalits that the previous chapters have sought to historicize, a history to which scholars have only begun to attend. Legacies of Upper-Caste Domination Despite histories of the congenial dissolution of caste difference stemming from varieties of ideological persuasion, then, there are also those persistently marking their limitations, suggesting the continued salience of attitudes and processes analyzed at length in this book. Even while noting the absence of its political articulation, Ranabir Sammadar’s essay on caste and power in West Bengal described a Dalit activist of the 1970s and 1980s who had nothing but “contempt” for the Communist leadership of the state. The Left’s political leadership was “spurious and high caste dominated.” Its movements for land reform were inadequate, “for they do not touch the vital question of caste hierarchy.” The Marichjhanpi massacre further confirmed his negative views about them.7 Somewhat more self-critically, a pamphlet produced by Republican Party activist Ranajit Kumar Sikdar about the principal problems facing Dalit society bitterly complained that their own political leadership did not take up any movement for the redress of their communities’ concerns

6

7

N.B. Roy, A People in Distress, Being a Connected Account of the Namas from 1812 A.D. Down to the Present Day Together with a Study of Their Antiquity, Vol. II (Calcutta: B. Sarkar and Co., 1992), 208. Ranabir Samaddar, “Caste and Power in West Bengal,” in K.L. Sharma (ed.), Caste and Class in India (New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1994), 54.

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on account of their allegiances to parties in which they found patronage, suggesting that Dalit inclusion under conditions of postcolonial democracy was made contingent on remaining silent about precisely their own communities’ welfare and grievances. Whatever little protest issued forth was limited to various localized Dalit organizations whose “outcries” went ignored by government. Sikdar maintained that the political parties in West Bengal at the time of his writing were controlled by a leadership of upper-castes: “They are against Scheduled Castes’ interests in heart and mind. You tell me whether any of these established parties is conducting a movement for Scheduled Caste reservations? Rather, the trade-unions of all parties are anti-reservation in a clandestine fashion.”8 Sikdar thus noted with evident sarcasm: “It is better not to speak of the leftists, in particular the CPI(M). They clearly say there is no question of caste in Marxism, which is why the question of reservations does not arise.”9 Such criticisms ought to inform understanding of the seeming silence about caste in West Bengal as they suggest continuities of prejudicial systematicity across otherwise contending political-ideological formations, and thereby lend special credence to the view that Dalit representatives were “almost constitutionally disqualified from taking too active a political interest in issues of greatest relevance to their own people.”10 The so-called irrelevance of caste in West Bengal seems belied by the fact that even several years after the highly touted land reforms initiated under Communist rule, often considered their signal achievement, the state registered the third-highest rate of poverty for rural Dalits out of fifteen major Indian states in 1989.11 Only neighboring Bihar and Kerala recorded higher, and states such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, so often privileged sites of casteism in public consciousness, 8

9 10

11

Ranajit Kumar Sikdar, Taphasili samajer maulik samasya o tar samadhan (Kalikata: Bharatiya Ripablikan Partir Pascim Banga Rajya Shakha Kattrk prakasita, date unavailable, possibly late 1970s), 9. Ibid., 10. Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 256. One might also note that while the representation of Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes has increased in all parties since the early 1990s, only the Communist parties have seen an increase in Brahmins. This is apparently because there has to be “a certain level of literacy to understand the ideology of Marxism and socialism.” See Saba Naqvi, “The Forever Revolutionary,” Outlook, 28 May 2012, http://www.outlookindia.com/arti cle.aspx?280950 Bruce P. Corrie, “A Human Development Index for the Dalit Child in India,” Social Indicators Research 34 (1995): 398. Also see Chandra Bhan Prasad’s analysis of land reforms in his essay, “The Left Regime and Dalits in West Bengal” at http://www .ambedkar.org/chandrabhan/WB1.pdf, and Ross Mallick’s Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal Since 1977 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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registered lower. West Bengal was also home to the second-highest degree of inequality in terms of body mass index across caste and tribe groups (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Others, i.e., non-Scheduled Castes) of eleven major Indian states, as revealed in the data of the National Family Health Survey conducted in 1998–1999.12 A series of “Right to Information” investigations revealed that in the decade following 2005, the state accumulated 7,517 crores in unspent funds under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan, making it the fourthworst offender of the twenty-eight states and territories in India.13 Upending long-standing assumptions about the role of urbanization in mitigating caste differences, a recent study showed that caste-based housing segregation is more pronounced than socioeconomic status in the ten largest cities and towns of West Bengal.14 It would appear that caste has remained absolutely central to structuring patterns of social and political behavior, in spite of strenuous claims to the contrary. Dayabati Roy’s ethnography of caste and power in contemporary West Bengal thus clearly indicated the persistence of caste prejudice among upper-caste communist leaders in village-level politics. “This attitude of denigrating the lower caste person, even when he was in formal power, reflected the existence of a sense of caste prejudice even in a party that claimed to represent the most downtrodden in the society.”15 Electoral fealty has been no guarantee of a transformation in upper-caste sentiment and practice. The absence of caste politics in West Bengal, the failure to politicize caste and consolidate political unity among Dalits, integration into the Congress and later the Left, or the upper-caste domination that has prevailed since Independence, should not be taken to mean, then, the happy resolution to the problem posed by caste in a communist state.16 There are other instances, such as one an activist described to the writer, of the violent reinforcement of existing hierarchies when scrutinized: the thrashing to within an inch of his life, and the subsequent hospitalization of a Dalit worker in Kolkata’s Dum Dum airport who had the temerity to inquire into the number of Scheduled Caste 12 13

14

15 16

T.K. Roy, Sumati Kulkarni, and Y. Vaidehi, “Selected Inequalities in Health and Nutrition in Selected States,” in Economic and Political Weekly 39 (2004): 680. Nikhil M. Babu, “Unspent Money For Dalits/Tribals, $42.6 billion = 8 times Agri budget,” IndiaSpend, 19 September 2016, http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/uns pent-money-for-dalitstribals-42-6-billion-8-times-agri-budget-90181 Ismail Haque, “Discriminated Urban Spaces: A Study of Spatial Segregation in Urban West Bengal,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LI, No. 46 (12 November 2016), 41–50. Dayabati Roy, “Caste and Power: An Ethnography in West Bengal, India,” Modern Asian Studies 46 (2011): 970. The Communists are generally known among various activists I met over the course of my research as dhappabaji – inelegantly, practitioners of bluffing or hoaxing.

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employees in his office as part of his job assessing the implementation of reservations policy in his workplace. The upper-caste Left’s ideological conceit in refusing to see caste did not result in a society where its structural manifestations or more overt defenses were by any means diminished on account of willed ignorance born of fealty to a vulgar Marxism. Their belonging, it would seem, was itself powerfully conditioned by their capacity for misrecognition. Implications This departure from received accounts of Dalit politics in Bengal carries a number of implications for the several historiographies and themes this book has brought into conversation, involving concerns not only of historical interpretation but pedagogy as well. Even if focused on one distinctive individual, it has also offered fresh insight into the various contexts in which Mandal lived and worked, raising in turn questions for further exploration. While grounded in an account and analysis of his political career, the study is of relevance not only to recent conversations about caste and Dalit studies, and history, but also to older debates concerning Indian and Pakistani nationalism, communalism, Partition, and colonial rule as well. Having studied Mandal’s political history for more than a decade now, the writer is, above all, left with the sense of how poorly he and those on whose behalf he struggled were served by both projects of national self-determination emerging from the end of colonial rule. For some time now, a growing body of evidence on the political history of marginalized communities in modern India has seemed to suggest that the standard accounts of colonial rule in India as turning on a uniformly exploitative order structured by racialized differences is increasingly untenable. All major leaders of Dalit movements across colonial India, for instance, looked to that state as provider and guarantor of rights and dispenser of justice. Mandal, in this respect, was no exception. As inconvenient as it may be to authorized versions of the colonial past, and Mandal’s career certainly bore out this observation with a special clarity, Dalit politicians regarded the phenomenon that goes by the name of colonialism with none of the moral outrage that typically accompanied nationalist commentary; furthermore, they explicitly addressed colonial officials and their state with declarations of gratitude, loyalty, and adulation. What does the fact of, to use the old and fraught term, Dalit and subaltern “collaboration,” do to our understanding of colonialism? It seems to me that we are yet to fully unravel the significance of this phenomenon, and to incorporate its import into prevailing historical approaches to the study of modern South Asian history.

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Related is what this history of Dalit politics in Bengal suggests about the tendency to regard the categorical structures of Indian society and politics as born of colonial governmentality. Although it certainly illustrates this insight to a degree, what I have called the defeat of Dalit politics implies significant variations in how this phenomenon actually unfolded in historically specific contexts that ultimately worked to the advantage of particular political agendas and to the detriment of others. By drawing attention to just how thoroughly contested processes of category formation were – whether with the Communal Award, the Poona Pact, the 1941 census, or the 1946 elections – I have suggested with colleagues working in other regional and temporal contexts not only the substantial concern of Dalit politicians to negotiate the very terms of politics with the colonial state, but the staggering power of their upper-caste colleagues in ultimately shaping the workings of “colonial” governmentality itself. The evidence analyzed thereby suggests the constitutive power of caste elites in shaping the very structures of government and the work of administration in ways every bit as determining as the colonial state and its British officials. My intention has not been to denigrate the heavily criticized bhadrolok of Bengal, but to call for honest historical reckoning with how desperately they sought to preserve the privileges of the colonial order to which they had grown accustomed, to the exclusion of many others in their society who aspired to a more just society and politics. The earlier chapters of this book thus suggested not only the tremendous significance of Bengal for the wider course of Dalit politics in India, but also the considerable dynamism behind the Federation’s mobilization in the mid-1940s. In so doing, I have also proposed what I hope is a richer conception of what constituted their concerns than the narrowly construed identitarianism featured in received accounts. Mandal and his legislative colleagues attempted to braid elements of social, political, economic, legal, and cultural justice for the communities they represented in their repeated demands to their colleagues and officials of the colonial state concerning matters both of recognition and redistribution. As we have seen, Mandal’s and Ambedkar’s political party articulated demands that assumed an understanding of caste as neither the product of mere colonial ventriloquism, nor the dying remnants of a passing order, but rooted in the full variety of contemporary relations between caste Hindu and Dalit. Yet, even as the emergent field of Dalit studies has rightfully remained animated by concerns to register the visibility and agency of its subjects in

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history, an endeavor to which this book has sought to contribute, the story of Mandal’s curious and prolonged suppression seems to raise new questions of at least partly comparative relevance. What historical conditions determined the plausibility and emergence of Dalit politics in a given region, and what actually constitutes agency when one speaks of this community? The first is suggested by this study in contrasts itself, and raises the counterintuitive possibility that regions where Dalit politics has seen greater prominence may indeed be those where the upper-castes have, as it were, been that much more receptive to such critiques. The second is prompted by Mandal’s inability to have developed an independent Dalit political platform that may have constituted the very basis for the kind of self-consciously and consequential activity implied by that overly burdened term, agency. While illustrating Dalit agency no doubt remains a laudable objective, Mandal’s historical experience (and a great deal besides, in our own present), seems to urge analytical scrutiny of the multifarious ways and contexts in which such assertion was hindered. His trajectory thereby further offers ample opportunity to reconsider the rather exaggerated mutualistic accommodation believed to have motivated Hindu communalism and Indian nationalism, and the demand for Partition. Such notions have undoubtedly received cogent critiques from varied quarters, and my study has extended the salience of such skepticism to the context of mid-twentieth-century Bengal through analysis of Mandal’s encounter with the upper-caste Hindu right, the Congress, and the Left, the many contradictions, obfuscations, and outright falsehoods on which they relied, and what these revealed about their anxieties and frailties. In that sense, one cannot afford to disengage from the caste Hindu in history and historiography. As this book has implied, what happened to Mandal and the Dalits of Bengal is especially illumining of the caste Hindu as such. While his story might seem to confirm some of the assumptions that characterized the early Subaltern Studies – both the incompleteness of the hegemony Indian nationalism sought to exercise, as well as the coercions it enlisted of necessity to this end – it nonetheless also confounds the dichotomies on which that project was founded. For with Mandal and the Federation we have what might be considered subaltern politics expressed in an elite domain; politics straddling the distinction central to that historiographical imagination. There is, besides, the widely remarked marginality of caste as a category of historical analysis in that scholarly venture, to which this book is at least partly a response. None of this should imply that the forces of Muslim nationalism in Bengal played an inconsequential role in forcing the retreat of Mandal’s

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Ambedkarite agenda. To be sure, despite his relatively constructive engagement with members of the Muslim League in the last two governments of undivided Bengal – a unique instance of Muslim and Dalit political unity and cooperation at a hugely significant juncture – the theory could not hold in the postcolonial context, where both retributive violence against the “Hindus of India” fell on the Dalits of Pakistan, and a seemingly state-backed project of ethnic cleansing made their lives in that country untenable. The founders of Pakistan decisively betrayed the politician who bore the burden of minority for them, and to whom they had turned only years earlier to help establish their government in Bengal. In this sense, the unfolding logic of communalism itself worked to undermine the plausibility of Dalit critique. One cannot, nevertheless, overlook the fact that for the majority of of his political life, Mandal’s primary political antagonists remained the upper-caste bhadrolok in their varied political hues. Comparative Considerations Such conclusions may acquire sharper relief if contrasted with features of Dalit movements elsewhere in twentieth-century century India. While such gestures inevitably have their limitations because of regional variation and distinctiveness, they nonetheless enable appreciation of Bengal’s peculiarities with respect to Dalit politics and subject formation. Unlike the fairly significant support and sympathy that Ambedkar’s mobilizations appeared to have gained from both Brahmin and non-Brahmin associates in western India, Mandal’s own efforts at propagating independent Dalit initiatives met with distinctly less sympathy among uppercaste political classes in Bengal. As scholars of the Mahar movement in western India indicate, such non-Dalit engagement played not an insignificant role in its history. Ambedkar’s Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, for instance, relied on the support of and cooperation extended by caste Hindus of “considerable distinction” in the Bombay presidency.17 They were also prominent among the series of temple entry and antiuntouchability movements launched by Mahars in the 1920s; perhaps of special note was G.S. Sahasrabuddhe, the Chitpavan Brahmin who urged the burning of the Manusmrti on Ambedkar and who helped with editing one of his periodicals well into the 1940s.18 Ambedkar’s Independent Labor Party likewise included many caste Hindus with 17 18

Eleanor Zelliot, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Untouchable Movement (New Delhi: Blumoon Books, 2004), 92. Ibid., 70-87.

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whom he had worked over the previous decade, and they counted among those the party put up for the first provincial elections in 1937.19 Several decades later, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s rise was in part enabled by substantial upper-caste electoral backing. It is hard to fathom analogous figures or the comparable marshaling of support, and specifically, the willingness of upper-caste Hindus to rally behind Mandal’s Ambedkarite political agenda in Bengal. Dalit politicization seemed to have garnered far fewer supporters among the bhadrolok than their counterparts elsewhere in India. The contrast is even starker if one considers for instance, the scale of white support for the civil rights movement in the United States, contemporary with Mandal’s years in West Bengal. There is, moreover, the absolutely critical issue of the multiple dispersals that Dalits in eastern India endured as a consequence of Partition and Independence examined in the chapters above. None of the major regions home to Dalit mobilization underwent the instability wrought by that catastrophic territorial division. Nor were substantial numbers of Mahars or Chamars evicted from the provinces to which they belonged thereafter, as was the case with the Namasudras. The consecutive displacements they experienced not only shattered existing networks of political solidarity, but also effectively stripped the community of its territorial anchorage, with consequences lasting to the present day.20 In addition, as evidence marshaled in the latter chapters of this book indicate, West Bengal performed exceptionally poorly with respect to Dalit welfare, compared with other Indian states. This suggests that despite the prevalence of more spectacular forms of caste-based violence elsewhere in India, in comparison with West Bengal (though the failure of reporting mechanisms might also play a role), this has not prevented the far more robust implementation of Dalit constitutional right in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, or Punjab. Such comparative negligence points to the greater obstacles Bengali Dalits faced in securing positions of administrative authority despite the rhetoric of nationalist and Communist inclusiveness. The views of Kanshi Ram, founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, are instructive in this regard, especially as he appears to have observed the state rather closely in his writings and interviews. Ram was a sharp critic of the Left, and in an appeal to the “downtrodden community members” in their camp, mocked Communist organizations that “kept singing songs of Russian Revolution, and kept talking how that revolution brought relief 19 20

Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1992), 106. The ongoing crisis over Indian citizenship for Dalit migrants and refugees from East Pakistan and Bangladesh is a case in point.

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to the kisans of Russia. But in India, they did exactly the opposite of that. When the Communists came to power in West Bengal, they forgot all their big songs and revolutionary slogans. Their cruel forcible eviction of the tillers of land from Morijhapi [sic], and their other activities has given us food for thought.”21 Seen through the eyes of the leader of India’s most electorally successful Dalit party, they were in need of liberation from upper-caste Communists. A related fact is that, while state governments elsewhere in India have continued to privilege caste as at least one meaningful factor (no doubt among others) in their political discourse, a particularly strong ideological opposition to even the hint of recognition that caste played a significant role in society and politics in West Bengal served to obscure inequalities masked by the supposedly class-based policy emphases of the Communist regime. In no other major Indian state with one of the largest Dalit populations in the country was the disavowing of caste as a meaningful category of social and political analysis pursued by the upper-caste political elites with as much assuredness as in Bengal. This is as true of the relatively recent past as of the origins of provincial autonomy in the 1930s.22 A final point of contrast concerns the circumstances in which Mandal and Ambedkar – literally, brothers-in-law for modern South Asia – spent their last years. In many senses, they were quite similar: neither, significantly, won an election in independent India, despite their storied careers, and both expressed profound skepticism of the actual nature of the freedom won from colonial rule at various key moments. Significantly, Mandal was held in great esteem in Republican Party of India circles. Yet, whereas Ambedkar was lionized to the point of deification and passed his final years in relative material comfort and ease, Mandal spent his own struggling to represent and simultaneously clear his unjustly marred reputation among his own people, in and out of jail on four separate occasions, living in a slum, under considerable financial strain, and fearing, on occasion, for his very life. Ambedkar died of longstanding physical illness; Mandal went suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind misgivings about the troubling manner and timing of his death. Where Ambedkar was posthumously memorialized in public statues and institutions in Maharashtra and beyond, Mandal has few to no memorials in the built environment or public nomenclature of Calcutta or West Bengal. Such differences in the closing years of their lives, and since, 21 22

Kanshi Ram, “Marxists in India,” in N. Manohar Prasad (ed.), Views and Interviews of Bahujan Nayak Manyavar Kanshi Ram (Delhi: Gautam Book Centre, 2012), 101. Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya and Kumar Rana, “West Bengal Panchayat Elections: What Does It Mean for the Left?” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 47, No. 37, 2013, 10–13.

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have everything to do with how these men were regarded in their respective regional and political-cultural contexts. Mandal seemed to have encountered an intensity of objection and obstruction his mentor did not, at least not in quite the same ways. Bengal’s oft-observed castelessness was thus born of a contradictory and doubled history of the decline of the caste question in the region’s politics: one in which difference was subsumed on account of Dalit participation in and electoral support for the Congress and Communist parties, or “integration” born of persuasion; and another, in which a deep-seated misrecognition and hostility toward Dalit political selfdetermination accompanied and interrupted the former, difference overcome through coercion. Drawing attention to these paradoxical impulses has been the purpose of this book. Over the course of his political career, Jogendranath Mandal bore witness to this jarring simultaneity of gestures of outreach and embrace, this yearning for a higher unity on the one hand coupled with a peculiar blindness and deafness, the seeming incapacity to recognize and answer the desire for a more meaningfully democratic social and political order, on the other. Frustrated by the inability to overcome the stifling duality of this predicament in his twilight years, his unexpected and premature demise marked the critical silencing of the most promising possibility for Dalit politics in the east.

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Index

Abamanona (Rabindranath Tagore), 130 absentee landlords, 30 academic qualifications, 108, 110, 143 adhi barga system of commuting rent, 90 administrative efficiency, 79 African-American politics, 63 Agailjhara, 69 agency, 17–18 agrarian capitalism, 71 agrarian crisis, 65 agrarian politics, 70–71 agrarian violence, 54–55 Agricultural Department, 108 agricultural production, 29–30 agriculturalists debt, 75, 112–14 Ahmad, A.M., 58 Ali, M.H., 120 alienation, 9 from Indian nationalism, 24–25, 62 All Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 190 All India Depressed Classes League, 149 All India Scheduled Castes Federation, 1, 2–3, 63, 273 agenda of, 122–24 Anti-Poona Pact Day, 139–41 “An Appeal to the Jhenidah Subdivisional Muslim League and Scheduled Castes Federation,”164–65 Bengal branch of, 19 conference in Gopalganj, 121–33 conspiracy to dissuade Ambedkar from attending, 127–28 disappointment at Ambedkar not attending, 128–29 poster for, 123 crisis of, 142 demands of, 125 first mass meetings of, 104–5 founding of, 89–90 Hindu communalism challenged by, 20

292

Hindu nationalists and, 134 Intelligence Bureau in Bengal assessment of, 104 marginalization of, 137 Muslim League alliance with, 139–41 Muslim League financial assistance for, 170–71 political sources of, 103–4 protests by, 156 publications by, 99–100, 133, 152 reception of, 107 spreading influence of, 99 student-wing of, 127 Working Committee of, 153, 158 All-Bengal Census Board, 85 All-Bengal Namasudra Association, 44–45, 46, 59 All-Bengal Nationalist Depressed Classes Association, 173 All-Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 72–73 All-India Congress Committee, 150 All-India Depressed Classes League, 104 All-India Hindu Mahasabha, 48–49 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji, 1, 9–10, 19, 23, 63, 126–27, 277–78 in Calcutta, 150 call for migration, 197–98 conspiracy to dissuade Ambedkar from attending Gopalganj conference, 127–28 disappointment at absence from Gopalganj conference, 128–29 election of, 180 Gandhi and, 60 Indian National Congress and, 103–4 Mandal, Jogendranath, meeting with, 102–3 surge in support for, 153 Ananda Bazaar Patrika, 106, 205, 214, 261 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 211 Andhra Pradesh, Agency Tracts of, 219

Index anticolonialism anticolonial nationalism, 26, 60–61, 182 upper-caste vanguard of, 101 anti-Hindu violence, 203 “Anti-Muslim feelings of the caste-Hindus and Calcutta riots” (Muslim League Revolutionary Workers Association), 165–68 anti-Partition agitation, 168–79 cartoon mocking, 169 Anti-Poona Pact Day, 139–41 anti-temple entry agitation, 60 Anti-Untouchability League, 56 “An Appeal to the Jhenidah Sub-divisional Muslim League and Scheduled Castes Federation” (Muslim League and All India Scheduled Castes Federation), 164–65 assassination, 11, 263 Attlee, Clement, 153–54 Australian Baptist missionaries, 6 autonomy. See also provincial autonomy Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 72–73 political autonomy, 163, 170 Azad, Abul Kalam, 159–60 Backward Classes Welfare Department, 265 Bahadur, Rai Rakhal Raj Biswas, 59 Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, 275 Bahujan Samaj Party, 5, 276–77 Bairagi, Babu Satish Chandra, 156–57 Bakarganj, 30 general constituency, 145 Sadar Subdivision of, 68 Bal, Raisaheb Lalit Kumar, 120, 193 Bala, Hargobind, 28 Bala, Jatin, 260–62 Bala, Narayan Chandra, 120 Bandyopadhyay, Pramathnath, 195–96 Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, 9–10 Banerjee, Maya, 230, 231 Banerjee, Pramathnath, 49 Bannerjee, Jitendralal, 36, 46–47, 52 on Depressed Classes, 47 Barisal, 27–28 district board of, 69 local institutions of government in, 33 Sadar Local Board, 33 Scheduled Castes, unity among in, 29 subinfeudation in, 29–30 upper-caste Hindus in, 28 Barman, Chandra Haran, 151 Barman, Debjyoti, 220 Barman, Prem Hari, 172–73

293 Barman, Syama Prasad, 172–73 Barman, Syamaprasad, 172 Barman, Upendranath, 88 Barori, D.N., 172 Barthi Tara Institution, 31 Baruri, Dwarika Nath, 163–64 Basu, B.K, 58 Basu, Jyoti, 1–2, 259 Basu, Narendra Kumar, 36–37 Bauri, Goloke, 242 Bengal, 6. See also East Bengal; West Bengal All India Scheduled Castes Federation, branch of, 19 Bengal Census, Caste, Occupation and Gender in, 40 Bengali Hindu movement for Partition, 169 castelessness of, 278 Dalits in late and postcolonial, 11–18 Dalits of undivided, 188–89 Depressed Classes in, 25, 44 freedom from colonial rule in, 3–4 Hindu Mahasabha in, 85 Hindus and Muslims in, 37 Indian National Congress dominance in the political life of, 141 Intelligence Bureau in Bengal, 104 jute as emblem of Bengali labor, 166 Legislative Assembly of Bengal, 178 Mandal, Jogendranath, writing to Governor of Bengal, 143–44 North Bengal Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity, 172–73 Partition of British India and, 94 Partition of India and, 136 political radicalism in, 2 political representation in, 35–36 populous castes in, 49 press in, 106–7 Swadeshi movement and, 24 upper-caste Hindus of, 159 upper-caste leaders of, 23, 24 Bengal Agricultural Debtors act, 112–13 Bengal Anti-Communal Award Movement, 48 Bengal Congress, 24, 150 bickering within, 85 muzzled, 36 nationalism of, 9 Bengal Depressed Classes Association, 44–45 Bengal Legislative Assembly, 25–26, 154 Bengal Legislative Council, 48 Depressed Classes seat in, 29 Bengal Provincial Co-operative Bank, 114

294

Index

Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 131, 162, 168 foundation, 94 Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, 39 Bengal Tenancy Act of 1928, 39 Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Bill, 68 bhadrata, 101 bhadrolok, 276 casteism of, consequences of, 15 nationalists, 8, 11 upper-caste, 266 Bhattacharya, Mahadev, 216–17 Bhegai Halder Public Academy, 69 Biswas, Bholanath, 151, 163–64 Biswas, Gayanath, 151 Biswas, Hemanta Kumar, 214, 216–17, 218 Biswas, Jamini Mohan, 104 Biswas, Kiran Chandra, 140 Biswas, Rai Charan, 54 Biswas, Rasik Lal, 46, 65, 89–90, 92, 98, 163–64 Biswas, Upendranath, 100, 265 Biswas, Yogesh, 242 black-flag demonstration, 233 Bombay Central Station, 102 Bombay Presidency, 1, 47, 275 Bose, Khudiram, 36 Bose, Sarat Chandra, 14, 75, 181 arrest of, 88 Mandal, Jogendranath, friendship with, 75–76 Bose, S.M., 42 Bose, Subhas Chandra, 72, 76 Bose, Sugata, 3 Brahmo Samaj’s Society for the Improvement of the Depressed Classes, 178–79 Brajamohan College, 33 Brayden, D.A., 104 Britain “communalization” of politics by, 38 imperialism, 12 Muslim League Branch of Great Britain, 177 separatism encouraged by, 23–24 British Government, 140 British India, 96 Partition of Bengal and, 94 protest activities coordinated across, 139–40 British Indian Association, 49 Buddhism, 246 Burrows, Frederick, 147

Cabinet Mission proposals, 139, 140 Calcutta, 45–46, 164 Ambedkar in, 150 Gandhi in, 72 High Court of Calcutta, 42 Indian Association of Calcutta, 49 population in 1931 of, 84 Provincial Congress Committee in, 149 riots in, 138 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 155–57 Scheduled Castes in, 111–12 Calcutta Corporation, 76–77, 78, 81 Calcutta Law College, 33 Calcutta Medical College, 98 Calcutta Municipal Bill, 78 Calcutta Municipal Corporation, 81 Campbell Medical School, 98 capitalism, agrarian, 71 Casey, R.G., 92, 100, 110 appointment of, 117 on Secondary Education Bill, 118 caste. See also upper-castes artificial erasure of caste-difference, 138–39 Bengal, castelessness of, 278 in Bengal Census, 40 communal violence by caste Hindus in Indian National Congress, 167 constitutive relationship between communalism and, 134 discrimination of refugees on basis of, 218 Mandal, Jogendranath, transcending burden of, 61 occupation of earners other than the traditional occupation of their caste by sub-classes, 40–41 populous castes in Bengal, 49 refusal to maintain governmental data about, 240 casteism, 270–71 bhadrolok, consequences of, 15 casteist norms, 269 caste-segregation, 45–46 caste-subaltern movements, 7, 12 caste-subaltern protest, 3–4 census All-Bengal Census Board, 85 Bengal Census, 40 1941, 146.80, 214.110, 276.80 numbers of Dalits reduced in, 84–85 Census Expenses Contribution Bill, 83–84 Chakrabarti, Prafulla K., 214–15, 220 Chakrabarty, Chandmohan, 33–34

Index Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 265–66 chandshi-chikitsa, 31 Chatterjee, B.C., 36, 42, 43, 48 Chatterjee, Partha, 30, 67 Chatterji, Digambar, 58–59 Chatterji, Joya, 9, 26, 183 Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra, 269 Chattopadhyay, Partha, 5 Chowdhury, Janab Hamidul Huq, 97 Christian missionaries, 6 Australian Baptist missionaries, 6 civil disabilities, 47 Civil Disobedience, 24, 54 Coalition Party, 75 colonialism, 272 anticolonial nationalism, 26, 60–61, 182 colonial constructs, 16 colonial governmentality, 273 colonial policy of religious neutrality, 56–57 democratization of late-colonial government, 38 dichotomy of colonial era, 16 impact of, 16–17 instrumentalist identitarianism propped up by, 12 loyalism toward, 7 commensuration, 71–72 Commerce and Labour Department, 80 Communal Award, 19, 23, 35–38 Bengal Anti-Communal Award Movement, 48 debate about tenancy reform and, 40 public debate on, 55 reception of, 50 Communal Ratio rules, 79, 111 communal representation, 65–66 communal violence, 54–55, 116, 137 by caste Hindus in Indian National Congress, 167 communalism, 255. See also Hindu communalism constitutive relationship between caste and, 134 Hindus renouncing, 53 Partition and, 180 turn to, 181 The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 77 Communist Party of India (CPI), 214, 215, 218, 238 Communist Party of India (Marxist) (C.P.I. (M)), 21, 258–59 Constituent Assembly of India, 1, 152

295 Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 186 constitutional debate, 193–97 constitutional provisions, 248 for Dalits in postcolonial India, 149–50 constitutional reforms, 61 Cooperative Credit and Rural Indebtedness Department, 96–97, 108, 112 Co-operative Department, 68 Coopers Camp, 229 Court of Wards estates, 82–83 CPI. See Communist Party of India C.P.I.(M). See Communist Party of India (Marxist) Cripps, Stafford, 84 Cultural Research Institute, 265 culturalism, 26 Dacca, 189–90, 192–93 Dalit MLAs, 74–75, 78–79, 88, 243 Gandhi meeting with, 71–72 legislative interventions by, 65 long-elusive unity of, 91 principal demands of, 94–95 Dalits agency of, 17–18 autonomy of, 15 in Bengal, late and postcolonial, 11–18 census reduced numbers of, 84–85 collective agitation by, 54 communal outlook of, 43 constitutional provisions for Dalits in postcolonial India, 149–50 constitutional rights of, 15 Dalit victimhood fodder for Hindu communalism, 157–57 Dalit welfare, 243 demand for recognition, 141 demands during provincial autonomy, 12 disunity among, 128 in East Pakistan, 185–86, 188–89 erasure of politics of, 5 excluded from Court of Wards estates, 82–83 fabrication of Dalit support for Partition, 267 forced removal of Dalit refugees, 226–32, 237 Hindu Mahasabha and Dalit selfdetermination, 131 Hindu Mahasabha resistance to Dalit welfare, 132 Hindus deliberate minimization of numerical strength of, 86

296

Index

Dalits (cont.) historical conditions of emergence of Dalit politics, 274 incited to mass violence by Hindu Mahasabha, 135 in India, 1 indices of Dalit political consciousness, 142–43 integration into Indian nationalism, 138 integration of, 4, 6–11 justifying education of, 70–72 labor as source of capital, 131–32 misrecognition of, 13 Muslim political unity with, 102, 209 possibility of, 163–68 Namasudras and, 6 network of public support among, 122 non-Dalit engagement, 275 numerical strength of, 86 in Pakistan, 184–93 Partition and, 208, 236 perceived unpleasant appearance of, 110 political activism of, 1, 2 political concerns of, 64–65 political mobilization under RPI, 260–61 political rights of, 125, 131 P.S.C., Dalit candidates for, 108–109 self-determination of, 16 special officer for Dalit education, 188 underrepresentation of, 66 of undivided Bengal, 188–89 upper-caste discrimination and underrepresentation of, 78–79 upper-caste discomfiture with Muslim League allying with, 105–6 usage of term of, 2 West Bengal, Dalit welfare, 276 in West Bengal, 2 winning confidence of, 60 Dandakaranya, 211, 219–25, 232–33 Dandakaranya Plan, 219 Darjeeling, 171 Das, Bhismadeb, 129 Das, Chittaranjan, 32 Das, Mohini Mohan, 129 Das, Monmohan, 66, 70 Das, Naresh Chandra, 99 Das, Pulinbehari, 29 Das, Pyarimohan, 33 Das, Ramananda, 244 Das, Tarakchandra, 111 Dasgupta, Narendranath, 115 Dasgupta, Satish Chandra, 49 Dash, Arthur J., 67 Datta, Bhupendranath, 32

Datta, Jatindra Mohan, 85 Datta, Pradip Kumar, 8 Datta, Saral Kumar, 25–26, 28, 34 De, Kanai Lal, 194 Debi, Sarala, 32 Debt Settlement Boards, 114 Debt Settlement Officers, 68 democratization, 27, 92 of late-colonial government, 38 of public institutions, 65 Depressed Classes, 29 awakening among, 129 in Bengal, 25, 44 precise definition of, 49 recognition of, 27 rights of, 55–56 seats allocated to, 23, 37–38 upper-castes outnumbered by, 25 variability in defining, 45 Depressed Classes Association, 156–57 Depressed Classes League, 149 Deshpande, Satish, 18 Dhali, Manohar, 198–99 dhanyakarari system of commuting rent, 90 discrimination, 12, 78–79 appropriate resolution to, 55 of refugees on basis of caste, 218 doles non-restoration of, 232 restoration of, 235 stoppage of, 227, 228, 231 domestic manual labor, 31 Dum Dum airport, 271–72 Dutt, R.C., 42 Dutta, Aswinikumar, 32 Dutta, P.K., 26 East Bengal, 184–85 East Bengal Legislative Assembly, 178 East Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 206 East India Refugee Council (EIRC), 223–24, 230, 232, 234, 268 East Pakistan, 1, 185 Dalits in, 185–86, 188–89 Nazimuddin ministry of, 191 rioting in, 199 “Scheduled Caste leaders of Eastern Pakistan” (conference), 189–90 Scheduled Castes of, 190 Edbar, Upendra Nath, 66 education. See also Secondary Education Bill demands for, 63

Index enrollments of Scheduled Caste students, 241–42 justifying Dalit education, 70–72 of Mandal, Jogendranath, 31–32 primary education of Scheduled Castes, 70, 75 special officer for Dalit education, 188 tuition costs, 244–45 egalitarianism, 135–36 EIRC. See East India Refugee Council electoral norms, Indian National Congress violation of, 141 electoral rolls, 174 electoral structures joint electorates, system of, 148 under Poona Pact, 148, 160 employment in public services, 65 of refugees, 226 representation in government employment, 71 Engels, Friedrich, 77 enumeration, 86, 87 equality, 197 exclusion Dalits excluded from Court of Wards estates, 82–83 mechanisms of, 79 famine, 96–97, 122 Faridpur, 164, 173 favoritism, 74 feudalism, 1–2 Floud Commission, 80–81, 132 forced labor, 161 forced removal, 226–32, 237 Forward Bloc, 262 formation of, 76 Foucault, Michel, 86 Fraser, Nancy, 13 Gain, Bhabani Sankar, 120 Gandhi, M.K., 3–4, 23, 55–56 Ambedkar and, 60 in Calcutta, 72 Dalit MLAs meeting with, 71–72 on harijans, 46 Roy, Bidhan Chandra, letter from, 50 George VI (King), 160–61 Ghose, Aurobindo, 178 Ghose, Latika, 178–79 Ghosh, Prafulla Chandra, 194–95 Ghosh, Surendra Mohan, 149 Girijakanta Sinha, 171–72 Gopalganj, 121–33

297 conspiracy to dissuade Ambedkar from attending conference in, 127–28 disappointment at Ambedkar not attending conference in, 128–29 poster for All India Scheduled Castes Federation conference in, 123 Gopalganj Namasudra Unnati Bedhayini Association, 44–45 Goswami, Tulsi Charan, 48 Government Hindu High English School, 45–46 Government of India Act of 1935, 27–28 government patronage, 65 Guha, B.S., 208–9 Gupta, J.N., 42 Gupta, Jogesh Chandra, 70 Gupta, Manoranjan, 145 Haldar, Bhegai, 32 Haldar, Mahananda, 10–11 Haldar, Shibchandra, 28 harijans, 46 Harinarainpur, 170 Hashim, Abul, 70–71, 163–64 High Court of Calcutta, 42 Hindu communalism All India Scheduled Castes Federation challenging, 20 caste-anxieties of, 131 Dalit victimhood fodder for, 157–57 Partition and, 9, 15 Hindu conference, 114–21 Hindu Mahasabha, 4, 9, 83, 94, 114–15, 221 All-India Hindu Mahasabha, 48–49 in Bengal, 85 Dalit self-determination and, 131 Dalits incited to mass violence by, 135 Islamophobia of, 181 vituperation to Mandal, Jogendranath, 151 Hindu Mission, 41–42 Hindu nationalists, 14–15 All India Scheduled Castes Federation and, 134 contested nature of project of, 119 unity and consolidation against Muslims by, 136 Hindu Sabha, 41–42, 49 Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 57–58 upper-castes on, 58 Hinduism feared destruction of, 51 orthodox Hindus, 6, 57

298

Index

Hindus anti-Hindu violence, 203 attempt at Hindu-Muslim unity of the 1920s, 39 Bengali Hindu movement for Partition, 169 body-politic, 23 communal violence by caste Hindus in Indian National Congress, 167 deliberate minimization of numerical strength of Dalits by, 86 Muslims and Hindus in Bengal, 37 Pakistan “anti-Hindu” policies, 187, 205 press of upper-caste Hindus, 171 public opinion of, 155 renouncing communalism, 53 rhetoric of Hindu consolidation and integration, 204 strength of Hindu voters, 148 upper-caste progressive Hindus, 60 völkisch vision of Hindu unity, 114–15 wealthy caste Hindus in Indian National Congress, 132 Hindus – A Dying Race (U.N. Mukherji), 8 Hindusthan Standard, 74, 106, 205 Honneth, Axel, 12, 13 recognition-theory of, 13 Hooghly, 172 Hossain, Choudhuri Moazzem, 163–64 Hossain, Janab Mudassir, 196 House of Commons, 51 Huq, A.K. Fazlul, 38, 71, 73, 108–9 crisis for ministry of, 88 nepotism and favoritism under regime of, 74 identitarianism, 63, 273 instrumentalist, 12 narrow, 19 identity politics, 62 illegal exactions, 30 imperialism, 12 Independent Labor Party, 275–76 Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party, 72–73, 74, 79 formation of, 74–75, 81 India, 1 constitutional provisions for Dalits in postcolonial, 149–50 in early years of national freedom, 196 Indian constitution, 194 migration to, 197–98 Partition of Bengal and, 136

Indian Association of Calcutta, 49 Indian constitution, 194 Indian Franchise Committee, 44, 46 Indian National Congress, 4, 6, 14, 23, 32, 60, 67, 98, 137–39 Ambedkar and, 103–4 arguing against category of Scheduled Castes, 194 Bengali Muslim politicians leaving, 37 Chandra president of, 72 change in attitude of, 150 communal violence by caste Hindus in, 167 Congressite political ideology, 63 Congress-supported Depressed Classes council-member, 44 critique of, 100 dominance in the political life of Bengal, 141 in early years of national freedom, 196 gap between Communist Party of India democratic rhetoric and, 239–40 interests, 40 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 75–78 Indian National Congress efforts to secure failure of, 144–45 Mandal rejection of, 89–90 mass violence incited by, 134 meetings disrupted by members of, 172 Muslim League and, 132 organizational machinery of, 143 outreach by, 134 propaganda by, 190–91 seats reserved for Scheduled Castes won by, 142 violation of electoral norms by, 141 wealthy caste Hindus in, 132 willingness to remove untouchability, 55 Indian nationalism alienation from, 24–25, 62 so-called integration of Dalits into, 138 Indian Statutory Commission, 44–45 Indianization, 45 Intelligence Bureau in Bengal, 104 intending evacuees, 201 inter-caste commensality, 7–8 inter-caste union, rejection of, 216 Inter-Dominion Agreement, 200 Interim Government, 3, 140, 152, 157–63 Mandal, Jogendranath, tenure as Minister of Law in, 160–61 inter-marriage, 55 Islamophobia, 119, 181 Iyer, C.S. Ranga, 59

Index Jack, J.C., 30 Jagaran (Awakening) (All India Scheduled Castes Federation publication in Bengal), 99–100, 133 “Why We Left the Congress,”152 Jain, Padmaraj, 32 Jalpaiguri, 171–72 Jatiya Jagaran (Biswas, Rai Charan), 54 Jessore, 164, 172 Jessore District Namasudra Association, 44–45 Jinnah, M.A., 157, 184–85, 187 death of, 203 Mandal and, 161, 186, 187, 189, 191 Nazimuddin letter to, 189 joint electorates, system of, 148 Jugantar, 226, 261 jute, 75, 112–13, 166 Jute Regulation Act, 90 Jute Regulation Department, 82 Karachi, 190–91 rioting in, 198 Kasem, Maulvi Abul, 37, 53 Khan, Ali Muhammad, 177 Khan, Khan Bahadur Hashem Ali, 69 Khan, Liaquat Ali, 175, 186, 199, 205–6 Khan, Maulvi Tamizuddin, 39, 66–67, 70–71 Khanna, Meher Chand, 226–27, 232–33 khas mahal lands, 122 Khilafat movement, 37 Kirttaniya, Umeshchandra, 126 KPP. See Krishak Praja Party KPP-Muslim League government, 73, 78–79 Kripalani, Acharya, 201 Krishak Praja Parishad, 250, 252–53, 268 Krishak Praja Party (KPP), 54, 64 Mandal, Jogendranath, retracting support of, 75 Krishnagar, 59 Kshatriya Samiti, 171–72 Laclau, Ernesto, 72 Lahore Resolution, 203 land reforms, 270 Land Revenue Commission, 73–74 land rights, 80–81 landlords, 39 absentee landlords, 30 erosion of landlordism as source of income, 67 interests of, 40 Legislative Assembly of Bengal, 178

299 legislative debate, 79, 81, 240 legislative discourse, 71 Liaquat-Nehru Pact of April 1950, 200, 203–4 liberalism, 7–8, 195 critique of, 101 Hindu liberalism, 59 Lieten, G.K., 10 Lohia, Ram Manohar, 1 Lokur Committee Report, 248 Lothian Committee, 47 Madhya Pradesh, 211 Mahanta, Kangali, 6 Mahar movement, 275 Maharashtra, 17 Maistarkandi, 30–31 “Majantali Sarkar” (Raychadhuri), 105 Majumdar, Haridas, 49 Majumdar, Shri Kamini Prasanna, 126 Majumdar, Usharanjan, 106 Malakar, Rajendra Nath, 120 Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 32 Mallick, Anilkrishna, 125–26 Mandal, Baikuntha Chandra, 189 Mandal, Birat Chandra, 78, 156–57 Mandal, Jogendranath, 2–3, 9–10, 14–15, 257–58, 267–68, 277–78 addressing first meeting of Pakistan Constituent Assembly, 186 Ambedkar meeting with, 102–3 anti-Partition agitation and, 168–79 autonomy and, 72–73 Bose, Sarat Chandra, friendship with, 75–76 “breakaway” by, 88–91 Calcutta riots and, 155–57 career of, 18 death of, 11, 237, 249, 263 possible political murder of, 260–63 defeat in general elections, 213 detention of, 229 disapproval of, 105 early legislative years of, 68–70 education of, 31–32 effective political exile of, 15 election to Bengal Legislative Assembly, 25–26 electoral appeal of, 250 emergence in provincial politics, 27–35 family of, 30–31 on Hindu conference, 120 Hindu Mahasabha vituperation to, 151 Indian National Congress and, 75–78

300

Index

Mandal, Jogendranath (cont.) Indian National Congress efforts to secure failure of, 144–45 Mandal rejection of, 89–90 initial optimism of, 63 joining Government of Pakistan, 183 KPP support retracted by, 75 last years of life, 254–55 leadership of Scheduled Castes Federation, 2–3, 98, 139–40, 150, 162 life under threat, 212–13, 262 means of articulation provided by, 13 as minister, 107–14 mobilizing discourse from The Communist Manifesto, 77 at national conference of RPI, 252 Nazimuddin ministry and, 95–98 1946 election of, 147 no-confidence address by, 73–74 at odds with nationalism, 32 Partition blamed on, 213, 256 political failure in postcolonial West Bengal, 238 political marginality of, 256 in prison, 222–23, 230, 253 provincial autonomy, first five years and, 92 in provincial government, 155 refugee movement and, 212–18 resignation from Government of Pakistan, 101–2, 200–1, 202–8, 210 in Sialkot City, 192 significance of, 4 smear campaign against, 146 tenure as Minister of Law in Interim Government, 160–61 trajectory of, 274 transcending burden of caste, 61 UCRC and, 221 voting record of, 74 writing to Governor of Bengal, 143–44 Mandal Commission, 1–2 Manikpuri, J.D., 150 Manto, Saadat Hasan, 209 Marichjhanpi massacre, 269 marriage, 216 Marx, Karl, 77 Marxism, 130 Marxist concerns in West Bengal, 259–60 Marxist heuristics, 73–74 vulgar Marxism, 272 mass violence, 135, 180 mass-agitation, 6 maternity policy, 122

Matua, 6 Mazumdar, Apurbalal, 214, 262 UCRC and, 215 Mead, C.S., 6–7 Menon, Dilip, 134 migration, 193, 200, 204 Ambedkar call for, 197–98 to India, 197–98 to West Bengal, 219 minority interests, 37 Mirza, Syed Kazemali, 225 misrecognition, 12–13 of Dalits, 13 by upper-caste leaders, 83, 92 Mitra, Asok, 1–2 Mitter, B.L., 56, 57 Mondal, Banku Behari, 196 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 85–86, 92, 96, 110–11 pathology of thinking of, 135 Mountbatten (Viceroy Lord), 161 Mountbatten plan, 185 Mridha, Maulvi Ahmed Ali, 113 Mukherjee, Biswanath, 259 Mukherjee, Syama Prasad, 69, 84, 88, 115–16, 208 Mukherji, U.N., 8 Mullick, Mukunda Behari, 29, 44, 49, 64–65, 74, 150, 151, 190, 254 Ambedkar and Mandal resented by, 127 Cripps letter from, 84 on Government ban of public meetings, 118–19 on Poona Pact, 52 Mullick, Nirode Behari, 45 Mullick, Pulin Behari, 66 Muri, 202 Murshidabad, 225 Muslim League, 3, 4, 94–95, 274–75 All India Scheduled Castes Federation alliance with, 139–41 “An Appeal to the Jhenidah Subdivisional Muslim League and Scheduled Castes Federation,”164–65 Direct Action Day, 138, 139–41, 156 financial assistance for All India Scheduled Castes Federation, 170–71 Indian National Congress and, 132 ministry of, 112 upper-caste discomfiture with Dalits allying with, 105–6 Muslim League Branch of Great Britain, 177

Index

301

Muslim League Revolutionary Workers Association, 165 Union Defence Committees, 165–66 Muslim MLCs, 53 Muslims, 23 attempt at Hindu-Muslim unity of the 1920s, 39 collective agitation by, 54 communal outlook of, 43 Dalit political unity with, 102, 209 possibility of, 163–68 Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, 37 interests of, 37 Muslim nationalism, 274–75 Muslim-majority Pakistan, 191 political assertions of, 23–24 public opinion against, 135 relieved by government ban on public meetings, 121 reservations for, 79 self-determination of, 186 underrepresentation of, 66 unity and consolidation by Hindu nationalists against, 136 Musolman (Biswas, Rai Charan), 54

bhadrolok nationalists, 8, 11 of Depressed Classes, 47 dominant currents of, 9 idealism, 265–66 Mandal, Jogendranath, at odds with, 32 Muslim nationalism, 274–75 Namasudras and, 7 Pakistan and, 21–22 social reformists and, 7–8 upper-caste nationalist leadership, 26, 60 upper-caste nationalist preoccupations, 7, 13 Nazimuddin, Khwaja, 80, 110–11, 163–64, 187–88 dissolution of ministry of, 139 East Pakistan ministry of, 191 Jinnah letter from, 189 Mandal, Jogendranath, and ministry of, 95–98 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 159, 215–16 no. 2 Uttar Tilpara camp, 217 Noakhali, 164 Non-cooperation, 24, 54 North Bengal Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity, 172–73

Nadia, 225 Namasudra bhadrata, 101 Namasudra leaders, 62, 214–15, 246 Namasudra Matua sect, 6 Namasudra Samaj Sangha, 220–21 Namasudra-Muslim agrarian violence, 135 Namasudras, 2–3, 26, 247–48 Dalit movement and, 6 discontent brewing among, 88 mass-agitation by, 6 Namasudra leaders, 45 nationalism and, 7 police treatment of, 235–36, 253 preponderance in cultivation of, 42 proposal to de-schedule, 248 refugees, 247, 248 relieved by government ban on public meetings, 121 victory, 35 Nandy, Ashis, 265 Narayan, Badri, 134 National Association for the Backward Classes, 260 National Defence Council, 126–27 National Family Health Survey, 271 nationalism, 4. See also Hindu nationalists; Indian nationalism anticolonial nationalism, 26, 60–61, 182 of Bengal Congress, 9

occupation in Bengal Census, 40 of earners other than the traditional occupation of their caste by subclasses, 40–41 orthodox Hindus, 6, 57 Page, J.C., 6 Pakistan, 178. See also East Pakistan “anti-Hindu” policies in, 187, 205 Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 186 Dalits in, 184–93 Mandal, Jogendranath, joining Government of, 183 Mandal, Jogendranath, resignation from Government of, 101–2, 200–1, 202–8, 210 Muslim-majority Pakistan, 191 nationalism and, 21–22 violence in newly independent, 203–4 Pakistan Constituent Assembly, 186–87 Mandal, Jogendranath, addressing first meeting of, 186 Partition, 1, 2, 3–4 anti-Partition agitation cartoon mocking, 169 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 168–79 of Bengal, 94 of Bengal and India, 136

302

Index

Partition (cont.) Bengali Hindu movement for Partition, 169 casualties of, 181–82 catastrophic effects of, 251 communalism and, 180 Dalits and, 208, 236 demand for, 137 fabrication of Dalit support for, 267 Hindu communalism and, 9, 15 Mandal, Jogendranath, blamed for, 213, 256 Sarkar, Bejoy Krishna, on, 173–74 upper-castes against, 180–81 violence preceding, 167 Patel, Vallabhbhai, 160 People’s Herald (All India Scheduled Castes Federation publication), 99, 133 permanent settlement, 80–81 police, 198–99, 231, 234 police brutality, 253 treatment of Namasudras, 235–36, 253 Poona Pact, 19, 23, 36, 67–68 Anti-Poona Pact Day, 139–41 electoral structures under, 148, 160 emergence of, 46 fine print of, 64 move to repeal, 48 voting on, 53–54 Mullick, Mukunda Behari, on, 52 public debate on, 55 Ray, Amulyadhan, on, 51 reception of, 50 postcolonial rule, 11, 17, 149–50, 195, 210, 211, 253 Prabartak, 81 Praja Socialist Party, 214 Prakash, Dharam, 149 Prasad, Rajendra, 234 prejudice, 35, 134 propaganda, 110–11, 142, 175–76, 190 by Indian National Congress, 190–91 protests by All India Scheduled Castes Federation, 156 of Cabinet Mission proposals, 139 caste-subaltern protest, 3–4 coordinated across British India, 139–40 against mistreatment of students, 32 provincial autonomy, 12, 14, 19, 62, 209 administrative efficiency since, 79 concerns during, 65 Mandal, Jogendranath, in first five years of, 92 P.S.C. See Public Service Commission

public institutions, 45 democratization of, 65 upper-caste over-representation in, 239 public meetings, government ban on, 115, 120 Mullick, Mukunda Behari, on, 118–19 Namasudras and Muslims relieved by, 121 Public Service Commission (P.S.C.), 108, 122 Dalit candidates for, 108–9 interviews conducted by, 109 public services communal ratio in, 80 employment in, 65 puja, 242 Saraswati puja, 32 Punjabi, Holaram, 184–85 Quit India, 7 Rahman, Fazlur, 163–64 Rajbhoj, P.N., 206 Ram, Jagjivan, 140, 152 Ram, Kanshi, 1–2, 276–77 Ramamurthy, S.V., 219 Rao, Anupama, 17, 72 Rawat, Ramnarayan S., 17, 142 Ray, Amulyadhan, 37, 39, 43, 140–41, 168 on Poona Pact, 51 Ray, Debnarayan, 173 Ray, Gautam, 214 Ray, Raja Janaki Nath, 58 Raychadhuri, Upendrakishore, 105 Raychaudhuri, Sitangshu, 28 Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 30, 34, 267 recognition, 12, 63, 125. See also misrecognition Dalits demand for, 141 of Depressed Classes and Scheduled Castes, 27 Honneth theory of, 13 problem of, 25 recognition order, 12 of legislative institutions, 25 redistribution, 63, 125 referendum on Partition, call for, 174, 175 refugee movement Dandakaranya and, 219–25 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 212–18 of West Bengal, 3 refugees, 224. See also East India Refugee Council (EIRC); United Central Refugee Council (UCRC) Bagjola camp, 220

Index caste discrimination toward, 218 Coopers Camp, 229 employment of, 226 forced removal of Dalit refugees, 226–32, 237 Namasudra, 247, 248 refugee camps in rural West Bengal, 221–22 refugee crisis, 208, 250 refugee identity, 237 rehabilitation, 155, 184–85, 211, 212, 218, 237 demands for proper, 227 extinguishing of struggle for, 232 hopes around, 226 moral duty of, 234 opposition to, 248 rent, adhi barga and dhanyakarari systems of commuting, 90 representation. See also underrepresentation communal representation, 72 crisis in, 67 demands for, 63 in government employment, 71 political representation in Bengal, 35–36 of Scheduled Castes, 75 Republican Party of India (RPI), 3, 5, 15, 249, 251, 259, 268 Dalit political mobilization under, 260–61 Mandal, Jogendranath, at national conference of, 252 reservations policy, in West Bengal, 238, 239–49 subversion of, 249 rights, 100 Dalit political and economic rights, 125 rioting, 55, 161 Calcutta riots, 138 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 155–57 in East Pakistan, 199 in eastern Bengal, 164 in Karachi, 198 Round Table Conferences, 35, 131 fallout of, 37 Roy, B.C., 207, 222, 227, 233 Roy, Bidhan Chandra, 50 Roy, Bijoy Prasad Singh, 82–84 Roy, Dayabati, 271 Roy, Dhananjoy, 82 Roy, Naresh Chandra, 50 Roy, N.B., 258, 264 RPI. See Republican Party of India rural credit, 74

303 Saha, R.P., 126 Sahasrabuddhe, G.S., 275–76 Said, Edward, 86 Sammadar, Ranabir, 269 Sanyal, Annapurna, 240 Sanyal, Nalinaksha, 105–6, 113 Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan (SBBS), 214, 230 Saraswati puja, 32 Sarkar, Bejoy Krishna, 155 on Partition, 173–74 Sarkar, Bijoy, 126 Sarkar, Jogendranath, 33 Sarkar, Madhusudan, 85 Sarkar, Nalini Ranjan, 69, 77 Sarkar, Nisikanta, 126 Sarkar, Sumit, 10–11, 16, 26 Sartori, Andrew, 26 Sasmal, B.N., 53–54 satyagraha, 222 Bettiah satyagraha, 215–16 Satyananda, Swami, 49 Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar, 85 SBBS. See Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan Scheduled Castes, 27, 137, 189–90, 246–47, 271 appointment to posts in Co-operative Department, 68 in Calcutta, 111–12 disadvantages endured by students in, 71 of East Pakistan, 190 economic justice for, 122 electoral rolls, 174 enrollments of Scheduled Caste students, 241–42 Indian National Congress arguing against category of, 194 Indian National Congress winning seats reserved for, 142 primary education of, 70 recognition of, 27 rejection of category, 266–67 representation of, 75 socio-economic profile of, 242 special stipends and scholarships for students in, 66 unity among, in Barisal, 29 voting eligibility of, 28 Scheduled Castes and Tribes Welfare Council of West Bengal, 244 Scheduled Castes Federation, 3, 14 Scheduled Tribes, 242 Schermerhorn, R.A., 243

304

Index

Secondary Education Bill, 117, 119 Casey on, 118 self-determination, 101, 130, 267 of Dalits, 16 Hindu Mahasabha and Dalit selfdetermination, 131 of Muslims, 186 Sen, A.K., 246 Sen, A.N., 58 Sen, Atul Chandra, 113 Sen, Durgamohan, 34 Sen, Harinarayan, 178–79 Sen, J.G., 69 Sen, Pandit Satyendranath, 59 Sen, P.C., 227, 231 Sen, S., 58 Serajganj, 193 Shahabuddin, Khwaja, 80 Shani, Ornit, 134 Siddhantabagisha, Mahamahopadhyaya Haridas, 58 Siddiqi, Abdur Rahman, 66–67 Sikdar, Ranajit Kumar, 269–70 Simon Commission, 178 Sind Scheduled Castes Federation, 184–85 Singha, Kshetra Nath, 82–83 on Census Expenses Contribution Bill, 83–84 Sinha, Bhupendra Narayan, 36 Sircar, N.N., 48, 50–51, 56, 57 Sojan Badiar Ghat (Jasim Uddin), 54 Sri Sri Guruchandcharit (Haldar, Mahananda), 10–11 Srinivas, M.N., 6–7 subinfeudation, 29–30 Suhrawardy, H.S., 80, 97, 175, 176–77, 188 Swadeshi movement, 8, 54 Bengal and, 24 Tagore, Rabindranath, 50–51, 130, 269 Talukdar, Kiran, 254 Temple Entry Bill, 19, 55 Mitter on, 56 temples, move to allow “untouchables” in, 55 Tenancy Amendment Bill, 74 tenancy laws Communal Award and debate about tenancy reform, 40 reform of, 38–46 Thakur, P.R., 29, 53–54, 116, 150, 173, 235, 253

Tippera District Scheduled Caste Federation, 189 Transfer of Power documents, 160–61 UCRC. See United Central Refugee Council Uddin, Jasim, 54 underrepresentation, 66 of Dalits and Muslims, 66 upper-caste discrimination and Dalit, 78–79 United Central Refugee Council (UCRC), 214 Mandal, Jogendranath, and, 221 Mazumdar and, 215 United Front, 259, 260, 261, 262–63 University of Calcutta, 50 untouchability, 71–72, 134, 255 Anti-Untouchability League, 56 Bengali claims of exceptionalism regarding, 57 delegitimizing salience of, 51 Gandhian resolution to dialectics of, 135 Indian National Congress willingness to remove, 55 strictures of, 46 Untouchability Offences Act, 242 “untouchables” move to allow “untouchables” in temples, 55 worship with, 55 upper-castes, 49 anxieties about impending diminution of influence, 43 Barisali upper-caste Hindus, 28 Bengal, upper-caste Hindus of, 159 Bengal upper-caste leaders of, 23, 24 bhadrolok, 266 cognitive capacity, 48 corruption of upper-caste Hindu officials, 86 Dalit underrepresentation and uppercaste discrimination, 78–79 Depressed Classes outnumbering, 25 discomfiture with Dalits allying with Muslim League, 105–6 government dominated by, 254 on Hindu Temple Entry Disabilities Removal Bill, 58 hypocrisy of, 100 legacies of upper-caste domination, 269–72 misrecognition by leaders of, 83, 92 nationalist leadership, 26, 60

305

Index

Viswanath, Rupa, 17, 56, 149 viva-voce examination, 109 voting Mandal, Jogendranath, record of, 74 on move to repeal Poona Pact, 53–54 Scheduled Castes eligibility, 28 separate voting, 47 strength of Hindu voters, 148

Congress in first two decades of postcolonial rule, 211 constitutional debate in, 193–97 Dalit welfare in, 276 Dalits in, 2 habitual subversion of constitutionality in, 245 Mandal, Jogendranath, political failure in postcolonial, 238 Marxist concerns in, 259–60 migration to, 219 refugee camps in rural West Bengal, 221–22 refugee movement of, 3 reservations policy in, 238, 239–49 subversion of, 249 Scheduled Castes and Tribes Welfare Council of West Bengal, 244 Wordsworth, W.C., 113

Wavell (Lord), 128, 147, 159 George VI letter from, 160–61 West Bengal, 1, 17, 207, 243, 266

zamindari abolishing practice of, 132 zamindari families, 28, 33

nationalist preoccupations of, 7, 13 over-representation in public institutions of, 239 against Partition, 180–81 political anxiety of, 96 press, upper-caste Hindu, 171 progressive Hindus in, 60 upper-caste bhadrolok, 67 vanguard of anticolonialism, 101