Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867-1905 (Philosophy of History and Culture)

Notions of Nationhood in Bengal

Philosophy of History and Culture Editor

Michael Krausz Bryn Mawr College

Advisory Board Annette Baier (University of Pittsburgh) Purushottama Bilimoria (Deakin University, Australia) Cora Diamond (University of Virginia) William Dray (University of Ottawa) Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research) Clifford Geertz† (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Peter Hacker (St. John's College, Oxford) Rom Harré (Linacre College, Oxford) Bernard Harrison (University of Sussex) Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago) Leon Pompa (University of Birmingham) Joseph Raz (Balliol College, Oxford) Amélie Rorty (Harvard University)

VOLUME 29

Notions of Nationhood in Bengal Perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867–1905

By

Swarupa Gupta

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

Cover illustration: Kanta Nagarer Mandir (temple of Kanta Nagar) in Dinajpur. Courtesy: Dey's Publishing (Publisher: Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey), Calcutta. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gupta, Swarupa. Notions of nationhood in Bengal : perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867–1905 / by Swarupa Gupta. p. cm. – (Philosophy of history and culture, ISSN 0922-6001 ; v. 29) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17614-0 (hardback : acid-free paper) 1. Bengal (India)–Intellectual life–19th century. 2. Bengal (India)–History–Autonomy and independence movements. 3. Bengal (India)–History–19th century. I. Title. II. Series. DS485.B49G853 2009 954'.14035–dc22 2009013694

ISSN 0922-6001 ISBN 978 90 04 17614 0 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For my father Mukul Gupta and my mother Chhanda Gupta

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Chapter One. Nationalist Ideologues, Ideas and their Dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter Two. Recreating a Jati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Chapter Three. Samaj and Perspectives on Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Chapter Four. Caste, Class and Internal ‘Others’: ‘Lower Orders’ in Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Chapter Five. Contiguous Ethnicities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Chapter Six. Sub-Regional ‘Essences’ and the Regional Self . . . . . . . . . 271 Chapter Seven. From Region to Nation: The Idea of India . . . . . . . . . . 309 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is based on my Ph.D. thesis completed at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in . I am indebted to many, more than I am able to acknowledge, but most of all to my supervisor Professor Peter Robb. Words seem inadequate for expressing my gratitude for his constant guidance, support and concern. His supervision opened my mind to new ideas and perspectives in my intellectual journey, and his constructive suggestions helped improve my work. I am also deeply grateful to Dr Subho Basu who was initially my cosupervisor. I greatly benefited from his suggestions that helped my formulation of methodological trajectories in analysing the interrelation between the key concepts (samaj, jati and itihas or history) interrogated in this book. The suggestions and comments of Dr Gordon Johnson, and Dr Joya Chatterji enriched my work, and helped me rethink and recast some themes explored in this book. I am also grateful to Professor Rajat Kanta Ray who gave me suggestions and insights before I started my formal Ph.D. course work in London. Professor Chittabrata Palit, Professor Papia Chakravarty and Professor Jayanta Kumar Ray have helped me through their comments and suggestions, as well as their advice and sustenance. Professor Sugata Bose’s and Professor David Gilmartin’s suggestions on earlier drafts of this work also helped me sharpen my arguments. I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of scholars who have written on related aspects of the theme of my book. Their works have provided a foundation, comparative reference point and inspirational background for conceiving this book. They are acknowledged in the notes, but I would particularly like to mention the seminal works of Professor C.A. Bayly, Professor Rajat Kanta Ray, Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri, Professor Anthony D. Smith, Professor Prasenjit Duara, Professor Peter van der Veer, Professor Niharranjan Ray and Dineshchandra Sen. I am very grateful for the help given me by the staff of the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, and of the Oriental and India Office Collection, British Library, London. The staff of the National Library (Rare Book Section and the Main Section), Calcutta, the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Calcutta, the Hites Ranjan Sanyal Archival Collection

x

acknowledgments

of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta also helped me in procuring primary Bengali texts essential for developing my arguments. In New Delhi I received assistance from the staff of Nehru Memorial Library and the National Archives of India. I was also rendered assistance by the librarian of Rabindra Bhavan Collection in Santiniketan. The chapters on jati and samaj (Chapters II and III) in this book contain material, which form the subject of my earlier published work. I am grateful to Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge University Press), which published my article “Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, –” (Volume , Number , May ). The chapters mentioned above also draw upon, and share common ground with an earlier version of my article “Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal”, which had appeared in Studies in History, Volume , Number ; copyright c , Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I am grateful to Sage Publications for giving me permission to reuse the material in this book. A full scholarship from the Felix Foundation covered tuition fees and maintenance in London during my course of study. I also received a fieldwork grant from the Central Research Fund, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London, which helped in covering fieldwork expenses (photocopying, travel in India and accommodation in New Delhi and Santiniketan). An additional fieldwork grant was granted by the School of Oriental and African Studies which helped cover other fieldwork expenses. I am grateful to Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey of Dey’s Publishing, Calcutta for giving me permission to use (as the cover illustration of my book) the picture of the temple in Kanta Nagar, Dinajpur, which appeared in the book Brihat Banga (Volume II, p. ) authored by Dineshchandra Sen, and published (reprinted) by Dey’s Publishing in . This temple (–) has brick walls on which are carved images and portrayals of events, vividly depicting the samajik history of seventeenth-eighteenth century Bengal. I am deeply grateful to my family including my father, Mukul Gupta and my brother Sugata for their enduring love and support, and especially to my mother Professor Chhanda Gupta who has been a constant source of support, sustenance and inspiration.

INTRODUCTION

This book explores the origins and development of notions of nationhood in Bengal by focusing on interactions between pre-existing indigenous social unities and late colonial discourses. The theme forms part of a wider endeavour to understand the nature, foundations and futures of colonial nationalisms. Most studies in the west and in the postcolonial world have tended to centralise the political ideology of nationalism1 to understand the world in which we live, rather than the element of process and continuity embedded in distinctive cultures and nationalisms of colonised worlds. I wish to highlight such historical connections and see how they had a modern functionality in producing the notion of a nation. By doing so, I hope to show how ‘nationhood’ or the process of being a nation is a central theme which is to be linked to the concept of nationalism in order to have a more coherent understanding of the idea of the nation. This approach may add new dimensions to a worldwide phenomenon which oscillates between polar extremes of creative construction and divisive destruction, continually conditioning the 1

Nationalism, as the political ideology of the sovereign nation state and as a movement, with its associated concepts continues to be central in the contemporary world. Its range, depth and sweep are evident in the manifold ways in which it interpenetrates a wide variety of arenas, conditioning the making and remaking of identities across historical, temporal and geographical frames. It permeates a multiplicity of complex relationships between the individual and society, the state and society, and between nations in the modern world. As Anthony D. Smith has pointed out: “Historians have generally seen nationalism as a doctrine or principle or argument; it has been nationalism rather than the nation that has exercised their imagination. This doctrine or principle has often been regarded as an idée fixe, a motive force that remains constant beneath its many disguises.” See Anthony D. Smith, “Nationalism and the Historians”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ), p. . I try to focus on the process of being and becoming a nation, or ‘nationhood’, and connect it to nationalism as ‘national sentiment’, which implies a feeling of identification and belonging to the nation. Colonial Bengal did not offer a counterpart of the western political nation-state. In contrast to the model of the political nation having its own sovereignty, born at a modern moment, when the ties of family, neighbourhood and larger communities are loosened and the nationstate comes into its own, the idea of the nation in colonial Bengal, its sentiment and its ontology need to be related to continuing ties of family and social connections which drew upon earlier traditions, as well as interacted with colonial, modern influences.



introduction

making and remaking of identities across temporal and geographical frames. The third world has come to be defined as a paradigmatic site of division and fragmentation, the legacy of which is traced back to colonial policies. Existing analytic frames have debated the nature of colonial nationalisms from specific standpoints: typologies (eastern and western),2 its supposed modernity, and its political nature. Given the tendency to see Asian awakenings to modernity through western prisms, current postcolonial predicaments of fragmentation and the spectre of ‘negative’ nationalisms associated with the third world, it is time to look beyond existing analytic horizons and rethink colonial nationalisms from new angles. Was division/fragmentation implicit or inherent in colonial nationalisms? Or were there indigenous inheritances and constellations of unity, which provide a strong counterpoint to postcolonial fragmentation? How were such origins reoriented under colonial impact? Do such origins help us move beyond fragmentation and reconstitute the nature of colonial nationalism? This book attempts to answer these questions by a critical focus on the origins, development and pathways of one type of colonial nationalism (that articulated by the Bengali Hindu literati). Addressing a wider debate on the intellectual roots of colonial nationalisms, I seek to qualify existing academic models, which regard such nationalisms as ‘borrowed’ and/or ‘derivative’, and stress the tremendous difficulty in transcending ‘western’ paradigms. I interrogate the hitherto unexplored conceptual category of samaj (social collectivity) as deployed by the Bengali literati to demonstrate that ideas about nationhood had indigenous origins, which were oriented to a shared world of values and conduct. The story of nationhood in Bengal as told in this book, traces how the notion of a nation was produced through a complex interaction between reorientations of past 2 An influential typology is the dichotomy of ‘western’ voluntaristic and ‘eastern’ organic nationalism. See Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background (New York: Macmillan Co., ). Kohn’s classification has been mentioned in Anthony D. Smith, “Nationalism and the Historians”, in G. Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation, p. . John Plamenatz has also talked about “two types” of nationalism. In both nationalism is “primarily a cultural phenomenon” although it often takes a “political form”. One type is “western”, and the other “eastern”. See John Plamenatz, “Two Types of Nationalism”, in Eugene Kamenka (ed.), Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London: Edward Arnold, ), pp. –, mentioned in Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . This book underscores difference between the two types without positing an implicit taxonomic gradation (the western types are assumed to be already culturally equipped, and are the cultural, economic and political pace setters).

introduction



(socio-cultural) unities, and influences emanating from the late colonial situation, thereby shifting the focus from assumptions of the nation as an artefact of modernity. The definition of the nation as a cultural entity, historically rooted in the evolution of samaj involves a shift from theoretical imaginings influenced by Saidian perspectives which see the nation through a political prism subject to the overwhelming sway of the state. My claim for the primacy of a discourse on nationhood entwined in culture does not involve a denial of other, admittedly more political discourses.3 Instead, by showing how the domains of culture/society (samaj) and polity (rashtra) intersected in the Bengali discourse, this study facilitates a more nuanced investigation of the ontology of being and becoming a nation. The prioritisation of socio-cultural elements explores the genealogy of the idea of the nation with a view to returning the gaze to processes relegated to ‘internal’ domains of culture, and studying their interaction with trajectories of politics and the making of identities in an ‘outer’ world. This interpretative pathway turns from any de-linked emphasis on nationalism as the political ideology of the sovereign nation state and rethinks the nation by focusing on ‘nationhood’. In this book, this term is used specifically to mean the ontology of being and becoming a nation through a nuanced development and prioritisation of cultural identity, especially during the period –  (in , the Hindu Mela was convened, symbolising the organised beginning of cultural nationhood, and in , political action crystallised in the Swadeshi Movement). Significantly, the theoretical stance marks out an alternative analytic arena which sees nationhood as related to, but something much more than a political movement, sentiment or doctrine in a world fractured and fragmented by the resurgence of ‘negative’ nationalisms4 associated with divisive ethnic politics, particularly in the third world. How was the story of nationhood in Bengal different from quests for identity within and beyond South Asia? Movements concerned with identity and nationhood (especially in the nineteenth century) were not peculiar to Bengal. Stirrings of identity closely connected to “conceptual

3 From about the middle of the nineteenth century, political-cum-economic associations burgeoned in Bengal, including the Landholder’s Society and the Zamindari Association. In  Surendranath Banerjee formed the Indian Association, regarded as the forerunner of the Indian National Congress (). 4 Elie Kedourie (ed.), Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ), p. .



introduction

realms” of past patriotisms5 were felt in India, Europe and South East Asia. Patriotism, race and historical memory were some of the conceptual links through which present identities were related to the past. However, the degree of rooted-ness of modern notions of identity in the past differed in countries within and beyond Europe. In England and France, more centralised state systems eroded local particularisms and patriotisms, whereas in colonised agrarian societies like India, the link between old patriotism and modern nationalism was clearer.6 In China, Vietnam and Japan, race,7 old, ethnic patriotism, and territorial sovereignty were reworked in an anti-alien and political platform.8 Significantly, nationalist discourses and identity issues in late nineteenth century Japan followed the European post-Enlightenment, rationalist, evolutionary and linear trajectory. The production of the idea of toyoshi,9 emphasising territorial sovereignty and bounded-ness, “allowed the new nation state to write its history as an enlightened modern nation,” and also as a culture rooted in a great Asiatic tradition that could challenge western claims of superiority.10 The situation in India was different in two main ways. First, identity in India remained rooted in a plural culture that did not always have an overt political texture. Second, re-articulations of identity in India (as the present case study of Bengal would show) could not be un-problematically fitted into the post-Enlightenment, westernrationalist, ‘derivative’ paradigm. Within India too, there were subtle 5 C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 6 The situation in India was in a sense analogous to that in Germany and Italy where looser state systems fostered the growth of cultural realms defined by language and civilisation. This was the background to an energised nationalism that interacted with the unifying force of nineteenth century capitalism and European rivalries. See Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, p. . 7 According to Frank Dikotter the idea of racial unity played a major role in shaping identity in China at the close of the nineteenth century. See Frank Dikotter, “The Idea of ‘Race’ in Modern China”, in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 8 Vietnamese nationalism had an overt political and xenophobic content, which drew from past examples of resisting foreigners. For details see Thomas Hodgkin, Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path (London: Macmillan ), p. . This has been referred to in Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 9 See Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), mentioned by Prasenjit Duara, “Postcolonial History”, in Sarah Maza and Lloyd Kramer (eds.), A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, ), p. . 10 Ibid.

introduction



variations. Identity debates in Maharashtra reworked notions of swadeshabhiman and deshbhakti implying rooted-ness to a particular territory, which drew upon Shivaji’s memorialisation of the Maratha homeland.11 The notion of the Tamil inam also came to imply a geographical unit of language.12 In Bengal, however, the idea of an ordered and harmonious society as the basis of unity had more fluid territorial connotations that could ideologically transcend local and regional boundaries to approximate the nation.

Samaj: The Conceptual Nucleus I argue that the significance of the deployment of samaj for conceptualising nationhood stemmed from its unique connotative framework. Etymologically meaning to move in a united manner, it could imply a union/aggregate of castes, sub-castes, and people of a specific region. Moreover, it constituted and embodied certain enduring social values and ideals of inclusion, which had survived across historical eras. The twin ideological trajectories emanating from the conceptual nucleus of samaj—() dharma (implying an enduring idea of righteous life) and () cultural Aryan-ness (acceptance of the epics and puranas,13 connections with Sanskrit, belief in a supreme Godhead, and adherence to certain codes of conduct) were prioritised in past and present (late colonial) contexts. These were seen to form the basis of unity in medieval (past) samajs as well as being a reference point for reconsidering affinities and attachments in the late colonial scenario. Thus, through the prioritisation of cultural Aryan-ness and dharma in past and present contexts, samaj was situated in two interrelated temporal and connotative contexts: () it was the (past) historical society from whence the nation emerged and () it had a modern functionality, representing an ongoing social reality. This dual positioning opened up a space for situating issues of unity within a longer historical tradition, fusing the past and the present in the imagining of nationhood. Further, it connected the realm of ideas to that

11

See Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, pp. –, –. See Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam, “Is There a Tamil ‘Race’?” in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 13 Puranas were texts comprising traditional knowledge. Usually regarded as being eighteen in number, these contained genealogical lists of kings, and related the origins of humanity and Indian history. 12



introduction

of social actualities, relating text and belief to everyday living realities, making samaj an idea-in-practice. Such contextualisations of samaj fed into an analytic framework in which the interrelated dynamic of continuity and unity was played out through a dual process of () reconfiguring inheritances and () negotiating fragmentation. Those groups (‘insider’ Bengalis of the ‘lower orders’ as well as ‘outsider’ neighbouring ethnicities, and other Indians), which adhered to the norms of dharma and were culturally Aryanised, were included within a wider social universe which approximated the nation. By constructing a regional selfhood (Bengali) and situating it vis-à-vis ‘others’ within an overarching framework based on intersections between dharma and cultural Aryanness, samaj became a metaphor and means for forging unity alongside, and in contention with bonds of caste, class, clan, micro-region and ethnic category. It could forge a complex whole from diverse fragments.14 The process was related to ideas about Indian unity conceptualised as a Bharatbarshiya (Indian) samaj. Thus, though envisioned and framed through the deployment of a ‘regional’ conceptual category, the discourse on nationhood in Bengal had wider analytic implications, connecting the region to the nation, and contributing to a wider process of the making of identities in South Asia.

Theoretical Shifts The focus on samaj as an analytic tool to understand the intricacies of nationhood in Bengal involves, as mentioned above, a shift from existing academic models, which see colonial nationalisms as ‘borrowed’ and/or ‘derivative’. Contesting the contention that nationalism is ‘modular’ and is capable of being transplanted across a wide variety of terrains, I excavate indigenous unities and origins, which fed into constructions of nationhood. Imagining the nation thus occurred within distinctive socio-cultural settings. This line of thought also suggests that reorientations of nationhood in colonial Bengal may be analysed in alternative, non-western terms, by exploring indigenous notions of unity and

14 The relevance of “samaj and unity” lies in the creation of this oneness or unity defined as a welding of diverse fragments into a complex whole. See Catherine Soanes (ed.), The Compact Oxford Reference Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. . Unity is defined here as the state of being united or forming a whole; and as a thing forming a complex whole.

introduction



their specific thematic underpinnings of race, caste and nation. The shifting of spotlight from Eurocentric definitions accomplished in recent literature has not focused specifically on Bengal.15 The social worlds of Asian countries were embedded in distinctive intellectual traditions, and did not, as Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani have recently argued, pay pronounced attention to the sphere of politics.16 This was especially noticeable in Bengal, where the literati conceptualised the nation as a cultural entity historically rooted in the evolution of samaj. Without eliding political processes or rigidly dividing culture and polity, this book makes the point that cultural identity was a more significant trajectory in rethinking identity during the period under consideration. The specific ways in which such identity was conceptualised are to be fitted into a historicist mould underscoring indigenous particularities in imaginings of nationhood. The development of cultural identity pivoted around this conception of nationhood was underpinned by theoretical perspectives of romantic nationalisms of the type discussed by Herder.17 Herder’s idea that every historical age and culture has its own character and its own value was underpinned by the belief that humanity has not one form, but many, and these forms find expression in the many different societies and nations of the world. As every society has grown and developed in a distinctive manner contingent upon a combination of environmental factors presented by its time and place and distinctive modes of life and thought, the history of any society cannot be understood in isolation from the specific cultural milieu to which it belongs.18 The source of diversity has to be sought in the existence of distinct social entities which constitute specific

15

See Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam, “Is There a Tamil ‘Race’?” and Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “The Effeminate and the Masculine: Nationalism and the Concept of Race in Colonial Bengal”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia, pp. –, and pp. – respectively, which suggest indigenous ways of exploring identity. 16 See Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, ), Introduction, p. . 17 For details relating to how this viewpoint operated in regard to quests for sociocultural identity in Bengal, see Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 18 See Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,  Volumes (Riga, –). Translated by T.O. Churchill as Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (London, , ) For an analysis of Herder’s views relating to history, see Patrick Gardiner, “Herder, Johann Gottfried” in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume III (New York, London: Free Press and Macmillan and Co., ), pp. –.



introduction

cultural configurations.19 This view of history and nationhood prioritises difference, and the distinctiveness of a particular culture, language and history. The conceptualisation of nationhood woven around samaj did not simplistically follow a ‘derivative’ trajectory. The theoretical and epistemic framework of the discourse meshes with the significant issue of agency of the colonial intelligentsia. By focusing on indigenous inheritances of nationhood and seeing how they were developed and reoriented under colonial impact, I argue that rather than any simple replication of colonial discourses, there was selective adaptation and acceptance, and at times, even contestation. The interaction and interface between the indigenous literati on the one hand, and technologies of imperial rule and its epistemic foundations on the other cannot be cast in any simplistic dominance-subjugation mould, in which reinventions of the indigenous operated inevitably within a ‘derivative’ mould. Seeing colonial nationalisms as shadows of western nationalist development, the “derivative discourse” model sees the postcolonial nation-state as a continuation of the original western Enlightenment project imposed through colonial discourse. But the line of argument I have outlined above turns from the colonial discourse mode of enquiry into the politics of otherness, which locates the otherness of the other wholly and even solely in the colonial moment, thus eliding pre or non-colonial differences of consequence. The shift from ‘borrowed’/ ‘derivative’ paradigms also involves a turn from modernist and political definitions of nationhood. Constructivist ideas about the nation, influenced by socio-economic developmental theories see the nation as being born at a unique, transformative moment in modernity. The theoretical standpoint delineated in this book marks a departure from Ernest Gellner’s and Benedict Anderson’s interpretation of the nature of the history of nationalist consciousness emphasising its radically novel and modern nature. These scholars identify nationalist consciousness as the co-extensiveness of politics and culture. The individual is identified with a culture protected by the state. Sociologically, only in the modern era could people from different locales ‘imagine’ themselves as part of a single community. The exit from the pre-modern to the modern was marked by a unique moment of transformation, which for Gellner lay in the Industrial Revolution when the state fulfilled the 19 Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder on Social and Political Culture, translated and edited by F.M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

introduction



need to create a homogeneously educated work force in which individual members were interchangeable by creating a homogeneous culture.20 To Anderson, the conjunction of print capitalism, travel and territorialisation of the faith marked the momentous transition from sacred scripts, divine kingship and the conflation of history with cosmology.21 These theories have strongly impacted discourses on the historic development of identity in India. A sharp, a-historical divide between nestling bundles of fragmented communities having no strong sense of identity and a modern, western-derived nationalist political discourse22 has split the historical narrative of identities in India. By prioritising the centrality of the idea of a historical social community (samaj) as underpinning notions of nationhood, this book moves beyond such western-derived political and modernist ideas about the nation. By illuminating connections between ‘modern’ (late colonial) ideas about nationhood and historical traditions of socio-cultural unities, even while debunking, like Elie Kedourie, arguments about a continuous history of the nation and dismissing ‘mythologies’ of nationalist histories,23 I uncover the limitations of application of the linear evolutionary history of the Enlightenment/colonial model to nationalist development in the colonial world. As Prasenjit Duara has pointed out, this theory is repressive, exclusionary and incomplete.24 The nation in his analysis is not actualised at some unique moment in modernity, nor is nationalism a radically novel mode of consciousness. Duara argues that the modernist perspective ignores the complexity of the nature of historical memory and causality. Moreover, the notion of a unified consciousness underpinned by the pre-modern/modern polarity does not seem empirically tenable. Individuals and groups in pre-modern and modern societies simultaneously identify themselves with several communities.25 20

See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ). For details see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, ). 22 A. Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of the Colonial Self (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); and Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. 23 See Prasenjit Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China”, in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India (New Delhi: Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Gyan Publishing House, ). 24 See Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ), p. . 25 Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China”, in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India. 21



introduction

This book attempts to develop this analytic trajectory by arguing that in Bengal identification of individuals with caste, sub-caste, region, religion, sect, family, and social or professional group was conditioned by mobile and overlapping boundaries which were historically changeable. It shows that rather than what Duara calls “politicisation of identifications”,26 such belongings were redefined according to criteria related to one overarching idea: in this case that of cultural Aryan-ness. The negotiation of cultural markers remained embedded in a historical process which crystallised in the late nineteenth century when historical memory was reenacted to mobilise a new community. This element of historical continuity does not, of course, mean that connections between modern (late colonial) notions of nationhood and earlier antecedents were simple or continuous. Rather, they need to be studied through a model of continuity through change. The prioritisation of a history of culture in late colonial Bengal deployed notions of pre-colonial samajik unities in the contemporary agenda of recreating a jati (the collective self) and conceptualising a nation. Sumit Sarkar has drawn attention to the prioritisation of society over polity (during the post-Swadeshi phase) in the literati’s appeal to culture that identified samaj as synonymous with religious community rather than territorial nationhood.27 The intent of this study is to go beyond such analytic horizons by suggesting that the preoccupation with samaj was evident well before the Swadeshi era.28 Ideas of samajik history developed within contextual parameters closely related to notions of the Bengali self vis-à-vis others, such as the neighbouring ethnicities, ‘lower’ orders within Bengal, and other Indians. These wider projections of samaj are lacking in Sarkar’s analysis. The framework of cultural nationhood developing through a historically-conditioned process turns from Saidian perspectives which see the nation through a political prism, and counterpoise community and fragmentation to the modern, political nation-state. Such positions regard culture and power as co-extensive. State-centric arguments viewing the nation as an artefact of modernity operate within a power-knowledge nexus seen as being embodied in the institutional mechanism of the state, or alternatively, in culture. Domination in such intellectual discourses 26

Ibid. Cf. Sumit Sarkar, who argues that the Swadeshi period provided the major context for the development of samajik identity. See Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. –. 28 Ibid., p. . 27

introduction



is seen in cultural, discursive terms. Such cultural studies and critiques record shifts from E.P. Thompson (Marxism) to Foucault and Said.29 Theoretical perspectives viewing power as seamless, irresistible and all pervasive tend to homogenise domination and autonomy, leaving no room for contradictions within structures. Histories written within this mould relegate resistance or autonomy (which can only be fleeting) to pre-colonial or pre-modern spaces untouched by power.30 But was there no power-knowledge connection in pre-colonial or pre-modern times?31 Pre-colonial histories such as Rajabali () written by the Brahman pundit Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar could not be de-linked from the contemporary Brahmanical predominance in indigenous society. Mrityunjoy’s work needs to be contextualised as a discourse operating within the social and intellectual parameters of Brahmanical power. Such instances are evocative of a deeper analytic point: the need to qualify polarisations of premodern/cultural and modern/political. This book would demonstrate that the prioritisation of culture in conceptions of nationhood woven around samaj does not mean segregation or objectification of culture, or its oppositional arraignment against politics. On the contrary, it relates culture to power. The argument questions disjunctions between ‘premodern’ community and the modern nation-state, stemming from a wider and implicit disjunction of polity and community. Studies of samajik history in Bengal show that, rather than being rigidly sequestered, polity and society were interactive arenas.32 Neither was samaj an urtraditional relic de-linked from the formation of nationalistic identities in the late nineteenth century. Through a fusion of modernity and tradition (community consciousness) the Bengali discourse redefined nationhood from the perspective of the rooted-ness of identity in a long historical tradition. This thematic trajectory relates, rather than de-links community/fragmentation from political processes in conceptions of the nation. The social community cannot be marginalised on the ground that it automatically and un-problematically implies fragmentation and 29

Ibid., p. . This argument of subaltern scholars such as Partha Chatterjee has been referred to and critiqued by Sumit Sarkar. See Ibid., pp. –. 31 Partha Chatterjee’s sharp distinction between pre-colonial history writing typified by Mrityunjay Vidyalankar’s Rajabali (), devoid of any implicit power-knowledge import, and the colonial ‘model’ exemplified in Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay’s Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ) seems open to contestation. 32 For details about the interaction and intersection between the domains of samaj and rashtra see Chapter III. 30



introduction

is dominated by the political sway of the state. It is difficult to agree with Partha Chatterjee’s viewpoint: Though some writers denied the centrality of the state in the life of the nation and instead pointed to the many institutions and practices in the everyday lives of the people through which they evolved a way of living with their differences . . . the writings of Rabindranath Tagore in his post Swadeshi [also pre Swadeshi] phase are particularly significant . . . the principal difficulty with this view is its inherent vulnerability to the overwhelming sway of the modern state. Its only defence against the historicist conception of the nation is to claim for the everyday life of the people an essential and transhistorical truth.33

The community-state opposition is underpinned by a disjunction between ‘inner’ / cultural and ‘outer’/ political. But, as the point about interpenetration between the domains of samaj and rashtra demonstrates, the inner/outer dichotomy needs to be questioned. In negotiations of fragments of the nation, the discourse on samaj regarded language, kinship/race, religion, territory, customs and manners as important criteria for inclusion/exclusion. These were not merely determinate sociological products or primordial cultural ‘givens’ or essences. Instead, by studying their transformations and intersections within a framework of continuity through change in which ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ domains interpenetrated, I aim to show that they were living, metamorphosing links in ways of imagining the nation. Grafting sociological theory to perspectives of intellectual and social history, I try to show that these cultural criteria cannot be relegated solely to an inner, uncontested, ‘already sovereign’ domain. These criteria need to be situated and problematised within contexts of interaction between the domains, and seen as dynamic sociological bridges between different kinds of attachments—familial, caste, regional, associational (belonging to an ‘outer’ civil society) and panIndian. The formation of identity in late colonial Bengal cannot be understood in terms of any iconic and rigid divide between Gemeinschaft / Gesellschaft,34 or inner/outer, or between “cultural systems of religious 33 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories in Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 34 Ferdinand Tonnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig: ). In Ferdinand Tonnies’ seminal analysis, the theory of Gemeinschaft was based on the idea that in the original or natural state, there is a complete unity of human wills. This is maintained even when people become separated, and it takes different forms depending on how far the relationship between differently situated individuals is predetermined or “given”. Gemeinschaft, initially a community of blood develops into a community of place and then of spirit held together by kinship ties, neighbourhood, friendship and comradeship.

introduction



community” and the “political community of nation” born from fundamental changes in modes of apprehending the world and imagining the nation.35 The specific contexts and situations in colonial Bengal muted such polarities, offering a reference frame for comparing indigenous modernity vis-à-vis classic ‘western’ models. One of the immediate contexts for ‘modernity’ can be taken to be the emergence of a civil society in Bengal after . Civil society has been defined as a society independent of the economic domain and the state where ideas are publicly exchanged, associations freely formed and interests rediscovered. According to Jurgen Habermas civil society with its underlying public/private dichotomy emerged and took on its function during the eighteenth century, establishing itself as the realm of commodity exchange and social labour governed by its own laws. Notions concerning what is public and what is private, could, however, be traced much further back into the past. Civil society came into existence as the corollary of a depersonalised state authority, with the replacement of the household by commercial economics and the development of the press.36 Recent scholars have seen the idea of civil society as residing in a set of cultural acquisitions and in historically inherited manners of civility which moderate relations between groups and individuals.37 Colonial Bengal offered specific contexts for the emergence of a civil society. Pre-colonial ‘traditional’ society Gesellschaft, on the contrary, is a group of people living peacefully alongside one another without being essentially united. Through convention and natural law, Gesellschaft forms a single aggregate or a multitude of natural and artificial individuals. Their wills and spheres of interest interact with each other, but they remain independent and lack intimacy. This is the general picture of civil society based on commercial exchange. See Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Civil Society, edited by Jose Harris and translated by Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. – , –. 35 Benedict Anderson’s seminal work explained how the political community of the nation superseded the preceding cultural systems of religious community and dynastic realm. See Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, p. . 36 Habermas believed that the tradition of ancient Germanic law through categories such as gemeinlich and sunderlich or common and particular generated a contrast that corresponded to public/private. But it was only in the eighteenth-century that the noun offentlichkeit was formed from the older adjective offentlich, in analogy to publicity, implying that the public sphere did not require a name of its own before this period. See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, ), pp. , , . 37 See Sunil Khilnani, “The Development of Civil Society” and Sudipta Kaviraj,



introduction

did not make a collective definition of all other groups defined against the state because political authority was segmented. The colonial state with its ideology of sovereign power underlined the division between the province of the state and the province of society that could be left unregulated. The westernised elite skilled at the fluent use of the practical concepts of European public life helped create a literary public sphere, with newspapers, journals and pamphlets forging a public arena for the discussion of common issues. The formation of associations was facilitated by modern economic processes, the growth of commercial classes and of a modern market.38 These changes ushered in by colonialism constituted the parameters for the emergence of a civil society in colonial Bengal. Heralding the emergence of a civil society, print fostered communication among unrelated individuals belonging to different social strata, and made possible the imagining of unities among them. It also signalled the emergence of a ‘public’ arena, a new domain of social activity involving the public, and of new social regulations ordering these public practices.39 As Sumit Sarkar has pointed out: The forms and channels of sociability which developed around the new educational-professional and print-cultural networks . . . contributed to the emergence—under specific conditions of a colonial society . . . of something akin to a public sphere . . . Certainly terms like ‘public’ or ‘public opinion’ had come to be commonly used by the late nineteenth century, no doubt partly in simple mimesis of the language of British political life, but also reflecting institutional changes in Indian society.40

But there was no complete segregation between community and polity or between ‘public’ and ‘private’ in Bengal. Therefore, though colonialism provided a major context for the emergence of civil society in Bengal, it was not a ‘classic’ case of civil society counterpoised to community and state or ‘public’ and ‘private’, as familial values and ‘inner’/samajik bonds were projected onto, and continued in the public world of the modern civil society. Community consciousness existing since pre-colonial times interacted with new forces and changes of the colonial era—especially print cultures, the emergence of a civil society and the growth of a network of relationships among the Bengali intelligentsia—to produce the “In Search of Civil Society” in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities, pp. –, –. 38 Sudipta Kaviraj, “In Search of Civil Society” in Ibid., pp. –. 39 Partha Chatterjee, “On Civil and Political Society in Postcolonial Democracies”, in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society, History and Possibilities, p. . 40 See Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. .

introduction



notion of a nation. This process reflected a simultaneity and overlap between nationhood and nationalism, rather than a temporal and ideological divide between the two. The idea that nationalism’s journey begins in an ‘inner’ / cultural sphere before the political movement of nationalism takes off 41 presupposes and underscores such division. I suggest that instead of division, there was interpenetration between the domains. This line of reasoning also differs subtly from recent models, which, while prioritising the element of continuity in the conceptualisation of identity in modern India, have not specifically focused on nationhood as an ideological arena cohering with, and intersecting with the political ideology and movement of nationalism. Critiquing modernist paradigms, they have concentrated on commonalities of sentiment and embedded mentalities,42 as well as certain patterns of social relations, patriotism and ethical government43 seeing them as meaningful connecting links between the older forms of conceptualising identities, and the modern national movement. Such links have been seen to constitute continuities by forming a pre-history of nationalism or a “felt community”,44 and by being drawn upon, transformed and reflected in associational politics of the Congress brand.45 These perspectives have concentrated on earlier mentalities/communities of sentiment, the social collectivity of the Hindus and Muslims of Hindustan, and ideologies of resistance grounded in a political vein within contexts of the political ideology/movement of modern Indian nationalism.46 But this book shifts the spotlight from antecedents of the discourse and practice of nationalism as a political and associational movement, and focuses instead on the ontology of nationhood grounded in culture. Distinguishing ‘nationhood’ from ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationality’,47 Ray designates a pre/early

41

Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –, –. 42 Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism. 43 C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia. 44 Ray, The Felt Community, pp. –, – and passim. 45 Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, p. . 46 Bayly has investigated precursors of the associational/political movement of the s and s, and Ray has conjoined and contrasted the felt community to the emergence of Indian nationalism. See Ibid. 47 Ray has pointed out that though ‘nationalism’ is a modern phenomenon closely related to the idea of a sovereign nation-state, nationhood is rooted in sentiments derived from a longer history, in emotions, identities and ideas. See Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community, p. .



introduction

colonial felt community as a domain offsetting and complementing the full-fledged political nationalism of a later period. This endows nationhood (in his analysis) with an earlier (pre and early colonial) temporality and genealogy. But this study brings nationhood to the stage of modernity, seeing it as a more continuous, historically conditioned process running parallel to, and at times intersecting with political processes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Significantly, it makes the point that the trajectory of culture was more significant than political discourses engaging with overt oppositions of the raj during the period under consideration. Identities were conditioned historically through a negotiation of cultural markers. Marking a departure from existing academic models, I address the theme of continuity and unity by focusing on a sociological/conceptual category from which specific trajectories emanated and intersected to produce the notion of a nation in Bengal. These ideological strands—cultural Aryanness, dharma, specific codes of conduct, religious, linguistic, and social connections, and heritages of shared culture—were subtly different from the “precursors” explored in existing works (sacred locales, memorialisation of homelands, ideas about good government, earlier mentalities of resistance such as in  and the pre-history of communalism). Such perspectives on unity draw on, as well as go beyond ethno-symbolist paradigms48 for it explores historical clusters, and myths and memories of cultural community as living, transforming links in a dynamic process of nation-formation which followed a different route (negotiating unities as woven around multiple indices of culture subsumed by samaj) than that of core ethnies exercising political domination in the road to nationhood. Further, while existing models highlighting continuities have focused on India as a whole,49 my aim is to see how the ideological trajectories mentioned above intermeshed in applications of samaj at subregional, regional and pan-Indian levels. A regional sociological identitycategory opened out through wider projections of its ideological bases of unity to reconsider connections between regional (Bengali) populations, contiguous ethnicities and other Indians, and moved beyond regional

48 Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ) and National Identity: Ethnonationalism in Comparative Perspective (Reno: University of Nevada Press, ); and John Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ). 49 Ray, The Felt Community; and Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia.

introduction



frontiers to approximate the nation. Thus while existing literature has elided finer nuances of interrelations between local specificities and panIndian unities, this book relates and contextualises the regional and sub-regional vis-à-vis the national by seeing how samaj as a conceptual microcosm of larger unities flowed beyond a regional core, including, accommodating, but not transcending or eroding local particularisms in larger settings of unity. Samaj, situated in dual temporal contexts of the past and the present (late colonial), with its multiple connotative reference points subsuming unity, formed the unique focus of Bengal’s negotiation of the region and the nation in conceptualisations of nationhood. This differs from interrelations of the region and the nation in discourses in other parts of India, for instance in Maharashtra, where, as recently demonstrated, a creative historical period (historical memory), various interpretations of history, and a local religion (Maharashtra dharma) created a space for articulating a relationship between Marathi regional, Hindu religious and Indian national communities.50

The Context, Causes and Dynamics of Cultural Nationhood The framework discussed above formed the theoretical and ideological setting for critically analysing the terms and trajectories of the literati’s discourse on cultural nationhood. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the socio-political climate ushered in changes that formed the ideological and material bases of the discourse. The development of socio-cultural unities occurred over a longue duree, but the late nineteenth century formed a turning point in regard to the crystallisation of ideas about identity, and their conscious interweaving into a discourse. During this era earlier inchoate ideas of samajik unities51 were articulated coherently, and related to jati52 in a historically indexed and structured discourse on cultural nationhood.53 However, certain identifiable strands 50 Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, - (New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi: Permanent Black, ). 51 The Bengali literati located identity in a history of culture and attachment symbolised by the conceptual category of samaj signifying social community, collectivity and aggregate. 52 This indigenous term denoted type, nation, caste, sub-caste, tribe and even species. By the s jati had become admittedly multi-functional. 53 This term is not used in the sense of militant Hindu chauvinism. During the period



introduction

of the discourse were embedded in ideological lineages of an earlier era. Changes in material culture, education and employment patterns, economy and society, evident since the early s formed the prelude to late nineteenth century articulations. British commercial expansion in Bengal set the stage for urbanisation and the emergence of Calcutta as an important focal point due to its administrative and economic significance. The exigencies of empire necessitated a strengthening of the sinews of administrative control, and in this respect Calcutta as the citadel of British power in India assumed a cardinal significance. Urbanisation in a colonial situation unleashed changes in the material arena, specifically the demarcation of Calcutta into white and black towns. This spatial-cum-racial distinction as well as demographic diversity due to the inflow of immigrants who came to Calcutta as daily wage earners caused a stir in the Bengali-Hindu literati’s society and created a space for rethinking differences. The stir in the indigenous society synchronised with a renegotiation of coloniser-colonised relations along political lines. Political changes were evident in indigenous moves to cement local group and economic interests. In  the Zamindari Association, later called Landholder’s Society, was formed. Its aim of setting up branches in every district of British India anticipated future efforts at wider economic and political unities by conceptualising a basis for connecting the interests of a social and economic group of specific locality/province with other parts of India. In a similar vein, the British Indian Association () aimed at ameliorating the condition of the people of the whole of British India. Changes in the material universe were paralleled by a transformation of the mental world of the literati due to the spread of indigenous and western education. The formation of the Asiatic Society () was a major milestone in this regard. It occasioned an interest in indigenous history and underlined in the literati’s mind, the connection between history and identity, which re-surfaced as a major ideological strand in the late nineteenth century discourse. Education, professional qualifications and the proliferation of print ushered in changes in the mental and social universe of the literati, which were further fostered by travel within and beyond India.54 under consideration, ‘Hindu’ had flexible and inclusive connotations and did not involve the elision or denigration of non-Hindu elements in all contexts. 54 Rabindranath Tagore’s travels in Europe had their impact on Europe Probasir Patra, as well as on his ideas about indigenous samaj. A cultural history of Nepal and thirty

introduction



Changes brought about as a result of the proliferation of print and employment relationships in the colonial situation altered existing patterns of interaction between the individual and the society. Western social theory, philosophy and historiographical types had their impact on the literati’s evaluations of the interplay between the individual and the society, and on their notions of an identity rooted in history. However, though the inspiration came from western historiographical types and social philosophies, the subject of concern was swadesh (own country, province). A quest for the history of swadesh led the literati to locate identity in samaj and culture rather than polity, though the former intersected with the latter, an outer ‘public’ arena. Further, as political history was ruptured due to the absence of reliable sources, the jati/collective self had to be reconstructed through a history of culture and attachment to the social collectivity. The history of samaj and its dual ideological axes of cultural Aryan-ness and dharma thus became central. The thrust toward a history of culture and attachment was noticeable since the s, with the publication of samajik texts such as the Bidyotpatti (), the Kulapradeep () and the Biprabhaktichandrika () which discussed genealogical lists of Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas. These texts had an impact on much later works such as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Bange Brahmanadhikar () and Lalmohan Vidyanidhi’s Sambandhanirnoy (). The specifics of kula (family), sub-caste and caste lineages, and group practices and social norms were related to wider unities in Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Samajik Prabandha () epitomising the essence of the Bengali Hindu samaj and its evolution through a comparison with European society. Similarly Bankimchandra’s views on samaj had links with Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay’s works published in .55 Just as a common thread can be traced between the general samajik texts of the s and those written during and after the s, contemporaneous texts on sub-regional histories also had similar aims. For instance, Birbhum Rajbangsha, Bikrampurer Itihas and Tamluker Itihas, written around the first decade of the twentieth century claimed to be representative and emblematic of the history of Bengal as a whole and not the history of a specific pargana. These instances may provide a justification for moving from one text to the others in an two articles on Tibetan dharma, language and itihas by Saratchandra Das were no doubt moulded by his extensive travels in these areas. See Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, ), p. . 55 Ibid., p. .



introduction

endeavour to trace and compare similarities, heterogeneities and broad trends embedded in the narrative form and authorial intentions of the texts. From the second half of the nineteenth century the intricate and complex relationship between Indians and the British raj underwent changes which then started governing the inner dynamics of empire. Changes in the wake of the Mutiny-Rebellion of , and subsequent developments altered existing patterns of interaction between the ruler and the ruled. During this period, colonial sociological exercises such as the census reports, imperial gazetteers’ accounts and the ethnographic views of W.W. Hunter and H.H. Risley56 led to a rethinking and redefinition of identity-categories among the indigenous population. The rearticulation of identity acquired more emphatic overtones in Bengal, the citadel of British power in India. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the turn toward a history of culture and attachment to the social collectivity was markedly evident. In , the Hindu Mela was started to give organised expression to cultural nationhood. The Mela had its roots in the twin ideas of promoting a distinctive identity and self reliance articulated in the Bengali poet Iswarchandra Gupta’s Sambad Prabhakar.57 The theme of self help referred to by a poet of the “older generation” and of a different and earlier social condition was taken up by the Derozian Kasiprasad Ghosh, editor of Hindu Intelligentser during the s. At a later date, the eminent Brahmo leader Dwarkanath Vidyabhushan articulated this idea in his well-known journal, the Som Prakash. Self help was therefore a common theme in the samajik imaginings of different groups (relatively conservative and ‘older’ Bengalis such as Iswar Gupta, the ‘iconoclastic’ ‘Young Bengal’ group or the Derozians, and the Brahmos). The Brahmos consistently emphasised the need for self help as was clear in Rajnarain Basu’s ideas. In  he wrote a pamphlet, the Anushthan Patra of the Jatiya Gourab Sancharini Sabha on the subject of establishing a society 56 Colonial sociology provided one of the major contexts for the Bengali quest for identity in the late nineteenth century. Official and non-official works influencing the Bengali literati’s rethinking of sociological categories included W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (London: , reprinted, th edition, Smith. Elder and Co., ) and A Statistical Account of Bengal, Volume I,  Parganas and Sundarbans (London: Trubner and Co., ); H.H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary, Volume I (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ). Colonial enumerative exercises included The Census of India (), The Census of India, Volume V, The Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ). 57 See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , –.

introduction



for the promotion of national feeling among the educated natives of Bengal. He outlined the aims and subjects of debate for such a society,58 and as a result, in , a Jatiya Mela was established. It sought to encourage a return to ‘Indian’ customs and practices.59 In , Debendranath Tagore started the circulation of National Paper, edited by Nabagopal Mitra. The latter, deeply impressed by Rajnarain Basu’s Anushthan Patra of the Jatiya Gourab Sancharini Sabha, thought of establishing a jatiya sabha. He was ably helped by Dvijendranath and Ganendranath Tagore.60 These Brahmo leaders linked self help to the issues of jati and samajik uplift. Shibnath Shastri’s views demonstrated how notions of unity, jatitva and the Bengali samaj interlocked in the cultural-nationalist agenda of the Mela: A new feeling awoke in Bengal with the founding of Nabagopal Mitra’s Hindu Mela . . . this feeling was reinforced by the participation of different groups of people of this desh [province/country] and their leaders. It was a major milestone in the history of samaj in Bengal, because the awakening of jatiya bhab [feeling of collective unity] in the minds of the Bengalis from  onwards has not been lulled ever since.61

The first meeting was held on  April  in a garden house in Belgachhia in Calcutta. The Mela sought to unite different groups of people and promoting self-reliance. Its main aims were—() promotion of fellow feeling among people of the swajati, and the unity and uplift of swadesh; () progress and uplift of the samaj, on which topic, each year, a speech was delivered; () promotion of vernacular education; () display of handicrafts and agricultural products; and () promotion of physical education.62 The relevance of the Hindu Mela springs from its being the first organised expression of cultural nationhood. The discourse on identity in late nineteenth century Bengal grounded in the language of cultural nationhood enmeshed with samajik history. It envisaged the progress of swadesh in terms of cultural identity, rather than associational politics of the later Congress brand.63 But, as mentioned above, formulations of 58 The Anusthan Patra was translated by Umeshchandra Datta. See Umeshchandra Datta, Bibidha Prabandha (Calcutta, ), pp. –. For details see Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri, ), p. . 59 See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, p. . 60 See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 61 Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta, ), p. , quoted in Ibid., p. . 62 Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, Introduction, p. , and pp. , –. 63 Ibid., p. .



introduction

cultural identity intersected with political processes. The social/political contrast as well as interconnection provides an analytic reference point for comparing the selective emphasis on Hindu heritage in the early phase (the period under survey) and later, emphatically political discourses. The earlier period, regarded by Tapan Raychaudhuri as the “secular early period” (basing his view on Haraprasad Shastri’s writings) implied a cultural nationalist agenda, questioning the actuality of what Gyanendra Pandey calls the militant construction of community, nation and history.64 Though even in the earlier discourse communal sentiments were embedded, they had not hardened into rigid lines. The latter came in the wake of the Swadeshi Movement. Focusing on the amorphous and shifting connotations of ‘Hindu’ and especially the ramifications of ‘culturally Aryan’ this study questions Gyanendra Pandey’s assertion that “nationalist discourse is always political . . . however much it pretends to speak in the ‘non-political’ language of religion and community.”65 The non-political stance of the early nationalists had roots in the literati’s ambivalence in their search for a redefined self. The impact of western education and exposure to European culture interacted with strong moorings to tradition. Ideas about improvement of the society and a pride in inherited culture co-existed with an acceptance of colonial rule.66 The focus of the literati’s notions about a redefined identity was Hindu culture, and pride in Hindu glory. Seeming deviations from the traditional Hindu way of life occasioned by the Brahmo movement and the iconoclastic Derozians were not deep or far-reaching in their impact. This set the stage for the burgeoning of cultural nationalism rooted in Hindu identity, and integrated to a programme of self help that avoided any overt confrontation with the raj. The agenda of cultural nationalism also acted as a site where samaj and jati interlocked. One of the chief protagonists of the Mela and an eminent poet and dramatist,67 Manomohan Basu, mentioned in a speech delivered in the third session of the Mela: Our aim is to strengthen the sinews to bind different sections of the samaj and check evils present in the samaj . . . the other name for this samajikata [norms and functions of the social collectivity] is jati dharma . . .

64 Gyanendra Pandey, “Which of us are Hindus?” in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today (New Delhi: Viking, ), p. . 65 Ibid., p. . 66 See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, p. . 67 See Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. .

introduction



we need to free this jati dharma . . . by arranging meetings between different sections of the swajati, encouraging their communication, and fostering the interchange of sentiments and feelings among them. We need to discuss what samajik progress has been achieved in the past year . . . and promote love for indigenous art, craft and literature among the swajati.68

The swajati was taken to mean ‘nation’ defined in cultural terms. In the absence of a notion of or term for the state in abstract terms, there was no real concept of sovereignty objectively over territory and its citizens or subjects except in western vocabulary. This is why swajati was important, as something vested in the belonging-ness and identity of the people. It was therefore rather different from the political, judicial and juridical idea of nationalism.

Cultural Aryan-ness The idea of cultural nationhood woven around samaj was lodged within an ideological nexus between the inclusive notion of cultural Aryan-ness and dharma. The reconfiguration of ‘Aryan’ as a culturally inclusive concept was crucial as it afforded the means to negotiate diverse fragments by providing an ideology and a framework of normative conduct, practices, manners and specific cultural hallmarks. Conjoined to the idea of dharma as righteous life and conduct, these principles and practices formed a connecting link and an ideological matrix for deploying samaj at two planes: as a historical society and as an idea-in-practice. At both levels, the norms and practices of cultural Aryan-ness formed a foundation for including people of diverse groups (provided they adhered to the specifics of cultural Aryan-ness and dharma). Cultural Aryanness as an idea and practice travelled in time to act as a connecting bridge between samajs of the past (past unities) and the late colonial samaj. The concept of cultural Aryan-ness was subtly different from the familiar colonial disjunction of Aryan/non-Aryan as racial categories. This division figured centrally in colonial sociological exercises such as the census reports and the Imperial and District Gazetteers series.69 68

Ibid., p. . In  the first series of District Gazetteers was started and in , the census operations were started. See Chapter II for details about how colonial sociology impacted the reorientation of indigenous terms relating to identity, such as ‘jati’. 69



introduction

Further, it constituted an overarching framework of division into which other divisions (such as those of caste and tribe) were fitted. Thus it formed the crux of the colonial “discourse of differentiation”70 deployed to accentuate divisions within Indian society. During the second half of the nineteenth century, colonial sociological exercises, the aftermath of the Mutiny-Rebellion (), the Black Acts and the Ilbert Bill Controversy (), highlighted the racial asymmetry between the ruler and the ruled. ‘Aryan’ accordingly came to be overlaid by racial and sociological connotations. The Bengali literati’s idea of cultural Aryan-ness as a cultural and civilisational concept, formed the fulcrum of an ordered and harmonious society envisaged through samaj. The cultural construction of ‘Aryan’ no doubt reflected Orientalist lineages: Monier-Williams for instance used the term to mean noble/honourable, an inhabitant of Aryavarta (North India, considered the habitat of Aryans), and one who is faithful to the religion of that country.71 These connotative lineages were reflected in the concept of cultural Aryan-ness, but there were subtle transmutations too. The crucial difference between colonial and indigenous understandings of the Aryan idea stemmed from the fact that the latter engaged with the significant task of self-definition. To the Bengali literati, the fascination of the Aryan idea had much to do with the composition of the Indians themselves. It was situated in the regional context of Bengal and extended to evaluations of contiguous groups and other Indians. The construction of selfhood operated at two main levels: () a distinction between the coloniser and the colonised; and () a comparison with, and connection between the regional self/selves with contiguous ‘others’, and other Indians. What determined the levels and parameters of such connections? Certain key criteria implicit in cultural Aryan-ness were conjoined to the idea of samaj to open up a space for including specific groups within a wider socio-cultural universe which approximated nationhood. As said, acceptance of the epics and the puranas, connections with Sanskrit and belief in a supreme Godhead, along with adherence to and observance of specific codes of conduct formed the crux of cultural Aryan-ness. The

70 Bernard Cohn, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command”, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Volume IV (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 71 Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. .

introduction



significance accorded to these criteria reflected the fact that the racial connotation of ‘Aryan’ was glossed over contextually. The late colonial reorientation of ‘Aryan’ as a sociological and cultural concept had lineages not only in Orientalist legacies72 and the views of the British Sanskritists, but also in an indigenous connotative genealogy. By the time of the Pali canon ‘Aryan’ had lost all sense of race and come to mean cultural acceptance of Aryan texts and customs, an ‘approved’ code of conduct, and adherence to Sanskrit. There were implicit provisions for the inclusion of foreigners; Manu gave lists of Vratya tribes who were to be included in the Aryan fold. One can see a continuation of this trend of regarding ‘Aryan’ primarily as a sociological and cultural category in late nineteenth century Bengal. Rajanikanta Gupta in Arya Kirti spoke of inclusion within the Aryan fold, of people of supposedly nonAryan racial origin who had adopted certain specific Aryan practices and rituals, and adhered to the epics and puranas.73 This study analyses how such cultural accommodations afforded scope for inclusion of traditionally ‘non-Aryan’ groups. These meanings were re-asserted and re-oriented in the late nineteenth century. The Aryan leitmotif explained the nuances and inflections, the stresses and silences of the literati’s discourse on ‘lower orders’ within Bengal and on neighbouring ethnicities. It also surfaced in evaluations of sub-regional histories and juxtapositions of ‘Bengali’ and ‘Indian’ in a search for a pan-Indian identity. The cultural connotation of ‘Aryan’ deployed in samajik inclusions was further reinforced by the fact that sociological connotations gained precedence over racial ones. The supposed connection/equation between Bengalis and Aryans positioned in the stream of history operated within a sociological grid. The literati referred to the arrival of Aryans in Bengal (– bc) by narrating legends such as that of Adisur. He was the first king of the Sena dynasty who invited five Brahmans from Kanauj to come to Bengal. Their descendants were said to comprise the present Bengali population. Aryan lineage was thus regarded as having a pervasive influence on Bengali society and culture. Texts such as the Manusamhita and Ramayana were cited by Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay and others to assert that the socio-cultural structure in Bengal was based on the Aryancum-Brahmanic bidhi-byabastha (rules, regulations and system), social 72 See Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . The Aryan leitmotif surfaced in the deliberations of the Mela and shared common connotative ground with Orientalist definitions of the term. 73 See Rajanikanta Gupta, Arya Kirti (Calcutta, ), Introduction.



introduction

classification and jatibhed (divisions).74 The caste system was explained with reference to the ancient occupational diversification scheme, and (as said) the higher Bengali castes were supposed to be direct descendants of the Aryans.75 But the sociological lens of cultural Aryan-ness did not function as an exclusionary and narrow tool for valorising the Brahmanical basis (real or imagined) of the Bengali samaj, and distancing the non-Brahman and ‘lower orders’/classes/castes in all contexts. The late Aryanisation of Bengal and the manifold non-Aryan sociological lineages as well as the redefinition of Brahmanhood as a matter of character and conduct afforded room for inclusion of ‘lower orders’ adhering to ‘proper’ codes of conduct albeit in specific contexts. The literati also underscored the significance of language as a criterion of cultural Aryan-ness. Those groups whose linguistic genealogies were connected to Sanskrit were included in a wider samaj. From about the middle of the nineteenth century, language was prioritised as an essential strand of ideas about nationhood woven around culture. What is significant is that connections with Sanskrit and the inclusion of even traditionally/originally non-Aryan but Sanskritised languages into a common linguistic fold were underscored in an attempt to forge a flexible rubric of unity affording multilayered inclusions. The burgeoning and development of Bengali both at literary and colloquial levels were crucial as forming the connecting bridge melding the high Sanskritic tradition and the mass of variegated vernaculars below the classical language.76 Forging a conscious connection between nationhood and language, Rajnarain Basu claimed in the Anusthan Patra of A Society for the Promotion of National Feeling Among the Educated Natives of Bengal that No nation can make rapid strides in the path of progress unless they possess a highly developed language fit to answer all the requirements of writing or conversation.

In the fifth session of the Hindu Mela Dvijendranath Tagore, Debendranath Tagore and Nabagopal Mitra underlined the importance of language as a component of cultural nationhood. Directly connecting language to a vocabulary of patriotism, the Mela aimed to promote those works written in Bengali which were conducive to the progress and uplift of the swadesh (own country). The native language was the vehicle of 74

Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 76 Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. –. 75

introduction



expressing love of the land and articulating histories of that land. Further, it helped in the development of “national character”.77 The dual emphasis on the promotion of Sanskrit and Bengali was geared toward the construction of a linguistic identity as an essential strand of a regional selfhood, and as a cultural space for including other groups having linguistic links with these two languages. The Mela worked in association with the Asiatic Society to highlight the development of written and colloquial Bengali and exclude foreign words. However, this centrality accorded to language (Sanskrit-Bengali connections and a common linguistic cultural space based on Sanskritic connections) must be seen as a culmination of earlier developments since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The establishment of Fort William College promoted the publication of prose works in Bengali. From the s the efforts of Brahmo leaders helped in perfecting written Bengali. Rammohun Ray pioneered a new style of prose. The development of Bengali was facilitated by print especially after . These earlier developments merged in the second half of the nineteenth century with links between the Bengali jati and language, and the glorification of Sanskrit. It was natural at a time when cultural Aryan-ness cast its roots deep into the Bengali psyche as an aftermath of broader intellectual debates, and the researches of William Jones and Max Muller discovered a link between Indo-Aryan and European languages. Self-assertion and ideas about an empowered identity were expressed through an indigenous history written in Bengali. As vernacular literature was considered an important source of the social history of the people, Bengali attained an even greater significance. These conceptual links between identity and language explain the importance attached to language in the literati’s discourse on the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal, and to connections, similarities and differences between Bengali and the neighbouring languages, especially Oriya and Assamese. Belief in a supreme Godhead, regarded as an essential ideological strand of cultural Aryan-ness operated at specific levels and determined inclusion/exclusion of diverse groups into a re-imagined samajik universe. A reverence for Hindu religion was implied in the search for past glories of ancient (Hindu) civilisation. The Bengali literati juxtaposed Orientalist legacies of a glorious ‘Hindu’ civilisation which had slid off from a higher place to the central ideological principle of dharma or righteous life embedded in the concept of samaj. This expanded the scope

77

Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. .



introduction

of religion, making it a matter of faith as well as of life and conduct, to which even non-Hindu groups could adhere. Rajnarain Basu’s lecture on the superiority of Hinduism underlining the connection between cultural nationhood and religion must be contextualised within these analytic parameters. This brand of Hinduism had an assimilative and accommodative nature, and amorphous and shifting boundaries. It could not be restricted to a narrow and rigidly sequestered domain resting on Brahmanical ritual and norms. The wide rubric of Aryan-Hinduism underpinned by cultural connotations could include creeds such as Buddhism and Jainism (glorified in the literati’s discourse on neighbouring ethnicities) as well as more recent variations from the Brahmanical theme, such as Brahmoism. Cultural Aryan-ness also signified the cultivation of a code of conduct consisting of certain approved forms of social behaviour and cultivation and observation of indigenous customs. Even ‘lower’ non-Aryan groups as well as specific groups among the contiguous ethnicities adhering to this code of conduct could be elevated and regarded as ‘Aryan’, and accorded a place in the Bengali-Hindu samaj. The promotion of indigenous customs intertwined with the inculcation of ‘proper’ conduct and etiquette, which was deemed an integral part of social reformation. The underscoring of conduct intertwining with other strands of cultural Aryan-ness also had lineages in the past. Thus certain customs and manners seen as forming the normative basis of past samajs were sought to be rejuvenated as part of a wider programme of social regeneration approximating nationhood during the late colonial period. The Nationality Promotion Society was formed with the purpose of aiding social reformation by rousing national feelings. Men naturally look to the past for sanction for their acts and nothing aids reformation so much as a former national precedent. The Nationality Promotion Society shall therefore publish tracts in the Bengalee containing proofs of the existence of liberal and enlightened customs in Ancient India.78

The regulation of etiquette was also underlined. The Nationality Promotion Society aimed to give preference to the national namaskar (greeting with folded hands) and pranam (touching the feet of elders and respected people).79 Other aspects of a ‘proper’ code of conduct included politeness, gentleness, hospitality and courage (defined in non-physical terms). 78 79

Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .

introduction



These formed the behavioural foundation of cultural Aryan-ness and inhered in the conceptualisation of nationhood as an ongoing process of being and becoming, or as an experiential reality in practice. The specific meanings and trajectories of cultural Aryan-ness as delineated above may be seen as constituting a historicised model, its important characteristic being its Hindu-ness. The model drew upon an equation between ‘Aryan’ and ‘Hindu’, and the supposition that Hindus were the only true Aryans. But ‘Hindu’ during this period had amorphous, flexible and shifting connotations. Further, though Bengal was a lateAryanised land, the Aryan-Hindu equation was extended to include Bengalis also, and the latter were regarded as co-sharers of a glorious Aryan heritage and a history of heroism. The fluidity of ‘Hindu’ and the flexibility of culturally Aryan created an inclusive space which could contextually accommodate ‘non-Aryan’ elements. Thus the reconstitution of ‘Aryan’ in cultural terms, though framed and articulated in a Hindu rhetoric, was not an exclusionary, homogeneous or hegemonic metanarrative sweeping away local particularisms and oppositionally arraigning ‘non-Hindu’ (including Muslims) against ‘Hindu’ in all contexts. The discourse on nationhood grounded in a nexus between samaj and cultural Aryan-ness was not monolithic or unilinear. In contrast to existing secondary literature by Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta,80 Sudipta Kaviraj81 and others, this book would show how the process of reinventing the indigenous was multistranded, implicating many possibilities and trajectories. As this study is mainly concerned with the Bengali Hindu literati’s notions of identity as related to their own samaj, their reactions to ‘lower orders’ in Bengal, Hindu neighbouring ethnicities in contiguous regions, and other Indians, the nuances of interaction between Hindu and Muslim and the latter’s voice in articulations of identity82 are not central to it. It, however, analyses the literati’s viewpoints and interactions with the Muslims inasmuch as the scope of ‘culturally Aryan’ afforded a space for their inclusion or exclusion. Gender perspectives are also elided in 80 Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta has emphasised that the Bengali literati’s discourse on identity in the late nineteenth century was a Hindu discourse. See Indira ChowdhurySengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, ). 81 See Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of the Nationalist Discourse in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ). 82 For details about the quest for identity among the Bengali Muslims, see Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, –: A Quest for Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ).



introduction

this research as such issues, based on nuanced critiques of stereotypical images of the ‘masculine’ Englishman and the ‘effeminate’ and ‘weak’ Bengali, and the agenda of a virile history, have been dealt with in detail in recent works.83

The Framework of the Book Nationalist Ideologues, Ideas and Dissemination As nationhood was conceptualised in terms of social and cultural unities (both in historical as well as modern-day experiential contexts) the dynamics of the discourse were entwined in the particular characteristics of the social world of the Bengali nationalist ideologues. Applying a historicist perspective, this chapter addresses the central question of how, why and among whom ideas about nationhood originated, and how they were disseminated. I explore specific socio-cultural settings, familial/social roots of the literati, their individual and group experiences, and their ideological affiliations to map consensus of opinion among an internally differentiated and multilayered social group. While existing literature, concerned with these “sentinels of culture” (the middle class/literati/bhadralok) has traced the burgeoning of this class along the economic base of education (equated to property), this study explores the specific ways in which culture was constituted, how it worked in regard to axes of social and economic power, and was woven around reworkings of social unity related to nationhood. I argue that the world of culture worked in relation to everyday social realities through interactions/negotiations/mediations, rather than domination of ‘others’ in a narrative of nationalism, which cannot be simplistically seen as operating in a hegemonic mould. These social and ideological factors would uncover the springs and dynamics underlying authorial intention, and individual and collective mentalities. The social history perspective (crucial for understanding the social world of the literati to glimpse and glean the dynamics of mentality) is also implicated in the process by which the literati defined its relation to ‘others’ such as the contiguous ethnicities 83 See Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ) and Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and the Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, ).

introduction



and ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. It considers a variety of human activities difficult to classify except in such terms as “manners, customs and everyday life.”84 This interaction was independent of, and different from, its relation with the state. As the aim is to see how far the discourse was ‘real’ both in terms of imbibing the ideas at ideational and mental levels, as well as their translation into practice, I fuse methodologies of social to those of intellectual history. This approach is used to analyse the intricacies of the literati’s ideas as reflected in an indigenous archive of ‘primary’ tracts, pamphlets, articles in periodicals, private papers, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and literary texts, comparing them to colonial tenets reflected in census reports, and the imperial and district gazetteers series. The perspective of intellectual history attempts to trace the history of ideas, situate them in the social and political context, and explore the linkages they had with language and communications. The parameters relating to the articulation and dissemination of ideas, particularly readership and circulation of texts conditioned the ways in which the author and the reader met in a hermeneutic arc within networks of such connection. I relate such mediations to material bases of dissemination of ideas, especially print dynamics, closely connected to the growth of a public sphere or arena (different from classic western civil society or a Habermasian “public sphere”), to trace the audience and reach of the literati’s ideas across the social gradient. Rather than seeing print as a contested terrain between marginal ‘low’ and dominant ‘high’ cultures, I try to show that it (contextually) acted as a linking force and bridge between the two worlds. History, Identity and Jati The social, ideological and material contexts of late nineteenth century Bengal (explored in Chapter I) explain the terms, trajectories and nuances of the literati’s discourse. They act as a causal and analytic prelude to show how older categories were redefined and reoriented, endowing earlier ideas of unity with a coherent and articulate form and weaving them into a discourse. The starting point of this discourse was the discovery of an inextricable link between identity and history. Chapter II of this book studies ways in which this interconnection manifested itself in 84 Social history has been defined in this sense (among other senses) by E.J. Hobsbawm. See Hobsbawm, On History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ), p. .



introduction

the search for an indigenous history which shifted the focus from polity to culture and attachment. Such attempts to re-write history began with corrections of “historical slander” and misrepresentations of the past by foreign, particularly British authors. The urge for self-representation was expressed in histories of Bengal written in the vernacular language. History writing, language and incipient nationalism interlocked in the Bengali literati’s project of an authentic representation of the past. This chapter focuses on the ways in which indigenous history writing represented a break from colonial or ‘western’ historiographic types, while continuing to draw upon certain of their basic tenets. In contradistinction to existing scholarship it questions assumptions about a rupture between pre-colonial and colonial history writing, especially the rigidity of compartmentalising history into () Aryan classical age, () medieval decline, and () present era. On the contrary, it highlights continuities inherent in pre-colonial and colonial forms of history writing. While scholars have drawn attention to the interlocking of myth and fact in ‘colonial’ history writing,85 this issue has not been explored with reference to an indigenous history of culture and attachment. In other words, the intent of this chapter is to explain how myth, epic and legend were oriented to the agenda of samajik history. This ‘new’ history developed through certain formative stages. In content it was different from earlier indigenous chronicles of kings such as Maharaja Krishnachandra Rayasva Charitra () and Rajabali (), and had much to do with intellectual debates about historiography and the impact of histories of the ‘western’ type. The introduction of western education in the s in Bengal, and western historiographic, primarily positivist standards signified a turn towards professionalised accuracy. But the reconstruction of the political history of Bengal proved to be a difficult task because of the absence of reliable empirical sources. The inability to meet western standards led to a rethinking of the past along different lines. The simultaneous need to recreate a jati underlined the importance of providing a cohesive unity to the past. A methodological break, shifting the focus from polity to samaj was a logical aftermath. The ‘new’ methodology, however, drew from the Orientalist tenets in that it strove to salvage and valorise a glorious Hindu heritage. Positivist philosophy also played a role in shaping its aims. History became goal-oriented 85 See Indira Chowdhury, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, ), Chapter II.

introduction



and eager for progress. Its agenda now embraced samajik betterment. The earlier moral tone implicit in the yuga cycles and kingly rights of Rajabali was transmuted through the Positivist prism into a ‘proper’ and ‘approved’ code of conduct posited in the context of individuals forming a ‘better’ society. The ‘new’ history had a crucial and central function. It was a means (as mentioned above) to counter the colonial allegation that Bengalis were a history-less and therefore, identity-less people by forging an empowered identity. The methodological thrust of the indigenous history of culture and attachment to the society opened up a space for prioritising indigenous identity-categories which could provide an imaginative unity with the past. One such category was ‘jati’ which was reconfigured from the middle of the nineteenth century. It came to epitomise a spectrum of concerns and questions relating to identity, which enmeshed with the construction of a Bengali selfhood. This chapter would show that jati was a unique connotative category, and a site emblematising the “uncolonisable”, remoulding, and even contesting colonial sociological strands. As a conceptual site facilitating interaction between multiple forms of identity, jati complicated the question of a simplistic transition from “fuzzy” to “enumerated” identity. While its multifaceted-ness signified diverse castes, sub-castes, tribes, races, ethnic categories and communities (such as Hindus and Muslims), it was also an overarching rubric joining various sub-types. Through such re-configurations of jati, certain types of history and usages of history were shaped, including history of ‘race’, history of heroic ancestors and events, history of religious and cultural entity and history of linguistic groups. Each of these might be seen as contributing to a history-led refinement of the meaning of jati. The multiple positionings of jati vis-à-vis the colonial ruler, neighbouring ethnicities, and the wider notion of the Indian nation, further account for the new significance of history writing. The connotations of jati mentioned above, as well as the ‘new’ meanings of history were envisaged to provide an accommodative rubric and a cultural space that could then effectively deal with the problem of minorities such as ‘lower orders’ and Muslims. Samaj and Perspectives on Unity Jati, linked to quests for an indigenous history was a starting point in the forging of an empowered identity. Its fluidity and overarching connotation could act as a rubric joining sub-types. Despite this inclusive connotation, more effective means to cope with fragmentations were needed.



introduction

The ontology of nationhood was bound up with a world of social values and a normative framework which provided the ideological bond and welding force joining disparate units within and beyond Bengal. This mode of being and becoming inhered in samaj, the central conceptual category for imagining wider unities between the interstices of caste, clan, community, ethnic category and micro-region. Chapter III explores the complex interplay between emerging ideas of jatitva (being and becoming a jati, or the hallmarks of a jati) and samajik itihas. Highlighting relatively unexplored sources such as local genealogies, it seeks to show how premodern and precolonial notions of community consciousness and embedded mentalities helped in the development of unity among diverse groups. Concentrating on etymologies and semantics of samaj, and the sources of samajik history, it argues that cultural Aryanness and dharma (entwined in samaj) opened up a space for including ‘others’ (different castes, sub-castes, ‘lower’ groups, ethnic categories and contextually even communal ‘others’ such as Muslim) within and beyond Bengal. It also focuses on the centrality of dharma as the ideological basis of samaj and as the civilisational differential distinguishing it from European society. Dharma embodied the idea of creating unity, not by suppressing difference (as was supposedly done in the west), but by accepting diverse elements and locating them in a well-ordered scheme that derived its strength from moral principles and regulations. In this scheme, therefore, the self was not arraigned oppositionally against the other; rather, the other was incorporated within the self in a unique relationship. Samaj pivoted around dharma could then provide a means for cutting across barriers of caste, sub-caste and region. Medieval caste samajs, as this study shows, had acted as forums of unity, because a caste samaj of a specific pargana (administrative unit / sub-region) could include men of diverse castes. Sub-regional samajik unity dating back to the fourteenth century served as a backdrop to late nineteenth century identities, and sub-regional histories written during this period drew on such antecedents of unity, seeking bases in myth, Aryan-ness and custom. Changes in the present samaj were related to earlier caste and subregional samajik histories to give new meanings to jati. This chapter analyses the viewpoints of Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Nagendranath Basu and Lalmohan Vidyanidhi among others, writers whose histories of caste and regional samajs demonstrated how past identities were oriented to the present. These histories drew attention to the dual roles: political and social, of kings and of the chiefs of society (of a bygone Bengal),

introduction



demonstrating how society and polity were interpenetrative domains. Social identity, organisation and unity drew upon and were conditioned by political processes. Further, the kings and samajik chiefs of precolonial Bengal and the literati writing in the late colonial period shared common ground insofar as they believed certain customs, social norms, and values as constituting and conditioning unity. Critically exploring such fusions of the past and the present in the imagining of unity, I problematise samajik unity within paradigms of decline and progress, showing that the links between past historical societies and modern samajik unity were neither simple nor continuous. The chapter also sees how past samajs (of particular castes, subcastes and subregions) were microcosms of a wider Bengali samaj. The latter intersected with conceptualisations of an Indian samaj, as the logic of samajik inclusion opened up a space for relating the regional and the national. This issue is contextualised in regard to a crucial interrelated point: whether notions of samajik unity moved beyond the narrow parameters of an upper-caste hierarchy and Brahmanical emphasis to envision a more egalitarian samaj. The limitations of the literati’s outlook are then related to their conception of a samajik decline/progress paradigm that projected samaj over historical eras. From such explorations of origins of samajik decline and ideas of improvement, this study moves on to analyse, in subsequent chapters, how others such as the ‘lower orders’ within Bengal, and the neighbouring ethnicities were accommodated in the literati’s conceptions of a ‘new’ samaj. The following chapters explore how the conceptual framework of unity inhering in samaj was applied to evaluations and interrelations of ‘others’ within and beyond Bengal. Caste, Class and Internal ‘Others’: ‘Lower Orders’ in Bengal These ‘others’ constituted the fragments of the nation: divided along the lines of caste, sub-caste and class. Such fragmentations have been seen as fundamental in considering India and her regions as paradigmatic of division and separatism. Taking the analytic grid of samaj to mediate the fragmentations of caste/sub-caste (explored in Chapter III), as a frame of reference, this chapter relates and applies such dynamics of unity to issues of ‘low’ castes, ‘tribes’, aboriginal groups / adivasis, as well as ‘low’ classes in Bengal. ‘Class’ here is seen not through the Marxian prism of economic division, but in terms of social rank. How did the category of samaj negotiate the shifting social status of traditionally ‘low’ groups to situate them in a discourse on unity? Chapter IV analyses the Bengali literati’s



introduction

discourse on ‘lower orders’ by exploring specific social, intellectual and historical contexts, connecting late nineteenth century articulations to earlier viewpoints in medieval86 and early colonial literature referring to the traditionally excluded ‘lower’ others in Bengal. This approach traces continuities and changes between earlier ideas and their more coherent expressions in the late nineteenth century discourse. It also focuses on subtle differences in the literati’s views, delineating three types of individuals and groups who wrote tracts directly concerned about the ‘lower orders’, and those that referred to them as a marginal theme within the broader issue of the Bengali samaj and jati. Aristocratic, high-caste individuals, less well-known individuals having humbler roots, and lowcaste but educated individuals all wrote about the ‘lower orders’. Rather than concentrating on the movements among ‘lower orders’ to elevate their position through Sanskritisation,87 or on specific caste histories, or on the evolution of caste as a category through precolonial to colonial eras,88 or even on supposedly ‘contrasting’ worlds of elite and folk,89 this study focuses on evaluations of ‘lower orders’ in Bengal during a specific period, through the ideological lens of a particular social group, the literati, engrossed in explaining social realities and identities through samaj. It moves beyond evaluations. It shows how specific aspects of cultural Aryan-ness were deployed and applied to the ‘lower orders’, to include particular groups among them within larger settings of unity. These aspects then provide a comparative index for analysing whether similar aspects (of cultural Aryan-ness) were applied to neighbouring ethnicities and to other Indians to frame an overall classificatory scheme which fed into the framework of samajik unity. In so far as certain groups among the ‘lower orders’ adhered to the cultural norms of Aryanism, they were included at specific (albeit often inferior) levels in the literati’s conception of samaj. Their positions in the samajik hierarchy depended on the degree of absorption of Aryan customs and

86 See Mukundaram, referred to in Promode Lal Paul, The Early History of Eastern India, Volume II (New Delhi: Sharada Prakashan, ), p. . 87 See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, –”, in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi: Manohar, ). 88 Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). 89 Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Street: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull, ).

introduction



practices. Other groups, not sufficiently Hinduised (for instance, tribes such as the Santhals, and the untouchables) were excluded. By exploring such specifics, the chapter argues that colonial sociological dichotomies deployed to fix and freeze such categories were subtly transmuted in the literati’s contextual demarcations/exclusions as well as inclusions of the traditionally excluded. The theme is discussed in regard to a more fundamental question: whether the discourse on samajik unity as applied to the ‘lower orders’ was bounded by a hegemonic high-Hindu, Brahamanical metanarrative. Qualifying models which pose an irreconciliable division between contrasting and opposed social worlds of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ or underscore a de-nuanced Brahmanisation of the framework of caste in Bengal highlighting caste discrimination through an interplay of caste, culture and power,90 the chapter makes the point that there was a tension in the rhetoric of a high-Hindu discourse, and an alternative way of negotiating ‘folk’ voices and cultures, which did much to interrogate the ideology of hierarchy, and facilitate multilayered groundings of identity. Contiguous Ethnicities The negotiation of unities moved beyond intra-regional perspectives toward a reconsideration of affinities between Bengal and her neighbours: the immediately contiguous ethnicities such as the Oriyas, Assamese, and the people of Manipur, Tripura and Cachar. Applying the conceptual models of jati and samaj, the literati debated which groups among the neighbouring ethnicities could be situationally co-opted in larger, more unifying structures of identity. Such co-opting operated and moved through levels of complex oscillations between differentiation, comparison and inclusion. The literati compared their own samaj to that of the neighbouring groups en bloc, as well as applied the model of cultural Aryan-ness to distinct sub-groups within neighbouring populations. The application of these conceptual models served as the backdrop for differentiations of neighbouring groups in terms of jatis and samajs. At one level, the societies of the neighbouring ethnicities were considered inferior because of the absence of the simultaneous growth of a middle class akin to the Bengali madhyabitta who had connections with the colonial

90 See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ).



introduction

authority, belonged to or shared linkages with a landed social group, and formed, in their own eyes an “aristocracy of culture”. Despite such differentiation, the analytic tool of samaj was applied to neighbouring ‘others’ as part of the construction of a wider selfhood which contextually co-opted these others as sub-selves. The specific terms of such inclusion stemmed from debates surrounding language, religious links, customs, manners and sociological affinities between Bengal and her neighbours. In this regard, the chapter sees how such reworkings of cultural markers differed from colonial viewpoints.91 In contrast to the colonial tendency of regarding India as a melange of distinct and de-linked communities, characterised by divisiveness, which persists in postcolonial discourses, I explore how religious affinities were reworked in the sites of pilgrimage and common religious movements in Bengal and contiguous areas, to show that larger frameworks of unity (than that of the locality) already existed in India before the colonial advent. The late colonial discourse built on / transformed these preexisting networks. This chapter also links such debates with the literati’s emphasis on other culturally Aryan traits in neighbouring histories and religions. Especially highlighted was the Hinduisation of foreign, nonHindu groups such as the Ahoms of Assam and their incorporation (at a subordinate level) within the wider concept of the Hindu samaj, an extension of that in Bengal. This study also illuminates how histories (of kings of Bengali origins ruling neighbouring areas) were annexed to the present to explain complex juxtapositions of identity and difference between Bengal and her neighbours. These analytic trajectories attempt to show that the Bengali assessment of neighbouring ethnic groups like the Oriyas and Assamese formed a complex mosaic of attitudes, which were not conditioned by rigid dichotomies. Rather, the boundaries were shifting and fluid because neighbouring others were co-opted and / or excluded situationally. What does emerge, however, was a pattern of cultural unity, explained historically, especially through concepts such as that of Pancha Gour (five Bengals), which was a political entity as well as 91 The Bengali belief in their own linguistic superiority over Oriya and Assamese languages was not matched by a similar colonial conviction. On the contrary, Grierson asserted that Bengali was the sister, not the mother of Oriya and Assamese languages. While Bengalis proudly glorified the Bengali-Sanskrit connection, Grierson held that this linkage had the undesirable consequence of creating a wide gulf between the Bengali literary style and the spoken language. See G.A. Grierson, The Languages of India (Calcutta: Linguistic Survey of India,  reprinted from Government of India Press, ), pp. , , .

introduction



a cultural concept facilitating interconnections between Bengal and the neighbouring regions over centuries. These connections, in conjunction with sociological links, dissolved rigid colonial sociological, cartographic and administrative dichotomies, drawing more fluid and fluctuating geographical and territorial borders to forge a cultural constellation in eastern India. Thus the chapter shifts from ideas about ethnicity as a site of conflict and overtly political / separatist tendencies, and from models which underscore it as constitutive of rigid self / other or ‘us’ / ‘they’ dichotomies.92 Instead, it redefines ethnicity as a site for negotiating differences as well as similarities, underscoring the latter in the delineation of cultural geographies fusing past and present unities. Sub-Regional ‘Essences’ and the Regional Self As identities were not only divided along the lines of caste, class and ethnic category but also in terms of micro-region and locality, sub-regional particularisms or ‘essences’ were critically addressed and problematised in the literati’s discourse on unity. Delving into archives of local / familial histories, genealogical lists and sub-regional dynastic accounts, this chapter applies the model of samaj to micro-level studies through a technique aimed to knit historical processes into a meaningful unfolding of the regional self refined through manifold sub-regional particularisms. The society-polity interconnection and contrast, as well as the theme of cultural Aryan-ness were applied at both sub-regional and panregional (all-Bengal) levels, and local legends relating to origins of specific sub-regional caste groups, were grafted to ‘main’ ones in a discourse, which interestingly blended multiple (non-Aryan and ‘alien’) legacies with ‘mainstream’ Aryan values in the construction of a Bengali regional self. In references and citations of ancient Sanskrit texts, emphasis on the Brahmanical basis of different sub-regional samajs and glorification of Hindu kings, the primacy of cultural Aryanism was apparent. Interestingly, however, oscillations between this predominantly Aryan theme and non-Aryan undertones (noticeable in accounts of local religions and festivals of Bengal) were much more pronounced in this particular theme (sub-regional ‘essences’) of the discourse on identity than in any other. This chapter attempts to situate these complexities within the late nineteenth century perspective of social and cultural realities. Could the

92

See Thomas H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, ).



introduction

literati’s references to non-Aryan and low-caste sub-regional kings, for instance, be related to the waning importance of high birth and the rise in the samajik status of many ‘low’ caste individuals due to the acquisition of wealth and education? This line of analysis shares common ground with the point made in regard to integrations of ‘low’ caste and ‘low’ class elements via a multilayered discourse which cannot simplistically be called a Brahmanical or high-Hindu metanarrative. Such analysis is then related to the literati’s attempts to integrate the sub-regional fragment with a pan-regional historical stream both in idea and in practice. Local histories were supposed to symbolise the jati’s past. Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty in Birbhum Rajbangsha contextualised the issue of Bengali jati as a composite entity within the specific parameters of a quest for a sub-regional and exclusive identity by referring to the heritage of the people of Birbhum.93 Renowned writers such as Nagendranath Basu and Satishchandra Raychaudhuri94 integrated, through their works, a historical and sociological lineage of past sub-regional samajs, transcending local caste and sub-caste barriers, and late nineteenth century social realities of the idea of a wider Bengali samaj. In practice, the literati arranged sub-regional samitis (local platforms for discussion and organisation) which discussed local problems from a wider viewpoint affecting the Bengali jati as a whole. Aligning a universe of ideas to that of social actuality, the chapter explores specific sites of social interaction and platforms of unity among different jatis in specific places of Bengal, particularly local festivals, melas (fairs) and continuing legacies of earlier samajik formations which enmeshed with the world of everyday experiential reality. Tracing the working of local societies (e.g. Barendra Research Society) as well as sub-regional histories seen as emblematising the glory of Bengal as a whole, the chapter seeks to demonstrate that the study of sub-regional fragments formed part of a discourse on a continuous Bengal, connecting the local and the regional as complementary streams in conceptualisations of an overarching idea of a Bengali samaj.

93

See Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty, Birbhum Rajbangsha (Calcutta, ). See Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ) and Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ). Also see Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ). 94

introduction



From Region to Nation: The Idea of India The inclusive and interrelational dynamic between a regional selfhood and contiguous ethnicities was projected at a higher plane, which applied the idea of samaj to conceptualise a pan-Indian unity. Chapter VII traces, how, despite internal contestation and fragmentation, the transition from region to nation occurred at specific interrelated analytic levels. How did samaj rework an idea of India, which despite being shot through with fragmentations, forge unity in contention with, and alongside division? Taking the society-polity connection as a reference frame, this chapter considers how samaj as a focus of outwardly-radiating familial linkages, facilitating interactions between traditional loyalties and the individualistic and associational sentiments of a “new circle of society” mediated relations between different groups. This is juxtaposed to a location of history-refined identities in twin contexts of Bengal and India, connecting what it was to be a Bengali with the unfolding of the idea of India and Indian-ness. The literati connected Bengali and Bharatbarshiya samajs in a way which blurred boundaries between the two. In many late nineteenth century tracts on history no clear distinction was forged between the terms ‘Bengali samaj’ and ‘Bharatbarshiya (Indian) samaj’.95 These analytic trajectories intersected within the framework / theme of an ‘Aryan’ India which negotiated obstacles to integrations of regionnation, and of diverse groups. In equations of ‘Aryan’ with ‘Bengali’ and ‘Hindu’, the conceptual shift from Aryan ‘race’ to ‘culture’ (implicit in samaj) provided scope for including non-Aryans, lower orders, and contextually, even communal ‘others’ of the different regions of India. Crucial in such imaginings of unity was a history of patriotism linking Bengal and India in a common heritage of heroism. This particular brand of patriotism was conceived as the outgrowth of domestic and familial feeling, and was located within a tradition of samajik and community consciousness. Examples of valour (including nonphysical or moral courage) in Bengal and other parts of India were fitted into a common heroic heritage: Bengalis were considered co-sharers of a legendary heroic past along with traditionally ‘valiant’ races such as the Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs. The emphasis on Aryan courage, 95 In his appeal for rescuing a fallen civilisation, the author Nandamohan Chattopadhyay addressed the Bharatbashis (people of India). See Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj (Calcutta, ), p. .



introduction

traditionally the preserve of Marathas, Rajputs and Sikhs connected Bengali identity with the broader stream of a heroic Indian identity. At the same time it broke the colonial stereotype of the ‘weak’ and ‘effeminate’ Bengali through assertions of valour on the part of Bengalis such as Sitaram Ray of Jessore. Thirdly, it connected the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ within the jati, because the theme of courage was posited in regard to ‘lower orders’ too. While existing literature has regarded Bengal’s construction of a ‘virile’ history96 principally as a reactive move to counter the colonial slur of effeminacy, seeing it as part of a predominantly “Hindu discourse”, what remains elided are specific nuances and inflections embedded in the Bengali discourse on an Aryan India. The discourse shifted from colonial viewpoints97 in ways which underscored the recasting of ‘Aryan’ in a mould of culture, thereby shifting from the racial/gendered discourse on colonial masculinity versus colonised (Bengali) effeminacy,98 and reflected multiple strands which created tensions in the Hindu rhetoric. The glorification of a heroic Aryan past in which Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs had been the main participants, and of which Bengalis were cosharers, disregarded the views of colonial ethnographers which alleged the ‘low’ racial origin of the Marathas.99 So the notion of Aryan-ness that was extended to the Rajputs, Marathas and the Sikhs (specially the two latter groups), ironically, had little to do with upper-caste Hindu society in their immediate contexts. The dynamics of the discourse on an ‘Aryan’ India connecting the region to the nation constituted an analytic reference point for delineations of desh/ swadesh/ janmabhoomi (province/ region/ country). I explore the limits and meanings of desh in the nationalist vocabulary, to uncover the ways in which the historical-geographical entity or idea of India unfolded through deployment of imageries and metaphors, as

96

Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and the Virile History. The valorisation of the Rajput heroes’ ideals of nyaya (justice/fairplay) and dharma (adherence to religion and morality) as constituting the core of Aryan courage implied an equation between Rajputs and Aryans. But colonial discourse held that all Rajputs were not of pure Aryan blood. See H.H. Risley, The People of India (London: Thacker, Spink and Co., ), p. . 98 Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century. 99 See H.H. Risley, The People of India, p. . Marathas were not included in the IndoAryan group. They were Scytho-Dravidians. Interestingly, in the s, during the time of the Maratha invasion of Bengal, they were called Borgis (marauding plunderers who extorted revenue). 97

introduction



well as through actual processes of travel, pilgrimage and residence (outside Bengal). In this regard, I explore how late nineteenth century ideas of nationhood, in reality and in imagery, differed from earlier idealisations of the motherland which were essentially religious. The conception of nationhood through the imagery of Banga Mata (Bengal conceived as motherland) and Bharat Mata (Bharat or India as motherland), as also Janmabhoomi (land of birth) was qualitatively different from earlier images. The literati negotiated the problem of integrating the region to the nation by a new viewpoint: the unique and ‘different’ dimensions of the region would provide unique facets to the idea of nationhood, and a multidimensional scheme of unity would endow Indian-ness with an essential uniqueness born of diversity. The unfolding of concept of desh is linked to earlier genealogies of the mythical Bharatbarsha, and the territorial Hindustan, and situated within the wider theme of an Aryan India. This deployment of ‘virtual Aryan’ to negotiate complex, conflicting sets of loyalties opened a space for multilayered groundings of identity transcending the narrow limits of a ‘hegemonic’ discourse, and leaving legacies for dealing with the postcolonial predicament of fragmented identities.

chapter one NATIONALIST IDEOLOGUES, IDEAS AND THEIR DISSEMINATION

The discourse on nationhood woven around samaj developed in a specific socio-cultural climate and was conditioned by particular ideological and material contexts. It comprised a set of ideas, beliefs and tenets, which were articulated by a specific social and intellectual group: the western educated, mainly high caste, professional literati. The history of nationalism, it has been said, is as much a history of its interlocutors as of the ideology and movement itself.1 The remark holds true to a deeper extent in the case of cultural nationhood, which is a matter of being and becoming, and is implicated in ideologies, beliefs, social origins and a pattern of living and interacting among the articulators of the discourse. Their way of life and internal society form a microcosm of the normative social/cultural mould or pattern, which was prioritised in their vision of nationhood seen through the prism of samaj. The story of nationhood must therefore begin by setting the history of the development of ideas about an empowered identity within the social contexts of the literati’s own internal samaj (their social world). As samaj was the conceptual tool for envisioning nationhood, the dynamics of this internal samaj were crucial in the conceptualisaton of wider unities. Who were to be included within, or excluded from a wider, re-imagined samaj approximating the nation? The Bengali intelligentsia attempted to rethink the components of what they considered to be their ‘own’ samaj, as well as elements outside this samaj. The social changes within the literati’s own samaj accelerated the quest for identity along specific lines. Simultaneously, the colonial presence and allegations that Bengalis were a historyless and identity-less people underscored the need for a reinvention of the indigenous, and the forging of an empowered identity. The particular ways in which this occurred stemmed from the changing and shifting parameters of the literati’s own samaj. Inclusions and exclusions, worked

1 See Anthony D. Smith, “Nationalism and the Historians”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ), p. .



chapter one

out on the basis of social and cultural parameters (reflecting changes in the literati’s samaj) therefore conditioned the ontology of being and becoming a nation in the mind of the Bengali intelligentsia. A historicist perspective delving the social parameters underlying the discourse is used to explain its main terms and trajectories, linking social foundations and beliefs to practice, or to the world of everyday experiential realities (samaj-in-practice). The theoretical stance fuses methodologies of social and intellectual histories to trace finer interconnections at social and ideological levels to explain the roots of the literati’s beliefs and ideas, and the ways in which the latter were disseminated. The perspective of intellectual history involves the evaluation of the literati’s ideas (including those of less well-known personalities) and situating them in the social and political context. The attempt to trace the history of their thoughts and ideas would involve an exploration of the linkages they had with language and communications. It would imply a careful reading of the texts so as to discover what was left unsaid, and the stresses and silences of these works would form the basis for envisioning the intellectual world of the Bengali elite. The trajectory of intellectual history is conjoined to social history perspectives, exploring the world of the literati, and the ways in which this world conditioned their conceptions of social ‘others’ who were to be co-opted / excluded. The melding of intellectual and social history perspectives problematises the relation between text on the one hand, and belief and practice on the other. In other words how can one account for the transition from ideas expressed in a text, to idea-in-practice? This chapter attempts to explore how this happened.2 The perspective delineated above would help in tracing the springs and dynamics of authorial intention, as well as the audience and reach of their 2 For instance, the idea of the primacy of Sanskrit and of its connection with Bengali expressed in texts such as Rajnarain Basu’s Anusthan Patra and in various articles in the Brahmo-based journals, Aryadarshan and Nabya Bharat, became a belief and practice through specific means. Societies such as Banga Bhashanushilan Samiti and the Medinipur Sabha drew on texts to promote the enrichment of Bengali. The spread of ideas expressed in texts through such organisations helped in their crystallisation as group belief and practice. The prose of Rammohun Roy, Vidyasagar and Bankimchandra elevated Bengali, making it part of a linguistic agenda interlocking with jatitva expressed in itihas written in Bengali. Similarly the idea of certain customs, manners and conduct as constituting the core of cultural Aryanism expressed in texts such as Rajnarain Basu’s Se Kal ar E Kal (Calcutta, ), gained currency in the realm of samajik practice. Shibnath Shastri described how such norms became a part of everyday life.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



ideas. This chapter endeavours to explore the social world and ideological moorings of the literati to trace why certain ideas about nationhood couched in the language of samaj emerged among them, address the issue of agency of the colonial intelligentsia and trace ideological rendezvous. Given the differences in the social composition of the literati, and their subtly different ideological affiliations, how do we explain and map areas of consensus, especially in regard to the formulation of a set of ideas which were woven into a discourse on nationhood? How do we explain the crystallisation of a group of nationalist ‘ideologues’, who were committed to the awakening of a collective sense of ‘we’ within and beyond Bengal? This section argues that though the literati formed an internally differentiated group (having variations of sub-caste, familial roots and positions in the social nexus) there were areas of consensus and intersections of opinion. The mapping of such ideological rendezvous implies enquiries into roots of belief, and into bonds cutting across social layers. The main intent here is to show that though there were subtle shades of difference of opinion (due to variations in familial background, upbringing, local influences, and ideological loyalties) the literati shared common ground so far as the main aspects of the discourse were concerned. Second, it aims to see how the literati’s ideas were disseminated through an analysis of print technologies in late colonial Bengal. I focus on ways of articulations of ideas in () books and textbooks, () tracts and pamphlets, () newspapers and periodicals, () historical novels and () voluntary organisations such as regional historical societies, and link them to the dynamics of ownership and control of presses, and the clientele and readership of the newspapers and periodicals. As a prelude to the exploration of the social world of the literati, I briefly relate the nineteenth century context to the analytic mould of uncovering the dynamics of cultural nationhood as they evolved via a process of continuity through change. The redefinition of the Bengali self in the second half of the nineteenth century was crucially related to the influences emanating from the specific social and political realities of the colonial situation. As explained in the Introduction, the s constituted a crucial moment in the self-evaluative odyssey of the Bengali literati. Earlier events also accelerated the urge for self-definition. The Mutiny-Rebellion of  led to a major rethinking of colonial policy and underlined the importance of Calcutta as the administrative capital. In the same year, the foundation of Calcutta University was a milestone in the history of education in Bengal. The world of the Bengali literati, their position within their own samaj, and in the wider arena



chapter one

of the colonial situation underwent significant changes in this era.3 The relationship between the ruler and the ruled was conditioned by antagonisms in the wake of the Black Acts () and the Ilbert Bill Controversy (). These conditioned the mental universe of the literati which was also influenced by intellectual trends, ideologies and new creeds emerging as an aftermath of interaction between the western impact, education and indigenous tradition. The concatenation of these circumstances constituted an evolving context moulding ‘new’ ways of thinking about identity, and providing a reference for shifts in attitudes. The reinvention of the indigenous, however, cannot simply and solely be related to the effects and influences of the late colonial situation; it needs to be located within a much longer historical tradition of social realities in Bengal. The discourse on identity was rooted in a past tradition as well as grounded in contemporary circumstances. To stress this is not to deny the difference of late nineteenth century articulations of cultural nationhood from earlier inchoate ideas of unity. The major distinction lay in the mode of articulation and dissemination of these ideas to various social segments in Bengal. Identity, articulated in a multilayered discourse on jati, found a concrete expression in the speeches of the convenors and protagonists of the Hindu Mela, as well as in tracts, pamphlets, articles in periodicals and newspapers, personal biographies, autobiographies and memoirs of the literati.

The Social World of the Literati: Composition and Internal Connections The literati as a social and intellectual group crystallised during the course of the nineteenth century as a result of specific concatenations between material, economic, and social changes from the second decade of the century. The introduction of western education, employment under the colonial raj, shifting patterns of social mobility, the emergence of a new landed aristocracy, acquisition of wealth through the taking up of 3 I have discussed in greater detail, in the Introduction, the various catalytic factors that accelerated the urge for self-definition. The organisational network of the Hindu Mela, and the aims and aspirations of its protagonists form a part of this discussion. For post- changes in the colonial situation, and resultant effects on bhadralok mentality, see John Mc Guire, The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, – (Canberra: Australian National University, ), Introduction.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



professions, and travel within and beyond India conditioned their economic, intellectual and social pre-eminence, and shaped their social and mental universe. The s, in particular, witnessed the crystallisation of the ‘literati’ as an internally connected, conscious, social and intellectual group. Their consciousness of themselves as an “aristocracy of culture” was underscored by the concrete beginnings of cultural nationhood evident in the agenda of the Hindu Mela () and its conjunction to an indigenous history of culture and attachment to the social collectivity. The formation and composition of the society of the literati was of crucial significance in this search for a redefined identity. Mainly drawn from the high-caste, professional, western-educated sections of Bengali society, the literati formed a select samaj in Bengal. Though the generic term ‘literati’ or more specifically, the madhyabitta sreni (middle class) has been used to denote the framers of the discourse, in reality they encompassed a multilayered social group. Sumit Sarkar has drawn attention to the changing multilayered nature of madhyabitta society, and argued that internal differentiation was as true as the permeability of borders. The madhyabitta literati included small landholders, teachers, native doctors, journalists and writers.4 Drawing attention to the multilayered character of this group, Sarkar has also mentioned a category below that of the madhyabitta, the “daridra athacha bhadra lok” (poor but respectable folk).5 Though the term madhyabitta has been broadly equated with ‘literati’ in this study, it must be remembered that ‘literati’ intersected with categories such as ‘elite’ and ‘bhadralok’. ‘Elite’ was a sub-group within ‘bhadralok’ and both these categories could be subsumed under the rubric of ‘literati’. John Mc Guire has argued that the bhadralok comprised a respectable social group, mainly Hindu Bengali, embodying changing sets of social relationships. They included the rentier aristocracy or abhijat, and the madhyabitta.6 Certain common causative factors and material conditions contributed to the formation of this group as a whole, but there were internal differences on the basis of subtly different levels of social, economic, educational or professional criteria, which also contextually intersected and overlapped. This multilayered group included the comprador-rajas (men who had risen to riches

4 See Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 5 Ibid., p. . 6 For details, see John Mc Guire, The Making of the Colonial Mind, pp. , .



chapter one

through association with the English East India Company),7 aristocratic landlord families (abhijat), nouveaux riches landowners who were also editors of periodicals, professionals such as lawyers and college professors, and western-educated individuals connected in varying capacities with the colonial government. The objective here is to mediate between the multiple layers which comprised the literati, focus on intersections between ‘elite’, ‘bhadralok’, ‘abhijat’ (high born) and the ‘literati’, and see how, despite subtle differences in social origin, familial background and caste and sub-caste affiliation, certain common ideological factors and forces formed an analytic framework for explaining interconnections among the different sections of the literati. A social cross-section of the literati engaged in questions of identity reveals that the majority of them belonged to the higher castes of Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha. Comprising the economic upper crust were the comprador-rajas, the old landed aristocracy including local kings of specific areas of Bengal such as Burdwan and Dinajpur, and relatively new landed families and zamindars. The professional (middle class) section included an overwhelming majority of western-educated lawyers, doctors, school and college teachers, professors and journalists. Though subtly different in background, most of writers were upper caste men, either belonging to or having connection with the landed aristocracy. A set of attitudes and beliefs, deriving from an inherited tradition interacted with their roles/ideational patterns emanating from their employment as professionals, and links with the colonial authority. As James Long pointed out: Bengali authors belong chiefly to the Brahman and Kayastha castes, though one of the most learned Sanskrit and Bengali authors of the day—Raja Radha Kanta Dey [Deb] is a Shudra. Nilmoni Basak is also a Shudra.8

Rajendralal Mitra, renowned for his works on archaeology and history, was born into an ancient, aristocratic Kulin Kayastha family. It was believed that his ancestor, Kalidas Mitra, was closely associated with the five legendary Kayasthas supposedly brought from Kanauj by Adisur.9 7 The term “comprador-rajas” has been used by Pradip Sinha. See Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma KLM, ), pp. –. This has been mentioned in Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 8 James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta, ), pp. xvi–xvii. 9 Adisur was a legendary Sena king of Bengal who was supposed to have invited five Brahmans from Kanauj to Bengal. With them came five Kayastha attendants. This legend was fitted into a quasi-historical, sociological narrative of Bengal and deployed to explain

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



Raja Digambar Mitra of Jhamapukur, Calcutta, was connected with this family. Ramchandra Mitra, another illustrious member of this family, was the dewan of the Nawab of Murshidabad. Pitambar Mitra, also of this family, acquired the title of Raja Bahadur in the durbar of Delhi.10 Dvijendralal Ray, the famous Bengali composer of many patriotic songs and poems, was the son of Kartikeyachandra Ray, dewan of the Maharaja of Krishnanagar. Their family was that of “Chakraborty dewan” and was an institution in itself in Krishnanagar samaj.11 The above illustrations reveal that the literati, though a multilayered group, were internally connected through specific social linkages and mutual help facilitating the forging of an empowered identity through a rethinking of samajik history. Links and bonds between different sections of the literati were cemented by the active help and participation of local aristocrats. They helped the middle class literati in their efforts to re-write the samajik history of Bengal. The Maharaj Bahadur of Dinajpur gave invaluable manuscripts to Nagendranath Basu,12 which helped him in reconstructing the history of the Uttarrarhiya Kayasthas (a sub-caste of Bengal). Thus local rajas and zamindars participated in, and often led projects of jatiya regeneration. Kamalkrishna Bahadur and Kalikrishna Bahadur of the Shobhabazar royal family established the Dharmarakhhini Sabha, whose meetings were held in the house of Khelatchandra Ghosh, one of the wealthy aristocrats of Calcutta. Landed families were also closely associated with Nabagopal Mitra’s Jatiya Sabha.13 Kedarnath Majumder, member of the Royal Asiatic Society, was helped by Dharanikanta Lahiri Chaudhuri, a landed aristocrat of Kalipur, Mymensingh. He procured ancient historical texts and bought them for Jogendranath Gupta.14 Voluntary non-political and cultural organisations which engaged in debates on Bengali identity were formed and strengthened through familial and social linkages. For example, the Tagore family of Jorasanko was closely linked with Nabagopal Mitra and Rajnarain Basu, pioneers of

the realities of caste and sub-caste origins and connections during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 10 Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Bhadra, ), pp. –. 11 Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Dvijendra Rachanabali (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ). 12 Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ), Introduction. 13 Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta, ), p. . 14 Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta ), Introduction.



chapter one

the Hindu Mela. Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan, the editor of Som Prakash was the maternal uncle of Shibnath Shastri, the notable Brahmo leader and social reformer.15 Such links formed a nucleus for establishing networks, circulating pamphlets, and organising forums and platforms. These linkages and networks of mutual collaboration were supplemented by a common involvement with, and participation in a programme of cultural regeneration which gathered momentum from the time of the Hindu Mela. The Tagore family of Jorasanko, pre-eminent among eminent intellectuals who belonged to the abhijat (aristocratic) section, was closely associated with the Hindu Mela. In Jiban Smriti, Rabindranath Tagore reminisced: The Hindu Mela was convened with the help of our family. It was established initially in , and was known as the Chaitra Mela. A periodical was also published in this name. It was edited by Gaganendranath Tagore. Nabagopal Mitra, its associate editor, was the chief organiser of the Hindu Mela. This was the first organised attempt to conceive Bharatbarsha as swadesh. One of my elder brothers composed the patriotic song, ‘Mile Sobe Bharatsantan’ [Unite, all sons of Bharat].16

In fact, involvement of the Tagores with projects of jatiya regeneration predated the Hindu Mela. Jyotirindranath Tagore had been the prime mover in founding the Swadeshikatar Sabha (a forum promoting feelings of oneness and love for swadesh), presided over by Rajnarain Basu. A major participant of the proceedings of this sabha was “Brajababu”, the Superintendent of Metropolitan College and a private tutor at the Tagore residence. A ‘madhyabitta’ or middle ranking zamindar also took an active interest in the sabha, and meetings were often held in his farmhouse on the banks of the Ganges.17 The development of a prevalent mentality having certain points of similarity was facilitated by such social interconnections among the renowned families of Calcutta. They served as the basis for a network of relationships, which also helped in disseminating new notions of identity through articles in newspapers, tracts and periodicals. Aristocratic families such as that of the Tagores had intimate links with Rajnarain Basu, Akshoykumar Moitreya, and Rajendralal Mitra—veterans

15 Familial and social linkages often formed the basis of effective organisation. See Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, p. . 16 Rabindranath Tagore, Jiban Smriti, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta: Bisvabharati, ), p. . 17 Ibid., pp. –.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



in rethinking issues of history and identity. Rajendralal Mitra joined hands with Jyotirindranath Tagore in founding the Sarasvat Samaj () for the enrichment and popularisation of the Bengali language. Rabindranath Tagore often met Rajendralal Mitra in the garden of the Court of Wards in Maniktola, Calcutta, and was deeply impressed by his ability to explain intricate historical details in a very simple manner.18 Such interconnections obviously had the effect of linking thought-processes, shades of which were then reflected in the discourse on nationhood.

Dynamisms in the Literati’s Society These interconnections (social, as well as participative and associational) were influenced and strengthened by inner dynamisms in the literati’s samaj, which created shifting, permeating and merging boundaries. The literati were not a static social group. Within their ranks there was sufficient mobility, which merged and differentiated social boundaries over specific periods. Shifts in patterns of social interconnections were crucially related to emerging and transforming indices of social status, and the transition of ‘low’ groups to higher rungs in the ladder of the social hierarchy. S.N. Mukherjee has shown that ‘lower’ groups such as the occupationally low group of textile weavers (the Basaks) now came to be included within the ranks of the bhadralok.19 This period witnessed the waning of caste as the sole marker of social status, and an individual could rise in the social hierarchy by amassing wealth, acquiring education and taking up professions. The changing indices of social status pointed to a society in flux were pre-existing boundaries became more flexible. This accounted for interconnections (at specific levels) between the different sections of the literati. In a more general sense, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the madhyabitta displaced the abhijat from social limelight, eclipsing the latter’s traditional aura. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay welcomed the shift:

18

Ibid., pp. –. For details relating to the role of the modernising elite, and interrelation between bhadralok and elite, see S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 19



chapter one Now the leadership of the samaj has moved from the hands of the landlords to the madhyabitta; this is a sign of change, heralding progress, and is beneficial for the whole community.20

What counted most in this ‘new’ samaj of the madhyabitta, was an individual’s involvement with jatiya itihas (the history of the jati). This was deemed equal in importance to, or more important than high-caste affiliation, English education, Sanskritic learning, employment under the raj, wealth, and professional degrees. The latter were considered indices of social status and passports to elite and respected social circles. But true baraloks (which used to mean great men, and not merely men of wealth), as Romeshchandra Datta pointed out, were those whose endeavour and work left deep imprints in the jatiya itihas of the country, and who were exemplars to future generations. Wealth, education and titles were therefore not the only distinguishing marks of greatness. Romeshchandra emphasised that Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay could be called a baralok in this sense, and such individuals were simultaneously influenced by the specific character of the period in which they were born and did their life work, as also by the strength and uniqueness of their own personalities.21 Similarity of outlook reflected in certain identifiable strands of the discourse can be traced to certain common, broader social factors (despite underlying and internal-social differences) such as the high caste affiliation of most of the authors of the tracts dealing with questions of identity. A survey of the social and educational backgrounds of the authors of such texts shows that the writers were mostly drawn from the western-educated, professional, mainly high caste Bengali literati. Drawn mostly from the English-educated, high caste, upper crust of the society, the literati could not elude the influences emanating from the class dimensions of their social situations. But as the idea of social class/rank itself was reconstituted (due to changing indices of social status described above, and the consequent rise of ‘lower caste’ individuals in the social hierarchy), caste pride intersected with a new conception of culture acquired through education and adherence to social norms. The bhadralok focus of the discourse on identity springs from the latter’s emphasis on a history of culture. The bhadralok/literati were the social 20 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Lord Riponer Utsaber Jama Kharach, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ), p. . 21 Romeshchandra Datta, “Bankimchandra O Adhunik Bangla Sahitya”, Sahitya Parishat Patrika (Sraban, ), reprinted in Nikhil Sen (ed.), Rameshchandra Datta, Prabandha Sankalan (Calcutta: Everest Book House, ), pp. –.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



group at the heart of the intellectual ferment concentrated in Calcutta. Bhadralok predominance is linked to the image of the city as that of the Bengali high caste Hindus in terms of culture, not according to statistics of population and economic success. Moreover, the proportion of Hindu Bengali upper caste bhadralok was higher in Calcutta than in most other parts of Bengal though there was a spilling over of bhadralok culture and of creeds such as Brahmoism to suburban towns along the Hooghly and in eastern Bengal including Bikrampur.22

Other Causative Factors Explaining Intersections of Viewpoints: Colonial Influences and Indigenous Moorings The Bengali literati in the second half of the nineteenth century were caught up in the throes of changes unleashed by the colonial impact. The relationship between the literati and the colonial authority was conditioned by the cultural hegemony of the colonial ruling class. The dissemination of colonial values through powerful legitimising agencies such as voluntary associations and political pressure groups moulded the mentality of a dependent elite. The latter comprised individuals who had absorbed the colonial value system, and were familiar with its underlying organisational principles. They had studied overseas and rejected the orthodoxy of their past. They were deeply involved with the development of colonial institutions such as English education, the press and voluntary associations.23 These influences could not, however, erase the deep-rooted asymmetry between the ruler and the ruled. The colonial predicament complicated the issue of loyalty to the raj, which co-existed with a deep sense of insecurity and sensitivity to subjugation. Relationships in the public domain between the ruler and the ruled, and the literati’s feelings of ambivalence toward the raj were also conditioned by employment patterns. Most individuals among the literati engaged in questions of identity were connected with the colonial authority as government employees. They were also associated with organisations and associations established by official and non-official Englishmen. Rajendralal Mitra was Sahakari Sachib (Associate Secretary) and Librarian of

22

See Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. –. For the mentality of the dependent elite in a colonial situation, see John Mc Guire, The Making of the Colonial Mind, pp. , . 23



chapter one

the Asiatic Society and later became its chairman. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Romeshchandra Datta were employees of the colonial government.24 The middle classes, including western educated professionals such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, government officials and clerks, (not the zamindars)25 were torn between feelings of loyalty and gratitude as beneficiaries of the raj on the one hand, and a deep and burning need for self-expression on the other. They were deeply conscious of their inferiority in employment and the fact that their jobs were often incommensurate to their educational and professional qualifications. In fact, the beneficial effects of the much-vaunted western education came to be doubted too, along with discontent about incommensurate and unrewarding jobs. Rajnarain Basu observed: A lot has been said about the benefits of English education, but no one has written about the evils it has brought . . . blind imitation of the English has derailed social reform . . . It would be no exaggeration to say that selfishness is synonymous with today’s civilisation . . . Europe has so much of commerce and industry: can chakri [clerical jobs] alone support so many bhadralok [respectable people]?26

However, during the s, overt feelings of opposition to colonial rule in the form of associational politics had not crystallised. The discourse on nationhood therefore did not always follow an anti-colonial trajectory; rather it was framed within the parameters of cultural nationhood. Feelings of loyalty to and admiration for the colonial regime were, however, not the same in all contexts and situations. The resultant tensions that made inroads into the inner world of the Bengali intelligentsia generated new currents of consciousness, and an urge to redefine individual and collective identity. The social roots, familial background, and samajik influences relating to individual and group upbringing determined the literati’s evaluation of the colonial situation, and of their own position within it. Though there were obvious inner tensions and divergent attitudes due to subtle variations in such backgrounds, there were some apparently common areas of similarity of origin and education, and of belonging to an overarching network of social and familial groups. The literati were located 24

Ibid., pp. , . See Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 26 Rajnarain Basu, Se Kal ar E Kal (Calcutta, , reprinted ), pp. , , , , quoted in ibid., p. . 25

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



within an upper-caste hierarchy having close ties with aristocratic landlord families. Very often, common rural roots, subsequent residence in urban areas, a set of attitudes deriving from education in English intertwining with an inherited tradition of Sanskritic learning, employment as professionals, and connections with the colonial raj bound individuals and sub-groups among the literati. For instance, Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan, editor of Som Prakash, and author of historical books such as Utkrishta Bangla Bhashay Likhita Bharat Itihas Grantha, born in a family of Dakhyinatya Brahmans in  in Changripota village ( kros east of Calcutta), became professor of Sanskrit grammar in Sanskrit College. His father was a well-known Sanskrit scholar.27 Despite strong anchorage to an inherited tradition of Sanskritic learning, Dwarkanath studied foreign and Indian newspapers, books and government reports.28 Atulchandra Gupta was the son of a Rangpur lawyer. He studied in Rangpur zilla school, and later graduated in English and Philosophy from Calcutta. In  he passed the law examination from Ripon College. He wrote various articles in Sabuj Patra. His tracts on samaj, history and education (specifically, Samaj O Vivaha and Itihaser Mukti),29 though published much later, reflected the viewpoints of a professional, western-educated literati writing at an earlier period. Akshoychandra Chaudhuri who lived in Andul, Howrah, passed the M.A. and B.L. examinations and became an attorney of the Calcutta High Court. Being an M.A. in English Literature, he was well-versed in it. At the same time he was devoted to Vaishnavpadakarta, Kabikankan Mukundaram, Ramprasad, Bharatchandra, Horuthakur, Rambasu, Nidhubabu and Sridhar Kathak who wrote poems and songs about local Bengali legends, and also narrated/recited local myths and historical anecdotes. He wrote many articles in Bangadarshan during the early s.30 Akshoykumar Moitreya, editor of the famous periodical Aitihasik Chitra (), who pioneered a new way of rethinking history, practised in Rajshahi as a lawyer after completing his education. His brilliance in arts and literature, and his eloquence as an orator made him an exceptional personality. His interest in itihas, and his determination to write a ‘true’ history of Bengal reflected a deep love for swadesh (own country) which,

27

Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, pp. –. Ibid., p. . 29 Sourindrakumar Ghosh, Sahityasebak Manjusha, Volume I (Calcutta, ), p. . 30 Rabindranath Tagore, Jiban Smriti, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta: Bisvabharati, ), p. . 28



chapter one

however, coincided with close connections with the colonial authority, from whom he obtained the prestigious C.I.E. title.31 Rajendralal Mitra, closely associated with the Asiatic Society, was deeply influenced by an inherited tradition and Sanskritic learning. Janamejoy, his father, wrote articles and prepared a detailed list of the contents of the eighteen puranas.32 An inherited tradition and Sanskritic learning underpinned ideas about samajik unity that was actually rooted in a long historical legacy. Kartikeyachandra Ray, father of the well-known poet Dvijendralal Ray, was closely associated with the royal family of Krishnanagar. He composed Kshitish Bamsabali Charit and his autobiography or Atmacharit, rich in ingredients of the samajik history of Bengal. The Kshitish Bamsabali Charit was extolled in glowing terms by the Hindoo Patriot, With the glorious exception of Babu Rajendralal Mitra, the writers of our day have not, up to now, turned their attention in this direction . . . We hail Babu Kartikeya Chundra Roy as a pioneer in this unexplored but interesting field. It is very gratifying to find that he has made the best use of the opportunities that his long connection with one of the most ancient and distinguished families of Bengal afforded. The chronicles of the rajahs of Nuddea form an important contribution to the history of Bengal, and on some particular periods of their history they throw a flood of light.33

Nagendranath Basu, the famous social historian, was born in  in Hugli. He was an Archaeological Surveyor of Mayurbhanj, and a member of the Textbook Committee. He acquired the title “Raysaheb”.34 These and other instances reveal that the Bengali literati writing about history in the closing decades of the nineteenth century were an English-educated, professionally-qualified middle class, mainly belonging to higher castes, rooted to traditional moorings of Sanskritic learning and sometimes even influenced by popular historical imagination, myth and legend. The latter often co-existed with knowledge of the English language and admiration for the ‘western’ empiricist type of history-writing. The literati’s situation within the colonial context, admiration for ‘western’ historiographic types, and loyalty to the raj complicated the agenda and expres31 Shashibhushan Bidyalankar, Jiboni Kosh (Calcutta: Debabrata Charabarty, ), pp. –. 32 “Raja Rajendralal Mitrer Jiboni”, Janmabhoomi Part I, Number  (Bhadra, ), pp. –. 33 Hindoo Patriot (October , ), quoted in Dvijendra Rachanabali, Volume I (Calcutta, ), p. . 34 Sourindrakumar Ghosh, Sahityasebak Manjusha (Calcutta, ), p. .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



sion of a ‘new’ history, which adapted in an eclectic mould, indigenous as well as ‘western’ ingredients and traditions. An analysis of the social roots and educational backgrounds of most of the protagonists of the ‘new’ history therefore reveals a knowledge of English, colonial connections and admiration for western learning, co-existing with a simultaneous bonding with an inherited tradition. New creeds that emerged partly as a result of an effort to redefine identity and uproot social evils, influenced by the rationalist and humanist message of the west (for instance, Brahmoism) did not diminish the powerful hold of shastric (pertaining to the shastras or ancient scriptural books including the Vedas, puranas and smritis, written in Sanskrit) prescription and the dictates of Brahmanical religion. Though Rajnarain Basu adopted the Brahmo faith, his mother made him wear pitabastra (yellow sacred cloth) on every birthday. His father was a staunch believer in Vedanta dharma.35 Such upbringing and beliefs often co-existed and overlapped with English education and connections with the colonial authority. Rajnarain reminisced: My father Nanda Kishor Basu learnt English in Rammohun Roy’s school. He did not have a good pronunciation, but he wrote property articles and letters in correct English. When I left college and went to the Bengal Secretary Halliday, who later became Lieutenant Governor, for a job as a Deputy Magistrate, I told him my father’s name and he said—‘That Nanda Kishor who used to write English so well’?36

Employment under the colonial authority, and admiration of a dependent elite for the rulers conflicted with a pride in an indigenous past reinvoked to articulate an empowered identity. These conflicting and complicated streams interacted in the literati’s consciousness, and moulded their ways of rethinking identity. It is undeniable that certain individuals among the literati were more strongly influenced by the force of inherited tradition, adherence to Sanskrit learning, and a conservative Brahmanical way of life. Tapan Raychaudhuri has argued that in such cases (he cites the example of Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay), internal conflict was less evident, even in their expressed views, in tracts and novels. This contrasted with individuals (such as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay)37 in whose families the bindings of tradition and conservatism were loosened due to various reasons, and resulted in deeper conflicts in an “unhappy 35

Rajnarain Basu, Atmajibani (Calcutta, ), pp. ,. Ibid., p. . 37 Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 36



chapter one

consciousness.”38 These differences in the relative influence and effect of an inherited tradition, were however, more crucially reflected in evaluations of the west, and reconsiderations of Europe. They did not create deep fissures within the discourse on samajik identity grounded in reconfigurations of jati. No doubt, there were subtle variations, but broader connecting strands can be discerned to interweave views, perceptions and ideas into a pattern.

Ideological Differences and Areas of Consensus We have seen how viewpoints intersected despite internal social layers among the literati. How do we explain the coalescence of opinion among different sections having different ideological affiliations? Just as there were several social/familial/caste/class (in the sense of rank) layers among the literati, there were also differences in regard to respective adherence to various ideological and intellectual currents. During the first half of the nineteenth century, ideological groups included the ‘orthodox’ Hindu ‘revivalist’,39 conservative section led by Radhakanta Deb of the Shobhabazar royal family. In sharp contrast to the beliefs and practices of the Shobhabazar faction were the ‘radical’ iconoclasts of the Young Bengal movement, the Derozians, swayed by reason and liberty, questioning existing social customs. From the s the rationalist Brahmos guided by reason in their re-interpretation of shastras produced a major ideological upheaval in Bengal. Positivism,40 championed by men such as Jogendranath Ghosh, with its ideology of social gradualism, progress and glorification of the priestly class, had an appeal for Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay.41

38

The words “unhappy consciousness” have been used by Sudipta Kaviraj. See Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ). 39 The use of the term ‘revivalism’ is open to debate. It is controversial whether it is a valid term to explain the intellectual and social trends among a particular section of ‘conservative’ Bengali intellectuals during the second half of the nineteenth century. See Amiya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); and Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, pp. –. 40 Positivism was first introduced in Bengal in . See G.H. Forbes, Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmission and Assimilation of Ideology (Calcutta: Minerva, ). 41 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay was influenced by two schools of social philosophy, Utilitarianism and Positivism. See Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, pp. , .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



The existence of these ideological groups created a space for differences in respective schools of thought, and subtle variations in rethinking identity along trajectories of samajik betterment. Just as differences in schools of thought operated in economic arenas involving for instance, the betterment of the Indian peasantry, ideological differentials moulded different reaction patterns to the existing social and cultural situations. By the s the Positivist disciples of Comte had rejected many features of the established social-religious system.42 But Rajnarain Basu could publicly avow the superiority of Hinduism over all other religions.43 However, differences in thought processes and their reflection in the discourse stemmed more from individual familial background, upbringing, and local and sub-regional influences than from ideological currents and caste situations. Rajnarain Basu and Ramananda Chattopadhyay, both Brahmo intellectuals belonging to the higher castes (Rajnarain was a Kayastha and Ramananda a Brahman), viewed the samaj of the ‘lower orders’ differently because of variations of family background, local influences and personal experiences.44 Again, the difference between ideas of Aryan-ness of the extreme and crude variety championed by Sasadhar Tarkachudamani and Chandranath Basu,45 and the more mellowed versions of Rabindranath Tagore and Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay had much to do with varying familial conditioning, and their situations within an intricate set of individual and personal circumstances, responses to and internalisation of current intellectual debates, and ways of understanding tradition and society. Differences in thought (relating to questions of identity and samaj) due to variations of ideological belief were less deep and irreconciliable than they may seem at a first glance. The same individual/group, admittedly non-conformist, could simultaneously remain rooted or return (at a later period) to the ideological moorings of tradition. The Brahmos remained rooted to the bedrock of Hinduism, and in their advanced years the Derozians retreated from their social utopia and their challenging of Hindu norms to more sedate, traditional moorings. Many individuals, Utilitarians and/or Positivists in their youth, abjured agnosticism and the westernised life-style to rejoice in Hindu rituals and the unrestrained

42

See Ibid., p. . Rajnarain Basu, Atmajibani (Calcutta, ), p. . 44 For details see Chapter IV. 45 Amiya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, pp. , , ; and Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, pp. , , , . 43



chapter one

emotionalism of guru cults.46 As Tapan Raychaudhuri has pointed out, Brahmos, Hindus and Positivists rejected many features of the socioreligious system, and yet proclaimed the superiority of Hinduism. Even among the internally differentiated literati (Brahmo high caste, orthodox high caste, Positivists belonging to the higher castes and rationalist ex-Derozians) common strands of thought emerged from similarity in certain aspects of their outlook (for example, a selective veneration for certain principles of Hinduism). These aspects of their outlook become relevant for understanding the intricacies of the discourse. Often a specific aspect common to creeds otherwise different could act as a bridge for connecting attitudes. The Brahmo and Positivist schools, for instance, both shared a belief in progressivism which was crucially reflected in the literati’s view of a ‘new’ and supposedly ‘better’ samaj. The secular-agnostic trend permeating the ideological environment of the Hindu College mingled with the creed of Nabya Nyaya47 to give rise to a sense of national identity built around the Hindu heritage and social body.48 The emphasis on samaj was also a feature common to intellectuals of different ideological persuations. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay (a conservative and traditional Brahman) and Nabagopal Mitra (a Brahmo, one of the chief protagonists of the Hindu Mela) were both opposed to political democracy. Krishnakumar Mitra (a Brahmo), editor of Sadharani, following Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, considered society rather than the state to be the proper arena for national regeneration. The ideological centrality of dharma in samaj, was agreed upon by various groups and individuals among the literati. As Tapan Raychaudhuri has observed, The emphasis on dharma as the necessary and sufficient basis for political as well as social and personal conduct, central to the arguments of both Bhudev and Bankim, is echoed by other writers as well—most notably the Positivist Jogendranath Ghosh.49

The views of the literati reflected in various tracts, pamphlets, articles and speeches revealed a mentality, which was profoundly conditioned by exposure to western education, and political and social philosophy. Simultaneously, and at a deeper level, it was moulded by more subtle familial and social factors embedded in the literati’s own samaj. These 46 47

See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, p. . Nabya Nyaya was the school of logic developed especially in Nabadvip. See ibid.,

p. . 48 49

Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



factors had a longer lineage, and were deeply anchored in the social and cultural life of the indigenous collectivity over a longue duree. The mentality of the literati in the late nineteenth century social and historical context was connected with earlier notions of community, and patriotic sentiment rooted in a traditional culture and samajik norms. As Rajat Ray has recently argued, Identities are not “created” all of a sudden, nor are communities “imagined” overnight . . . It is not possible to grasp an identity without exploring the mentality in which it is rooted, and the culture in which it has grown . . . There are two distinct historical elements in the formation of the mentality behind nationalism: there is the felt community, the old community of emotion and patriotic sentiment; and there is the modern ideology of the sovereign national state.50

The cultural nationalist milieu of the Hindu Mela did not witness a crystallisation of what Ray calls “the modern ideology of the sovereign national state”, because complex sets of loyalties redefined in a colonial situation, and the lack of associational politics (of the type popularised by the Indian Association of  and the Indian National Congress of ), prioritised cultural nationhood. Rather than posing a sharp divide between this ideology of cultural nationhood and the modern politics of the Congress brand (the era of political nationalism), the aim here is to see how cultural nationhood was a connected stage in the development of an integrated, internally linked notion of the nation evolving over a long period. To trace the intricacies of this development, it is essential to formulate a complex orientation illuminating the subtleties and inflections, the stresses and silences in the literati’s discourse on samajik nationhood. This methodology addresses not only what kind of history, linked to the agenda of nationhood, the literati were writing about, but also why they wrote about it. To understand the intricacies of this why, one has to go into the depths of the various affiliations, and emotional communities that were interlocked in an individual’s existence. A common outlook and response to certain key issues concerning identity is to be traced to a melding between an inherited identity and a common educational background. Recent literature has prioritised education and its handmaiden, reform, as the greatest concern of the coloniser and the colonised, which could make or break the known 50 Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. .



chapter one

universe. Education and culture have been seen as forming the twin explanatory axes of the identity of the burgeoning bhadralok/middle class.51 Culture was not just an opaque concept but encompassed more complex sets of meaning operating in relation to social and economic power. As shown above, the social world of the literati underwent changes in the nineteenth century, when ‘lower’ groups (socially/economically lower, and/or belonging to low castes) could rise in the social hierarchy due to acquisition of wealth, education and taking up professions. In such social reordering, culture also came to be reconstituted according to specific parameters. It was not a “natural attribute of the bhadralok as a social group”52 but a category adapted, adopted and moulded via a recasting of past, enduring norms and their refraction in the changed colonial sociocultural climate. The idea of cultural Aryan-ness (a heritage of the past) was aligned to values emanating from interactions between western education and an inherited tradition. Thus culture was neither a relic of the past, nor an artefact of the present colonial modernity. It was reconstituted and redefined for a specific aim: that of recreating a jati. The mobility of ‘low’ castes to upper rungs of social hierarchy (due to the factors mentioned above) helped comprise a literati adhering to specific cultural norms. But this culture was not sealed off in the world of the literati’s select and elite samaj. As cultural mores, practices, customs varied among the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ of the jati, a common set of norms (enshrined in cultural Aryan-ness) was prioritised as an ideological bridge linking different social and economic elements in specific contexts. Conjoined to the reality of social mobility, this created a space for conceptualising an identity contextually cutting across borders. The ways in which this culture was conceptualised through ideas about identity involved specific ways of interaction between western education and indigenous tradition which are explored below. Even before the formal introduction of western education in Bengal, the interface between the coloniser and colonised was conditioned by indigenous intellectual collaboration with the Orientalists of the Asiatic Society (established in ). As mentioned above, Rajendralal Mitra, a famous archaeologist and historian, was closely associated with the Society. From , political, social and economic considerations prompted

51 Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 52 Ibid., p. .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



the raj to undertake projects that widened such collaboration. The foundation of the Fort William College (to train administrators and make native texts and customs known to them) and the work of the Serampore missionaries led to the publication of works such as Ramram Basu’s Lipimala and Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyay’s Maharaja Krishnachandra Ryasva Charitra. The predominance of Brahman pundits well-versed in Sanskrit, and of Kayastha scholars and professional writers in the production of chronological and biographical works continued later too in the work of the Calcutta School Book Society and the Sanskrit Press. Such beginnings provided a backdrop to the mainly high-caste affiliations of the Bengali literati engaged in questions of identity in the mid and late nineteenth century. The establishment of the Hindu College () and the formal introduction of western education (through Macaulay’s minute of ) were two major turning points in the history of education in Bengal. The Calcutta School Book Society and the School Book Society helped in the production of textbooks on history and other subjects written primarily in English. The scope for independent indigenous thinking in such publications was limited. ‘Western’ intellectual currents and ways of thinking history were no doubt predominant in such works. These also had their impact on the Bengali literati’s ideas about history. The curriculum of the Hindu College included Hume’s History of England, Gibbon’s Roman Empire and Elphinstone’s India.53 The literati were also deeply influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, rationalism and the emphasis on reason, as well as by Positivist philosophy. These intellectual legacies were united with indigenous emphases on shastras (ancient scriptural books including Vedas, smritis and puranas written in Sanskrit) and reassertions of tradition in the ‘modern’ colonial scenario. The Derozian wave of ‘iconoclasm’ occasioned a reversion to tradition and the reinterpretation of shastras in the light of reason. The conjunction of such ideas was symbolised in the development of creeds such as Brahmoism. Rammohun Roy’s reinterpretation of the shastras signalled a turn toward a reassertion of tradition that was evident also in the translations of the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata by Vidyasagar and Debendranath Tagore as part of the agenda of the Tattvabodhini Sabha. Smriti literature (books on dharma or Dharmasamhitas written by Manu and other learned men) found place in the Tattvabodhini Patrika, in

53 Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, ), pp. –.



chapter one

addition to articles on the antiquity of the puranas and debates about their historical truth.54 The foundation of the Tattvabodhini Sabha and the circulation of the Tattvabodhini Patrika () were major milestones in indigenous expressions of identity. The Vernacular Literature Society () and its mouthpiece, the Vividartha Sangraha, also made major contributions in this regard. This provided a background to later assertions that the puranas (ancient literature in Sanskrit containing traditions, myths, moral codes, religious and philosophical principles, and royal genealogies) and the epics contained strands of ‘historical’ truth and to the intertwining of myth and fact in many late nineteenth century tracts on history. The prioritisation of identity built around history also found place in the agenda of the Derozian Society founded in the s. Its forerunners included the Academic Association () and the Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge (). Indigenous thinking on history was reflected in (the Derozian) Krishnamohan Bandyopadhyay’s Nature of Historical Studies and in Pyarichand Mitra’s State of Hindoostan under the Hindoos.55 The preoccupation with history and identity found articulation in Brahmo endeavours as well. Among the writers of the tracts on identity in the late nineteenth century, the Brahmos were predominant. They included intellectual luminaries such as Rajnarain Basu, Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan and Shibnath Shastri. The imagination of history underpinned by ideas about an empowered identity paradigmatically represented the way in which colonial (western education and intellectual currents) and indigenous influences intersected. Delving the dynamics of such interactions I try to show that the indigenous strand and specific sets of attitude and belief deriving from the literati’s social and familial situations were more significant elements in the context of cultural nationhood. The juxtaposition of colonial influence and ‘western’ historical types to an indigenous inherited tradition led to a rethinking of history in an eclectic mould. A complex interplay between the realms of the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’ informed such historical thinking.56 Imaginary history conjured a valiant and heroic past, unbroken by the ruptures of political history and dynastic chronicle. 54

Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . 56 While ‘real’ histories were modelled along the empiricist, positivist, fact-oriented method following the Rankean guideline, ‘imaginary’ histories included historical novels where an imaginary course of events was played out in a dream arena, which drew from myth, legend and popular imagination. 55

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



Drawing from various forms of popular imagination and myths, imaginary history provided a means of breaking from ‘western’ historiographic paradigms, as well as situating a jati in a heroic past. A simultaneous admiration for empirical history following the Rankean guideline, and an indigenous agenda of recreating a jati in a mythic setting often interacted in a manner whereby the same individual wrote both ‘real’ as well as ‘imaginary’ histories, thus connecting the two. Romeshchandra Datta was one of the eminent Bengali intellectuals who did so. A government employee (commissioner), he was conditioned by a certain degree of loyalty to the raj, and deeply influenced by western education and ‘western’ methods of writing history. These influences endowed Romeshchandra’s historical insight with a critical, rationalist, fact-oriented, scientific bent. The latter was apparent in his articles on society and economy.57 He chose to write these ‘real’ histories in English, including articles on ancient Indian civilisation. A strong grounding in English education, employment under the raj, and beliefs about wider dissemination of histories in English explained this endevaour. Lokendranath Palit wrote: “If the mode of teaching history in Bengali was in practice, would not have Romeshchandra written in the Bengali language?”58 The remark seems to point to the predominance and pervasive impact of western education in the lives of the literati, despite a thrust toward the enrichment of vernacular and a significant turn toward histories written in Bengali, considered indispensable for recreating a jati. This interaction between western currents and equally strong or stronger trends in the direction of promotion and popularisation of the Bengali language was evidently a pointer to the way in which the inner universe of the Bengali intelligentsia was being conditioned. Romeshchandra wrote a history of Bengali literature and of the Bengali jati, under a pseudonym in  (The Literature of Bengal). It was ironical that this was written in English in an era of recasting Bengali identity and marking its components, one of which was language. The use of English betrayed an internal world fissured with contradictions, conflicting currents and overlapping sets of loyalties and beliefs. Romeshchandra’s inclination was undoubtedly related to his education in Kumarkhuli and Berhampore schools, his career as a civil servant, and his stay in London, where he 57 Nikhilnath Sen (ed.), Romeshchandra Datta: Prabandha Sankalan (Calcutta: Everest Book House, ), pp. –. 58 Lokendranath Palit, Sadhana, (Magh, ), quoted in ibid., p. .



chapter one

was much helped by Professor Henry Marley of University College, London. It was also due to official and social connections with the raj. His father, Ishanchandra Datta, was a Deputy Collector. He and other “loyal servants” had been invited to the durbar of Sir Frederick Halliday in Berhampore.59 But there were deeper and more poignant elements in the literati’s inner universe. Deeper dimensions of their identity were shaped by specific beliefs of bamsas (ancestral beliefs and codes of familial conduct that had survived through generations), inspirations from contemporary events, literary trends, and eminent personalities. These influenced Romeshchandra deeply, and were the foundation for writing imaginary histories. Since childhood, Romeshchandra had visited with his father many places in Bengal including Birbhum (locally renowned for the valour of the sons of the soil). His mother was very dedicated to Hindu dharma and Romeshchandra had accompanied her in a pilgrimage to Bakresvar.60 A deep love for swadesh mingled with a pride in inherited tradition, indigenous culture and religion. These early experiences and subsequent introspections lent a romantic fascination to the idea of swadesh, imbued with a patriotic and nationalist content. These were odysseys into not only what had been, but also an imaginative dreamarena of what could have been. It was an essential and integral element of recreating a jati by tales of glory and valour in a world different from a contemporary ‘real’ realm where subjugation was an inescapable fact. Inspiration from eminent personalities further deepened such ways of thinking and channelised Romeshchandra’s thoughts toward writing imaginary histories in Bengali. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Bangadarshan was printed in a press in Bhabanipore, Calcutta. Romeshchandra went there very frequently and conversed with Bankimchandra about Bengali literature. When Romeshchandra praised Bankimchandra’s novels, the latter said, “If you revere Bengali books so much, why not write in Bengali?” When Romeshchandra replied that he was not confident about the method of doing so, Bankim assured him that there was no fixed method, and the way an “educated man” wrote, itself became a method, and created new modes of expression. Three years later Romeshchandra wrote his first book in Bengali—Bangabijeta. He also composed

59 Romeshchandra Datta, Apan Katha, in Introduction of Nikhilnath Sen, Romeshchandra Datta: Prabandha Sankalan, pp. –. 60 Ibid., p. .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



Madhabikankan, Rajput Jiban Sandhya and Maharashtra Jiban Probhat,61 imaginary histories written in Bengali. Romeshchandra’s Banglar Itihas (A Brief History of Ancient and Modern Bengal for Schools), however, written in Bengali and published in , was not an imaginary history.62 The transition from The Literature of Bengal to history books and romantic novels in Bengali was actually a gradual one, and contained elements of continuity. The primary idea underpinning The Literature of Bengal—that religion and literature served as the cultural reservoirs of the history of Bengal, and that history and literature were interconnected domains—formed the foundation of what was actually a jatiya history of Bengal. The same idea, reflected in a slightly different way, prioritised the use of the Bengali language in tracts on history, and through the network of such organisations as the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, of which Romeshchandra was the first chairman ().63 Romeshchandra was also influenced by Bankimchandra’s earlier articles—A Popular Literature for Bengal () and Bengali Literature (published anonymously in  in Calcutta Review)—both written in English, and by the tracts of Sashichandra Datta (Romeshchandra’s cousin), including Ancient World, Modern World and Bengal, also written in English, and based on a conjunction of history and literature. Bankimchandra’s agenda of rescuing history from misrepresentation by foreigners (articles in Bangadarshan in )64 was also a major formative influence in shaping Romeshchandra’s turning towards indigenous history in the vernacular. Participation in a samajik process of interaction and response, the crucial role of the Bengali language as a component of jatitva, and a romanticisation of swadesh as a utopic space—a creative arena where hopes and dreams could be fulfilled—interlocked in the complex process of recreating a jati. All this controlled the inner workings of the literati’s mind at a deeper, more personal level than their official identities and loyalties to the colonial government. But the two worlds were not entirely segregated. Assimilation and internalisation of western influences on the one hand, and the urge to imagine a jati were interactive domains. Western learning and civilisation had unveiled a new era of reconsideration,

61

Ibid., pp. , , . Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana (reprinted, Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla Academy, ), p. . 63 Ibid., p. . 64 Ibid., pp. –. 62



chapter one

re-imagination and reinvention of the indigenous, processes where samaj, experience and re-writing history became connected. The meeting of the two streams—western influence and indigenous legacy—generated a new ideological basis for reconceptualising samaj and jati. Thus, at one level, there was convergence of the two worlds and a re-creation of the self grounded simultaneously on western impact, and a more deeprooted, indigenous tradition of individual and group identity. It led to a blending of two levels of consciousness, imagination and articulation. Both these levels of consciousness were reflected in the literati’s discourse on nationhood. Imaginary histories (historical novels) were as much inspired and modelled along the lines of Whig histories, as influenced by various forms of popular imagination and the effort to create an unbroken and valiant past for the jati. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Saphal Sapna and Anguriya Binimoy partly drew from the English novel, Romance of History.65 At the same time, the discourse on identity was underpinned by an intricate indigenous pattern of relationships and connections conditioned by traditional values, and codes of social interrelation. History, myth and legend played a crucial role in strengthening internal bonds in a samaj imagined as a community of sentiment. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and Rajnarain Basu went to Allahabad, with the aim of seeing their “fatherland”, Kanauj, because they were deeply impressed by the legend of Adisur, the legendary Sena king who had brought five Brahmans and five Kayasthas from Kanauj to Bengal. These Brahmans and Kayasthas were regarded as the ancestors of the present generations of Brahamans and Kayasthas. The tradition of Adisur was re-invoked through the greater ease of travel, the publicity for Indian geography and chronology, and the changing ideas of what it meant to be ‘Indian’, ‘Bengali’, ‘Hindu’, and ‘Brahman’. These parameters obviously conditioned Rajnarain’s and Bhudeb’s perceptions of regarding themselves as descendants of the legendary Brahmans and Kayasthas of the era of Adisur.66 These feelings were strengthened by deep, emotive connections between ancient and modern Hindu samajs.

65 Pramathanath Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ), Introduction. 66 Ibid.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



The Question of Agency: A Hegemonic Discourse? The analytic lens focusing on the social world and ideological rendezvous of the literati has illuminated the historical basis, moral and intellectual foundations, and the rationale of the discourse. Significantly implicated in this perspective is the question as to whether and how the discourse moved beyond ‘derivative’ frames. How do the contexts explored above explain the issue of agency of the colonial intelligentsia? How far do they help to rescue the voice/voices of colonial middle classes considered to be echoes of dominant western political discourses from the prisonhouse of western Enlightenment?67 The prevailing scholarship has tended to proritise the “middleness of the middle class”68 in addressing the question of social agency of the literati. They were “subordinate” in one relationship (as they were colonised in the political and economic domains by the British), but “dominant” in another—that of assuming the cultural leadership of the colonised people. This mediation has been seen as lying at the heart of the “hegemonic project” of nationalism. I suggest that the construction of ‘hegemonic’ ideologies cannot be seen as being without internal tensions and contradictions. There were multiple layers, trajectories and possibilities which qualified the framing of a supposedly ‘hegemonic’ discourse which culturally dominated the indigenous in specific ways.69 The theoretical stance presupposes an irreconciliable polarity between the worlds of ‘elite’/ ‘high’ and ‘popular’/ ‘folk’, as also 67

Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –, , . 68 See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 69 The main ways in which this domination worked were (according to Partha Chatterjee) appropriation of popular cultures and traditions, and their sanitisation, the classicisation of tradition and the construction of a hegemonic domain of nationalism. See Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, pp. –. The appropriation of the popular elements within a ‘national’ culture occurred in ways which jeopardised the disjunction between an ‘inner’ uncontested cultural space free from the colonial discourse of power, and an ‘outer’ public domain under the sway of modern forms of disciplinary power, where nationalism, even while seeking to assert its difference and independence from western hegemony, inevitably remained trapped in the prison-house of European Enlightenment, and became a derivative discourse. Even in the ‘inner’ free, cultural domain, popular elements were considered “negative” and “uncontrollable”, and these exoticised “others” could only be absorbed after being mediated and transformed through enlightened leadership. The trajectory reflects lineages of the Saidian view of orientalisation of the ‘other’ and the application of the western linear evolutionary model of progress within an inner indigenous cultural domain posited as free from the disciplinary forms of power, which operate only in an ‘outer’ arena.



chapter one

an absorption of the ‘popular’ and the ‘lower’ sections and elements by a hegemonic metanarrative of nationalism. While it is undeniable that the discourse on nationhood was framed in a Hindu rhetoric and could not elude the caste and class dimensions of its articulators, there were internal tensions and multiple strands within it. Eminent intellectuals belonging to high-caste families were convinced that they were best qualified to be the initiators and articulators of the discourse. A realistic integration of the ‘lower orders’ on their own terms did not occur. Rabindranath Tagore was convinced that social leadership needed to belong to individuals such as his cousin brother Ganendranath Tagore, who contributed to programmes of jatiya uplift. His personality and values had a deep and abiding “samajik impact and influence.” He could draw towards himself people from diverse social strata and walks of life, and bind them together.70 To Rabindranath Tagore, Ganendra was among the rare individuals of India whose characters have a special strength and power by virtue of which they became the central force and pivot of a family, an extended circle of relatives, and a village. Rabindranath thought: If such individuals were born in a country where groups or unions are formed for political and commercial purposes, and for the welfare of the people, they would naturally become mass leaders. It is the task of genius and a special flair to plan and establish organisations including a large number of people from different social strata and walks of life. In our country such talent and genius find limited expression within the orbit of a few big families.71

The high-caste aristocratic literati were convinced that they had to undertake the ordering of difference within the ‘new’ samaj, and determine the inclusions and exclusions of specific groups and categories. Sumit Sarkar has pointed out that samaj was all too often conceptualised in Hindu, high-caste gentry, and paternalist terms. In Nababarsha and Brahman (), Rabindranath Tagore spelled out his notion of an ideal Hindu 70 Such personalities had symbolic significance, and provided a nucleus around which movements for jatiya regeneration gathered momentum. Nurtured in a familial atmosphere of literary interest, and a passion for the arts and history, Ganendra was among those who were trying to “welcome the new age in Bengal.” His poems and songs, paintings and drama, ideas about dharma, and love for swadesh, reflected the ideal of jatiyata. Ganendra’s patriotic songs were sung in the Hindu Mela. He was also devoted to the study of the histories of different countries of the world, and translated many foreign histories into Bengali. Rabindranath Tagore, Jiban Smriti, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume , pp. –. 71 Ibid., pp. –.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



samaj, which was explicitly Brahmanical and patriarchal. Brahmanical primacy in samajik remodelling and leadership also underlay Satishchandra Mukherji’s “The Question of Caste” (Dawn, August, ).72 This elite bent was undoubtedly the predominant theme underlying conceptions of samaj. But there were significant pluralities and shifts in the discourse. The same individual often had different reaction patterns. Tagore moved away from his convictions of high-caste leadership of the indigenous society and his paternalist position after .73 There were other exceptions, too, which stemmed from differences in individual and group experiences. For instance, familial atmosphere, upbringing, early formative influences and the impact of local tradition accounted for the differences between the treatment of ‘lower orders’ by Ramananda Chattopadhyay (a Brahman), by Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay (also a Brahman), and by Rajnarain Basu (a Kayastha).74 Moreover, low-caste but educated and ‘cultured’ individuals often wrote about the caste/class group they belonged to, and their voices intersected at specific levels or added to that of the high-caste authors. Relatively low-caste authors writing about low-caste occupational groups often echoed Brahmanical guidelines to change their samaj. Interestingly, however, their very ideas and the particular ways in which they were grounded involved a shift from a unilinear, high Hindu Brahmanical discourse. These pluralities co-existed and intersected with a set of attitudes deriving from a Brahman-centred scheme. The Hindu-Brahmanism of this brand had an inner flexibility, and a cultural, conduct-oriented ethos which accommodated pluralities within its ideological rubric, though it not valorise or prioritise alternative, non-Brahmanical world-views in an unmodified form. The finer nuances must be seen as qualifying, and contextually muting the polarity between ‘high’/ ‘low’. At specific levels, these worlds were joined by sociological bridges, the roles of individuals belonging to multiple layers of the society, and by a discourse on cultural connections and specific levels of interaction which co-existed alongside contending visions, contrasting social worlds, and divisions along lines of class and caste.75 These elements may be seen as qualifying and interrogating the ‘hegemonic’ project of conceptualising the nation. 72 73 74 75

See Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. , –. Ibid., p. . See Chapter IV. The ways in which this happened are dealt with in detail in Chapter IV of this book.



chapter one

Further, the recasting of culture and its yoking to a discourse on nationhood cannot be seen as operating within iconic, divisive frames of inner/cultural and outer/political. The specific ways in which indigenous socio-cultural origins of nationhood were highlighted, and their interactions with colonial influences as well as with political processes and roles (of the articulators) in an ‘outer’ sphere cannot be seen as operating in a sequestered ‘inner’ domain sealed off from political arenas. Rather than seeing the discourse as a journey that begins in an “already sovereign” inner cultural space free from colonial intrusion, the analytic departure here has been to suggest that it was simultaneous to, and intersected with the making of identities in an outer world, making the two domains interpenetrative. Within such contexts of interpenetration, the discourse on nationhood significantly involved the contestation of certain basic colonial tenets (despite other strands of selective adaptation and internalisation), thus qualifying the idea of complete “subordination” operating in a domain under the overwhelming sway of the colonial state, where resistance could only be fleeting, fragmentary and relegated to inner domains sequestered from the modern disciplinary discourses of power. The changing nature of the dialogue between the literati and the colonial raj accounts for the ideological shifts in the texts reflecting the ideas of specific groups and individuals. The same individual had different reaction patterns at different times under different circumstances. The dual interrelated trajectories of interpenetration between inner and outer domains, and shifts from muted and/or derivative discourses must be seen as being intricately bound up with the social world of the literati, their composition as a social class, their ideological affiliations and their multiple roles as ‘nationalist’, writer, professional employee under the colonial authority, and member of political associations. In the light of such reasoning, the dichotomy between the domains of “subordination” and “domination” corresponding to the division between a colonial-influenced/colonised public/political sphere, and an indigenous inner cultural space untouched by the modern influence of disciplinary power seems simplistic.

The Dynamics of Print and the Dissemination of Ideas The history of ideas, explored above, needs to be situated within more material contexts to explore how ideas translated to practice. The conceptualisation of nationhood in terms of samaj implied the imagination

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



of a wider community beyond that of the society of the literati, which linked different sections and groups. The dissemination of the literati’s ideas thus comes into central analytic focus. Social (samajik) interconnections explored above, the impact and reach of organisations such as the Hindu Mela and other associations, and the dynamics of print are to be conjoined to make sense of the ways in which ideas spread and reached wider audiences. The particular conjunction of these forces illuminates the dynamics of a colonial civil society / public sphere in the making. As ‘inner’ cultural bonds, and samajik connections were inextricably intertwined with, and juxtaposed to the forging of identities in the public arena, the domains were interlinked. The colonial civil society in Bengal deviated from classic western models. This section explores such differences, and focuses on: () how ideas were disseminated and imbibed by exploring the contents of tracts, treating them as a site for tracing intertextuality; () the role of Bengali (the language in which tracts concerned with identity were written); () the ownership and control of printing presses; () the worlds of ‘high’ and ‘low’ print; and () the role of other organisations and associations aiding the dissemination of the literati’s ideas. The question engrossing the literati was: How were ideas relating to identity and unity to be instilled in the minds of the different sections/groups (to be included in the collectivity/ jati)? This process of imbibing of the ideas lay at the heart of the ‘education’ of the different sections of the jati, which was considered a necessary prelude for the infusion of oneness across the social and economic gradient. A late nineteenth century Bengali periodical, Nabya Bharat, discussed the issue in detail: Slowly down the generations, certain ingredients and formative elements have entered the veins and inner life of a jati. These ingredients constitute the essential elements of a jati’s education. Every jati has, at the vanguard, a group of intellectuals, who by their talent, experience and brilliance, infuse these essential elements into the heart and soul of the jati, by writing books and pamphlets which convey these ideas. These provide an insight into the jati’s education, but the ideas of the intelligentsia, in all their subtle intricacies, cannot be fathomed by the other sections that also comprise the jati.76

The writers of such articles, conscious of their own superiority as an articulate group, problematised the issue of integration of different sections 76

“Nabya Banga”, article in Nabya Bharat, Volume IV (Sraban, ), p. .



chapter one

and groups by asking how far the masses could imbibe the ideas of the intelligentsia. Despite this limitation, the hope and the agenda that informed the thought-process of the literati are significant. They were convinced that the dissemination of ideas (through print) constituted one of the crucial ways in which the jati could be linked, and sentiments of attachment could be created between unrelated individuals. The recreation of the jati was closely related to the issue of the readership and internalisation of the literati’s ideas. Just as there was consensus and divergence between authors and readers, so, different meanings were read into the texts by different individuals and groups among the literati. Samaj, as an ideological focus of relatedness, welded people through atmiyata.77 Print was seen as a vehicle of transmission and dissemination underpinning, supporting, and supplementing samajik connections by forging connections across social segments. Traditions of unity and interconnections, reoriented in the colonial context were conjoined to, and articulated through public channels of communication (such as print) and sociability. In the west, print-as-commodity by generating wholly new ideas of simultaneity78 changed the appearance and state of the world,79 and earlier sacred community ties were eroded via new associational ties linking a horizontal imagined community. In Bengal, the reorientation of earlier samajik ties and values and their conjoining to print technologies produced a different outer sphere where the imagining of nationhood occurred within subtly different frames.

Tracts and their Contents The emergence and development of print technologies in Bengal was linked with earlier, indigenous modes of dissemination of ideas about identity. Undoubtedly, colonial impact and changing contexts fundamentally altered and aided channels of communication and dissemination. The older lineages persisted, however, as parallel and contextually interrelated currents, and surfaced as ideological strands in the contents 77 Atmiyata meant the notion of familial bonding extended to non-relatives. This has been discussed in Chapter III. 78 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, ), p. . 79 Elizabeth Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Modern Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. , No. , pp. –, mentioned in ibid.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



of the tracts produced during the colonial period. As the notion of identity woven around samaj was intricately bound up with quests for an indigenous history, I explore how tracts written on this subject formed an evolving context and site for the dissemination of ideas about unity from the beginning of the nineteenth century. History writing was central in the late nineteenth century, but interest in a new history began much earlier. The milestones included the foundation of the Asiatic Society in , and the efforts of the Fort William College () in the production of biographical works such as Rajiblochan Mukhopadhayay’s Maharaja Krishnachandra Rayasva Charitra (), and Ramram Basu’s Raja Pratapaditya Charit ().80 There had been other attempts too at writing chronicles of kings, such as Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar’s Rajabali (). Biographies written at a later period included that of Sultan Mahmud, and Nilmoni Basak’s Nabanari. The Calcutta School Book Society (), and the School Book Society helped in the production and circulation of school textbooks including those on history. Interestingly, the history textbooks circulated by the Calcutta School Book Society included not just texts written along ‘European’ rationalist, historiographical lines, but also books combining mythology, Hindu shastra, historical anecdotes and morality. Among works used in Anglo-Vernacular schools were puranas, shastras, the Ramayan, Mahabharat, Chand, Ganga Bhakti, Hindu Darpan Marma by Loknath Bose, Smriti Darpan, Catechism of Hindu Ceremonies and Rituals, Moral Tales in Bhaskar, Gyan Pradeep (included in Vividartha Sangraha),81 Bangladesher Itihas (costing  annas), and Satya Itihas Sar ( annas). These formed the basis of a certain idea of history taught in primary schools, and redefined by the indigenous literati and colonial historians. Through the s and s there was further popularisation of a developing notion of history via textbooks and various other tracts. James Long remarked, A taste for history springing up among a people who have always regarded history as a trifling consequence in a world quickly passing away, is a good sign.82

Colonial influence in history writing continued to some degree, the year  witnessing several translations of European histories including 80

Mentioned in Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath, p. . James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta, ), pp. xxv, xxxii, xli, xliii. 82 Ibid., p. xxii. 81



chapter one

Schmidt’s Grecian History. There were also histories of specific regions and people; three histories of Bengal, eight of India, one of the Punjab, and one of Mahommedanism.83 Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay’s Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas (), a textbook, echoed the colonial division of history into Hindu, Muslim and British periods, though the Muslim period was divided into Pathan (era of the Turkish Sultans) and Mughal eras.84 Colonial influence was apparent too in Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s translation of J.C. Marshman’s History of Bengal, entitled Banglar Itihas (Part III) (). Thus, a certain officially-sponsored idea of history was promoted in schools via textbooks (written by Englishmen), translation of such texts, and other books written by the Bengali literati, strongly influenced by the colonial model of historical periodisation, and the ‘western’, scientific, fact-oriented, historical paradigm. This comprised one of the prisms through which emergent ideas of history were redefined. Yet, even in the late s there were beginnings of a shift from histories grounded on ‘western’ historiographical types, and mere translations of histories written in English.85 Indigenous histories imagined a utopic swadesh (often called Bharatbarsha), with its ancient heritage. Such portrayals found more emphatic articulations in various articles in Hindu Pradarshak () and Bharatbarshiya Arya Patrika (). An article on collective identity in the latter underscored earlier lineages of unity (which were seen as essential for being emulated and continued) such as Aryan dharma underpinning a harmonious social world.86 In a similar vein the periodical Arya Darshan in , extolled a tract called Bharatmata, written in verse form by Kiranchandra Bandopadhyay, on the ground that it aimed to re-kindle the dying embers of a half-forgotten ‘Aryan’ golden age. Seeking to awaken the slumbering spirit of “independence”, this tract equated Bharatbarsha with the homeland of the Aryans. This tract situated nationhood in a heroic historical retrospect and consciously related it to an enduring ideal (that of Bharat Lakshmi or India deified as the Goddess of prosperity), and to the role of the Bengali

83

Ibid. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, th edition, ), p. . This division of the Muslim period into Pathan and Mughal was done by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay also. See Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, pp. –. 85 The quest for an indigenous history has been discussed in Chapter II. 86 Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume I (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 84

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



language (and by implication, expressions in print). The illustration demonstrates a difference from European cases of administrative vernaculars (which predated print and the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century) eroding a sacred imagined community.87 The idea of samaj, a utopic swadesh, ideals of unity linked to the modern development of, and articulation in Bengali (through printed tracts) in a modern, colonial civil society provide an entry-point for seeing how modern languages operating in the site of print acted as a means of articulating earlier traditions. Another continuity surfacing in a modified form was the indigenous method of popularising ancient history. This was evident in the taste for drama, which was revived among educated Hindus. They found that translations of ancient Hindu dramas were better suited to the indigenous population than translations from English plays. The staging of these dramas was arranged and patronised by local aristocrats such as Raja Pratap Singh. A young zamindar, Kaliprasanna Sinha translated Sanskrit works such as Malatimadhava, Vikramorvashi, and Sabitri Satyaban, and distributed them at his own expense.88 The popularisation of ancient Sanskrit dramas in Bengali translation did not emblematise an idea of history based only on an exclusivist, Bengali-Hindu nationalist ideology. More assimilative influences were also evident, thus providing a qualifying note to what have been regarded as the “classicisation of tradition”, the “hegemonic” absorption of “popular” elements, and the failure to induct Islamic cultural currents (primarily classical ones).89 Historical works such as the Tarikh Yusufi, Tarikh Bangla, and Portrait Collection of Muhammed Reza Khan were praised by Hindu School inspectors of the late nineteenth century, including Radhanath Ray Bahadur, the eminent historian Haraprasad Shastri, and Pandit Rajendra Chandra Shastri Ray Bahadur in the Bengali Library Yearly Report () for providing interesting insights into eighteenth-century Bengali samaj, literature, culture and education.90 There were occasional references to Hindu cultural efflorescence and promotion of learning even under Muslim nawabs and a Hindu elite, which formed a composite ruling class.

87 For details as to how this happened in Europe, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. . 88 James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, pp. xxiii, xxiv. 89 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, pp. –. 90 These details were mentioned by Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –.



chapter one

Historical tracts other than textbooks were also published and circulated from the second half of the nineteenth century. These included Akshoykumar Moitreya’s Sirajuddaula (printed in the periodicals, Sadhana in , and in Bharati, and published in ), regional histories containing local myth and legend (e.g. Murshidabader Itihas,  by Nikhilnath Ray), and imaginary histories written by Romeshchandra Datta, Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay and Vidyasagar. Shibnath Shastri’s Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj () was a seminal work on social history. Considered as archetypical and inaugurative of a ‘new’ modernity linked to the idea of urban identity, this tract was actually a pointer to how earlier social ties and lineages fed into constructions of a redefined identity operating in lived-in worlds of social practice and customs. Many key themes and ideas discussed in this work, seen in conjunction (through prisms of intertextuality) with Shastri’s autobiography Atmacharit also show how samajik and familial bonds persisted, and were to an extent underscored in the era of the felt challenge of individualism and the associational ties of a “new circle of society”.

Ownership and Control of Distributing Agencies and Presses The content of the tracts and the social world they reflected are to be related to their production. The amazing reach of the ‘new’ education and dissemination of the ideas of the indigenous literati were facilitated by the vehicle of print, which revolutionised intellectual communication and linked readers of different social cross sections in an ideological and intellectual space. The economics of print and publishing and the control of distributive channels of presses are significant for they reveal the material parameters in which ideas burgeoned, as well as help to track how the multiple, often simultaneous roles of the literati as writer, press owner, an individual connected with specific presses, and editor of periodicals intersected with social and economic processes. I focus on these dynamics to see how early colonial and later influences and trends met and separated with a view to delineating the world of print and its intersection with social processes and interrelations among the literati. During the first half of the nineteenth century, The Calcutta School Book Society was formed as a joint venture of Indians and Europeans with no government aid. It arranged for books to be written, published and supplied free of cost. An article in Samachar Darpan referred to the

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



fact that the Nawab of Lucknow had sent  rupees for the School through a lawyer of the East India Company. The Governor-General Montague, and Tarinicharan Mitraja have arranged that Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar’s son, Ramjoy Tarkalankar succeeds to his father’s place. Babu Umananda Thakur has also become the Society’s chairman.91

The involvement of indigenous aristocrats and Brahman pundits in the work of the Society can be viewed as a continuation of earlier connections of Sanskrit scholars with the textbooks sponsored by the Fort William College. The Sanskrit Press was effectively run by just three men, Madanmohan Tarkalankar, Vidyasagar and Akshoykumar Datta. Writers of books published by it included Carey, Gilchrist, and Debendranath Tagore.92 Writers often combined the roles of printers and publishers. The historian Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay published the periodical Bharat () from Bagbazar Bandhab Path Samaj. It contained many articles on the social history of Bengal. The Bharati was published from the Tagore residence in Jorasanko, and printed in the Calcutta Sucharu Printing Works, Mirzapore.93 The publication of Surabhi (), devoted to the discussion of the samajik condition of Bengal, was a family endeavour of Rajnarain Basu, and was supervised by him.94 The production of the wellknown journal Pradeep was also a family endeavour. Ramananda Chattopadhyay (the editor of Pradeep) was helped by his daughter, Santa Devi, who often read proofs and sent them to the press.95 Similarly the Tattvabodhini Patrika and the Sambad Prabhakar had their own printing presses owned by editors or other patrons. Kaliprasanna Sinha, an eminent Bengali intellectual, purchased a printing press, and donated it to the Tattvabodhini Sabha.96 In practice, therefore, efforts to print and publish tracts and articles in periodicals existed amidst a range of 91

Samachar Darpan, ( October, ), quoted in Sushil Kumar De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century: – (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, ), p. . 92 B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II (New Delhi: National Book Trust, ), pp. –. 93 Ibid., p. . 94 Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume II (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 95 Ramananda Chattopadhyay was the editor of the periodicals, Dasi and Pradeep. That his daughter often read proofs is known from Ramananda Chattopadhyay’s letter to his daughter ( September, ). This letter is among Ramananda Chattopadhyay’s Private Papers preserved in Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi. 96 B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II, p. .



chapter one

familial and social ties. The publishing and circulation of the Tattvabodhini Patrika () were facilitated by links between the Tagores, the authors of articles, and notable intellectuals including Kaliprasanna Sinha. The Hitavadi () was published by its editor, Krishnakamal Bhattacharya, but he was connected with well-known, wealthy families, and his journal depended on the participation of renowned personalities including S.N. Banerjee, Bhupendranath Basu, Janakinath Ghoshal, Nabinchandra Boral (as directors), and Satyendranath, Rabindranath, Dvijendranath, and Gnanendranath Tagore (as shareholders).97 The Som Prakash () was edited by Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan, at his own expense. He also ran the press, which had been established by his father Harachandra Roy in . Similarly, the tri-monthly Aitihashik Chitra () was printed at Bani Press in Rajshahi, the native district of its editor, Akshoykumar Moitreya (though he was not directly associated with its printing and publishing).98 The difficulty of running a mofussil (suburban) press was acknowledged, and this periodical was also printed in the Bharatmihir Press, Calcutta, by Sanyal and Company.99 The Aitihasik Chitra was also printed at the Metcalf Press and the Aitihasik Chitra Karjyaloy (workshop) in  Durgacharan Mitra Street, Calcutta. The journal was published by Upendranath Bhattacharya,100 and aided by historians such as Jogendranath Gupta, an expert on Bengali sub-regional history, and the Jubak Samiti, a local youth organisation of Boidyabati, Hugli. Less well-known individuals having humble roots also became publishers and owned and controlled printing presses. Upendranath Mukhopadhyay who got a mere  rupees per month in a bookseller’s shop, later bought the shop and published Rajbhasha, which was popular in rural and urban areas. He started a printing press, and in August , published Basumati. Gurudas Chatttopadhyay’s building in Cornwallis Street, Calcutta, housed the monthly Bharatbarsha () edited by Jaladhar Sen and Amulyacharan Vidyabhushan.101 These endeavours may be seen as a continuation of an earlier trend in the world of printing in Bengal: printing presses were started by men who wished to make money. Printing in Indian languages was introduced as a colonial instrument, an adjunct to administration and Christian proselytisation.102 In  a 97 98 99 100 101 102

Ibid., p. . Koushiki (), p. . Ibid. Aitihasik Chitra (Phalgun, ), Number . B.S. Kesavan History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II, p. . See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. .

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



printing press was established in Bengal by Charles Wilkins with the help of Panchanan Karmakar.103 The Serampore Mission Press also made significant contributions in the field of printing. The first Bengali newspaper was Samachar Darpan.104 Initially a profit-making concern,105 printing took a non-profit nationalist turn in the s with the publication of Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan’s Som Prakash. Vidyasagar was also connected with its publication. In , this periodical protested against Lytton’s Vernacular Press Act. Thus two strands intertwined, continued and were simultaneous: () the setting up and control of presses and publishing by individuals moved by ideological and ideational factors (such as Ramananda Chattopadhyay); () other individuals who ran presses for commercial purposes, though they too may have been influenced by ideological perspectives, sets of belief and interconnections with authors engaged with questions of identity. Economic, material, social and ideological factors thus intersected in the site of print technologies and the production and circulation of tracts concerned with identity and history.

Circulation of Textbooks, Tracts and Periodicals: Readership and Audience These dynamics of the ownership and control of printing presses were closely related to the issue of circulation of tracts, clientele of newspapers and periodicals, and the ways in which the disseminated ideas were received by audiences, who then rearticulated and translated the ideas to practice. History textbooks circulated by the Calcutta School Book Society were used in English and Bengali primary schools.106 From –, more than one lakh books were sold and distributed among 103

The first major move toward establishing printing presses in Bengal occurred towards the end of the eighteenth century. The efforts of the Serampore Mission are significant in this regard. Printing was started under its auspices more due to circumstantial pressure rather than for the purpose of securing any special advantage. In  the first type foundry was established in Chinsurah. Panchanan Karmakar, closely related to the Serampore Mission was a pioneer in this field. See B.S. Kesavan, The History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume I, p. . 104 See Karkaria, Beginnings of the Press in India (), p. , mentioned in Amulyacharan Vidyabhushan, Banglar Prothom, edited by Atul Sur, and compiled by Sourindra Kumar Ghosh (Calcutta, ). 105 Printing presses were set up by men eager to make profit. The latter included Baboo Ram and Ganga Kishor Bhattacharya, who set up a press in . See Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume I, p. . 106 Ibid., p. .



chapter one

Calcutta schools and mofussils.107 The Society produced sixty history and biography books, most of which were used in Anglo-Vernacular schools and in higher classes of vernacular schools.108 However, the circulation of the textbooks was later limited because it was found that the Society’s books were too expensive, and they were superseded by books produced in connection with the pundits attached to the Sanskrit College. The Sanskrit Press also distributed textbooks, priced cheaper than those of the Calcutta School Book Society. Such textbooks were widely circulated, especially after , when the history of Bengal became part of the curriculum of primary and secondary schools. The well-known textbook, Banglar Itihas (Part III) was published in Siksha Darpan and the Education Gazette (–).109 It is difficult to pinpoint the exact nature and composition of the audience among whom such tracts found currency, because of the indeterminate nature of print and publishing details, and uncertainty about the social composition of those who bought the books. Certain textbooks and books had a limited reach, and we may assume that readership was affected by price, and by subject matter and form (imaginary history/mythic narrative/historical drama/textbook modelled along ‘western’ historiographic lines). Some authors became celebrated, and their works were popularised among social groups and referred to in contemporary periodicals. Nabanari by Nilmoni Basak, reprinted in Calcutta at  Girish Bidyaratna Lane, and published by Shashibhushan Bhattacharya (), was said to be “accepted by all bhadraloks”, despite its author being a Shudra, and became a “textbook of the Hindu College and other schools and colleges of Calcutta, and other cities. Many women also read it.”110 First “corrected” by Vidyasagar, and popularised and circulated among high-caste, elite circles, this book must have had other elements of popular appeal. Possibly, its ‘mythic’ tone, mingled with the ‘historical’ in its narrative biographical form (including the lives of Indian heroines such as the Rani of Jhansi), paved the way for its wide readership. The imaginary histories and novels presumably had a wider accessibility, popularity, and reach, possibly even in less educated circles where history as an academic discipline was not taught. A second area where a wide readership could be charted included the domain of review litera107 108 109 110

Ibid. James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, p. xxiv. Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana, p. . Nilmoni Basak, Nabanari (reprinted Calcutta, ), Introduction.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



ture in periodicals. Certain books were reviewed in contemporary periodicals, a significant way of expanding the bases of dissemination of their key notions, as well as helping to trace the audience through evaluative remarks. The Arya Darshan of Magh (Bengali month)  while discussing Rajani Kanta Gupta’s Shipahi Juddher Itihas (History of the Sepoy War), remarked: Rajani Babu occupies a place of honour among those who are engrossed in the research and writing of India’s history. He is already known to us because of his authorship of Joydeb Charit and other books. The language of this book is sombre and emotional, and infused with the spirit of patriotism.111

The selection of books reviewed in a specific periodical obviously depended on the editor’s discretion and on similarities of outlook between a book, and the periodical’s general spirit, ideological bent and agenda. Arya Darshan () for instance, which had a strong Brahmo base and published various articles on Aryan glory, shared perspectives and insights with Rajanikanta Gupta’s Arya Kirti (). This relates to a further significant point: Did such ideas emanating from key values of an ‘Aryan’/Hindu ethos find little or no resonance or reach among the ‘lower orders’ or non-urban ‘folk’? Another Brahmo-based periodical, Nabya Bharat, bore the stamp of a ‘high’ elite culture in some ways, as did journals such as the Tattvabodhini and Bharati, which were endeavours of aristocratic families. Regarded as a “high-class journal”,112 and devoted to Vedic writings, history, biography, and sketches of Hindu texts, the Tattvabodhini enjoyed a popularity among educated, mainly high-caste Bengalis, with a monthly circulation of  copies.113 The social interconnections between the editor of the Hitavadi, Krishnakamal Bhattacharya and eminent intellectuals, as mentioned above, encouraged the circulation of Hitavadi among more elite circles in Bengal. The Aitihasik Chitra had a limited appeal, even among the elites, though it was helped by the Tagores—Rabindranath Tagore wrote its first introduction (January, ), and the periodical Bharati (published by the Tagores) extolled and highlighted its aims114—and though it was not the mouthpiece of any particular individual or sectarian group. Even when Nikhilnath Ray became its editor, it was not particularly popular. He realised that its limited 111 112 113 114

Arya Darshan (Magh, ), p. . B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II, p. . James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, p. xlii. Koushiki (), p. .



chapter one

circulation was due to the fact that history (as redefined in the periodical) had not become a subject of uniform interest among different sections, especially the ordinary/common people. After becoming the editor of Aitihasik Chitra in , Nikhilnath aimed at popularising the journal by including articles on histories of different places, based on historical information from different sources. These, he surmised, would entertain the ‘common’ people.115 Still, it was only partially successful. Its lack of appeal and its limited circulation were regarded as the outcome of its not having a variety of articles on different subjects (despite Nikhilnath’s attempts to introduce new subjects), and the absence of wealthy patrons interested in the history of Bengal.116 The circulation of most periodicals such as the Som Prakash was limited to primarily an urban clientele. It is difficult to determine whether rural subscribers increased in number even after Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan (its editor) shifted the press to his native village.117 There were, however, efforts to popularise certain journals in rural areas as well. Readers or kathaks were often hired to read out from works on history (itihas), Raghuvamsa, puranas and so on to illiterate people.118 Though many native presses were commercial enterprises,119 they nevertheless helped in the production of numerous tracts and periodicals, and many of these circulated beyond Calcutta. The Vividartha Sangraha (), a monthly illustrated periodical, printed in the Baptist Mission Press and published by the Vernacular Literature Society, issued about  copies, of which nearly  were taken by people in mofussil areas— mostly small zamindars, amlahs of courts, and teachers in vernacular and other schools. The taste of the readers was consulted in selecting the subjects of the articles—antiquities, biography, history, customs, and primar-

115

Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –. 117 Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, pp. –. 118 Referred to in James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, p. xv. 119 In the first half of the nineteenth century, Nilratan Haldar and Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, editors of Bangadoot and Samachar Darpan respectively found the press a profitable commercial enterprise. Similarly, Ganga Kishor Bhattacharya, editor of the Bengal Gazetteer, “conceived the idea of printing works in the current language as a means of acquiring wealth.” These details were mentioned in The Friend of India, Quarterly Series, Second Edition, Volume I (Serampore, ), pp. –. For details relating to the press in Bengal, and how far it was a commercial enterprise, see S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta” in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.) Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 116

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



ily ethnology.120 Another mofussil newspaper was the Rajshahi Samachar ().121 The Palli Bijnan () aimed at drawing in a rural audience, especially the ‘lower orders’ into the orbit of its readership. It contained various articles on concepts of time, itihas, and purabritta.122 The Grambartaprakasika () was started by Harinath Majumdar, a man of intermediate caste. It addressed issues of villagers’ sufferings and local syncretist traditions. A slightly later association with the production and circulation of this periodical on the part of educated, high-caste eminent Bengalis illustrates how individuals of different social sections and layers came together in a common endeavour of dissemination of ideas connected with identity and a linking of rural and urban worlds. Connections were forged in more overt ways. A disquiet among the high-caste, western-educated literati may have led to conscious attempts to popularise low-cost, mass-based journals. Sulabh Samachar, which contained articles on Indian and foreign history and biography, cost only one paisa.123 Another low-cost journal was the weekly Bangabasi (December, ). It was started by Jogendranath Basu and his friend Upendranath Sinha Roy, and its first editor was Gnanendralal Roy, M.A., B.L.124 Run by Brahmans such as Pandit Troilokyanath Bhagavadbhushan, and Panchanan Tarkaratna,125 it revisited questions concerning politics, sociology, and history. It aimed at promoting knowledge among the commonalty. The monthly periodical Hitasadhak (started in February, ) also aimed at drawing in the “common people” within its readership. Edited by Pearycharan Sarkar, who was also an editor of the Education Gazette, the Hitasadhak attempted to reach out to varied audiences, relying on the help of “well-educated, aristocratic individuals”. It observed: If these patriotic aristocrats and professional bhadraloks do not help, our labour would be un-rewarded. The price has been kept as low as possible so that all sections of the Bengali society can read it.126

120 121 122

James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, pp. xlii–xlv. B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II, pp. , . Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume II, pp. –

. 123

Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, p. . Brjendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume II, p. . 125 B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, p. . 126 Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra, – (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 124



chapter one

Thus, there were attempts on the part of the professional, mainly highcaste literati (who were often writers and editors as well as printers and publishers) to popularise their notions of identity and history among an audience spanning a diverse social spectrum. It seems, however, that ‘common people’, ‘lower orders’ and the illiterate sections responded more to the readings of history by kathaks, dramatic exhibitions, as mentioned above, and to historical plays such as the Bharatmata. The Arya Darshan proudly asserted—“The Bharatmata has been enacted twenty times within a year and moved audiences of different social backgrounds.”127 The issue of audience acquires a central focus because the popularisation of periodicals incorporating redefinitions of history and samaj, and making notions of unity flow into widely varying social arenas of Bengal, were integral to the process of imagining nationhood. Reviewing the readership of Bangadarshan (), Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay reflected that he was especially grateful to “ordinary readers” drawn from different parts of Bengal.128 Though the social composition of “ordinary readers” is unclear, the statement implies an attempt to go beyond the boundaries of an aristocratic, high-caste, western-educated, landed and professional class. Bankimchandra was ambivalent, however. Despite his gratitude toward “ordinary readers”, he distinguished between ‘high’ and ‘low’ periodicals and commented that while “high class” vernacular journals and their editors aided Bangadarshan, “low class” ones opposed it. He was also proud that the Indian Observer and the Indian Mirror contributed to the enthusiasm and interest generated by the Bangadarshan.129 ‘High’ and ‘low’ divisions were, however, less complete than they may seem at a first glance. Anindita Ghosh has recently contended that ‘elite’, ‘high’ print culture was keenly contested by commercial, “low life” productions disseminating literary preferences that ran counter to efforts to define distinct boundaries for ‘polite’ and ‘vulgar’. She further argues that the worlds of the ‘polite’ and ‘vulgar’ were not completely separated. Many bhadraloks participated in the production of farces and plays from Bat-tala, the hub of production of cheap tracts seen as emblematising the “low life of literature”. Boundaries of authorship and of social composi127

Arya Darshan (Ashar, ), p. . Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bibidha (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 129 Ibid., p. . 128

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



tion of readership were often congruent; and ‘high’ print culture of the bhadralok/elite world coincided with the “low life of literature”.130 The consumers of the tracts, the farces, and the prints including Ramayan (), Chandimangal, and Annadamangal,131 churned out from Battala Publications did not “necessarily exclude the most exalted among the bhadralok, while the surnames of their authors indicate most to have been upper-caste . . . very often Brahman.”132 Some of the plays and farces produced from Bat-tala were staged, and theatre, including jatras (a folk form of entertainment), had the potential of reaching out to wider audiences from different social groups.133

Voluntary Organisations, Regional Historical Societies and Libraries Voluntary organisations, melas and regional historical societies also united diverse groups by their programmes, speeches and exhibitions. Local history organisations can be traced back at least to , when the Vernacular Literature Society, helped by J. Bethune and J.K. Mukherjee published the illustrated Vividartha Sangraha, which included various articles on archaeology and history. Desirous of encouraging original composition, the Society offered standing prizes of  rupees, one of which was awarded to Rangalal Bandopadhyay, the author of Padmini Upakhyan.134 Regional historical societies helped in the production of regional histories incorporating local historical traditions and details of folk culture. In August , some aristocratic and well-established persons of Murshidabad, including Englishmen, helped to form a sabha in Baharampore College for studies in the history of Murshidabad. The project was 130

For details about non-standard linguistic variants, oral cultures and specific reading practices of audiences in a supposedly contestary arena of ‘low’ print culture, see Anindita Ghosh’s doctoral dissertation, “Literature, Language and Print in Bengal, –” (Cambridge, ), and her book Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ). The phrase, “low life of literature” was used by Robert Darnton in “The High Enlightenment and the Low Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France”, Past and Present, Number  (May, ), quoted by Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 131 B.S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II, pp. –. 132 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 133 Ibid., pp. –. 134 James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government, pp. xix, liv.



chapter one

envisaged by Dinabandhu Sanyal, and inspired Kaliprasanna Bandopadhyay to compose Banglar Itihas, th Century, Nababi Amal. ().135 About a decade earlier, Ramdas Sen had established a regional centre for the investigation of Bengali history in Baharampore. This centre published Ramdas Sen’s Aitihasik Rahashya (three volumes) in .136 Other regional historical societies having a wider network, included the Barendra Research Society of Rajshahi (). Akshoykumar Moitreya and Rajendralal Mitra were closely associated with its work.137 Libraries of renowned intellectuals, local landlords and aristocrats also helped disseminate ideas of itihas. The literati’s concern and sense of urgency in regard to the establishment of these libraries show that they considered them to be not just cultural trophies of an elite world but useful storehouses for different sections of people. Sri Satishchandra, writing to Shibnath Shastri, on  June , lamented: Nothing is being done for the library that is to be established. I had earlier asked whether we can approach Mr. Damodar Gordhadas about this. After donating , rupees to us he has made subsequent donations to other institutes. He could perhaps contribute some money for our library. We can send him a printed appeal with a letter, which I am requesting you to sign as the President.138

These libraries were accessible to regional populations, and they simultaneously drew in the support of eminent Bengali intellectuals.

Conclusion This chapter has critically analysed the springs, dynamics, and processes of dissemination of the literati’s ideas expressed in the discourse on nationhood by relating the intricacies of the social and ideological worlds of the literati to the material contexts of print technologies. It has suggested that reoriented cultural and social values and connections (which 135 Details are available in Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, Banglar Itihas, Nababi Amal (Calcutta, ), p. . 136 See Bimala Prasad Mukherjee in Jagannath Chakraborty (ed.), History: Studies in the Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta: National Council of Education of Bengal, ), p.  for details relating to Aitihasik Rahashya. Details about the regional centre in Baharampore, Aitihasik Rahashya, and the Barendra Research Society have been mentioned by Mriduchhanda Palit in Itihas Chintay Rabindranath, p. . 137 See Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath, pp. –. 138 Private Papers of Shibnath Shastri, obtained from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

nationalist ideologues, ideas and their dissemination



drew upon earlier traditions) informed the ways in which the social and ideological worlds intersected with the emergence and growth of print. Print-culture helped express a developing nexus of interrelationships between individuals, groups and regions in Bengal, facilitated an intertwining of diverse strands and elements, and formed the means of articulation of common memories, details of local inherited tradition, and a partly-imagined heroic and legendary past. These nuances and intricacies mediated the element of modernity implicated in the associational ties of a civil society. In Europe, what made the ‘new’ communities imaginable was a halffortuitous, but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity.139 This lay at the heart of the modern conceptualisation of the nation, and involved the breakdown or dissolution of older bonds operating in the realms of community. In colonial Bengal, an intricate set of social traditions, a reconstitution of culture as an inherited, transforming system or configuration of social values and norms worked in specific ways in the discourse and practice of imagining the nation across social and economic groups, and in relation to social and economic factors. Social interconnections and cultural bridges were aligned to a material world of print where too earlier contents and linkages were reconstituted in a ‘modern’ civil society through the networks and disseminative modes of print and the contents of the tracts. This suggests an element of continuity operating in social, cultural and material spaces. In this interactive arena between traditions, social connections and the associational ties and dynamics fostered by the world of print, the role of the Bengali language had a crucial significance (most tracts concerned with identity were written in Bengali). A conception of nationality grounded in language and culture endows a nation with a peculiar character closely related to its common language.140 The late nineteenth century Bengali quest for an empowered identity linked the promotion of the Bengali language with a recasting of history as a foundation for conceptualising a collective identity. Print languages have been seen

139

Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. , –. This concept of a nation was implicated in the ideas of German writers such as Herder and Fichte. For details see Paul Edwards (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Volume  (New York, London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and the Free Press and Collier Macmillan Publishers, ), p. . 140



chapter one

as laying the foundations of national consciousness by creating unified fields of exchange and communication. The enrichment and promotion of the “print language” Bengali was a complex process in which modes of social communication operating in cultural and familial spaces, as well as endeavours of specific associations and organisations interacted with, and supplemented its reconstitution as a “language of power” in the world of print. These interconnections are crucial in understanding the ways in which authors and audiences interacted. Though significant connections can be traced, it is difficult to fathom the exact ways in which authors and readers met in a “hermeneutical arc”,141 with the features of the text independent of the reader at one end, and the life experiences of the reader at the other. Notwithstanding this limitation, this chapter has tried to trace areas of congruence of ideas reflected in the emergent discourse on samajik identity. By tracing the links between the dual and interrelated worlds of social and ideological connections, and print, it has tried to offer insights into how the discourse attempted to coalesce fragments in a reimagined samaj. The linkages among the jati were incomplete and often ruptured by contextually exclusivist notions, but new ideas of swadesh, Bengal and India crystallised. They were filtered through a grid of samajik perceptions, inherited traditions, and indigenous conceptions the past. Notions of an imagined Indian unity intermeshed with more popular, deep-rooted historical traditions. The latter were reflected in a multitude of regional histories, in a more practical, experiential reality, based on samajik norms, and in perceptions of samaj as it was lived. Such levels of common awareness were made possible by print.

141 This idea was elaborated by Paul Ricoeur in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, edited and translated by J.B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . This has been referred to by Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Fifty Key Thinkers of History (London: Routledge, ), p. .

chapter two RECREATING A JATI

The ideological, social and material settings within which the discourse on nationhood developed provide causative frames of reference for understanding the intricacies of the literati’s ideas about an empowered identity. This implied a nuanced process of self-definition, as well as the conceptualisation of a wider social and cultural universe (connected contextually with political processes) within which diverse groups could be included. The endeavour involved a reconfiguration of terms most directly concerned with, and reflective of identity. Colonial allegations of Bengalis being a history-less people who had never been a nation,1 evolving contexts of colonial sociology, and comparative evaluations of the Bengali self (groups within Bengal) and other Indians accelerated the quest for identity. A reframing of identity which could simultaneously deal with the colonial challenge and stereotyping of the colonised as an identity-less melange of communities devoid of national feeling, as well as with the issue of multiple identities needed to be articulated in an indigenous rhetoric and connotative grid, and situated within longer, historical traditions of identity and lineages of unity in Bengal. Jati2 was a key site around which such ideas about identity came to be woven. This chapter interrogates this conceptual category to demonstrate how its dual meaning of multifacetedness and its overarching nature joining various sub-types was deployed in recasting identities in Bengal and 1 See W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (London: , reprinted, th edition, ; Smith, Elder and Co.), p. . The colonial belief that Bengalis had no history and had never been a nation was strongly challenged. Attempts to counter this allegation formed the basis of the Bengali discourse on identity. 2 Jati was a multidimensional term implying birth, race, caste, sub-caste, tribe and nation. This indigenous term cannot be regarded as a counterpart of the western notion of race /ethnicity in its narrow biological sense because it encompassed a range of meanings. However, race in a wider sense also has multiple meanings, and jati can be linguistically related to genus. Partha Chatterjee has drawn attention to the multiple uses of jati in his article, “The Manifold Uses of Jati” in T.V. Satyamurthy (ed.), Region, Religion, Caste, Gender and Culture in Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ). Existing literature however, eludes the ways in which jati was related to samaj in a historically structured and indexed discourse on cultural nationhood.



chapter two

beyond. As the term could imply both division (multifacetedness) and unity (overarching nature), jati was unique in acting as a site for forging unity alongside, and in contention with bonds of caste, class, clan, microregion and ethnic category. It provides a heuristic field for seeing how interactions between multiple scales of identity were negotiated and mediated by the literati in their discourse on nationhood envisioned through samaj. Before discussing how this happened, I argue that the significance of jati emanated from its inextricable link with quests for an indigenous history. The conscious interplay between identity and history was a crucial starting point and basis for the imagination of wider unties developing within the analytic frame of samaj. This chapter explores how jati was deployed in dual contexts of forging an empowered identity through a quest for a ‘new’ indigenous history, and connecting the multiple meanings of jati to its overarching nature in a discourse seeking to weld diverse groups, and mediate issues of minorities within and beyond Bengal. As mentioned earlier, the relationship between Indians and the British raj underwent changes from the second half of the nineteenth century, which then started governing the inner dynamics of empire. These changes, as well as earlier patterns of interaction between the coloniser and the colonised influenced the ways in which earlier inchoate ideas about identity acquired new forms even while retaining connotative and ideological lineages formed across a longue duree. Official and nonofficial writing, colonial sociology and transformations within the indigenous society and cultural arena opened up a space for the reconfiguration of categories such as ‘caste’, ‘the Indian people’, ‘race’ and the ‘Indian nation’. In Bengal, the quest for a redefinition of the self enmeshed with a cultural nationalist agenda to promote jatiya uplift based on the idea of self-help, which had been popularised since the opening decades of the nineteenth century. More contemporaneously (for purposes of the discourse) self-help was anticipated in the deliberations of the Tattvabodhini Sabha () and in various articles in the Tattvabodhini Patrika (). This chapter studies concrete expressions of cultural identity and notions of unity which set the immediate context and formed an ideational prelude for seeing how ideas about identity articulated through a connection between history and jati came to be lodged within the analytic frame of samaj. The programmatic thrust for this came from the Hindu Mela (started in ). This chapter develops the analysis of such concrete event / agenda-oriented recastings of identity by focusing on the equally important related theme of identity linked to the agenda of a ‘new’ history.

recreating a jati



The quest for identity implicated in the Hindu Mela’s agenda and grounded in relationships between the Bengali literati and other groups within and beyond Bengal, was projected in analyses of the past. The initial impetus for rethinking the past came from colonial history writing and the influence of ‘western’ historiographical types. But this chapter will show that adaptations and selections from the latter intertwined with indigenous forms of popular knowledge, legend and myth in the literati’s redefinition of history related to the overarching theme of jatiya unity. The search for an empowered identity led to introspections about present disunity, and, against a backdrop of the past, the literati attempted to create unities within a fragmented self. This redefined identity in mid and late nineteenth century Bengal was woven around multiple meanings of jati. I aim to relate these trajectories of analysis to historical antecedents of imagining a jati in Bengal (prior to the nineteenth century), and explore the differences between past notions of unity, and late nineteenth century rearticulations of jatitva (sense of being a jati or a collective self). Redefinitions of jati during the latter period were pivoted around the axis of cultural unity, articulated through the organisational network of the Hindu Mela, which sought to promote love and affection among the swajati (own jati), and the progress of the swadesh. The Hindu Mela identified jati as an imagined cultural entity, defining the nation as a cultural unit. The Mela’s aims and organisation were quite different from the associational politics of the Indian National Congress (). Pratulchandra Gupta in the Introduction to Jogeshchandra Bagal’s Hindu Melar Itibritta pointed out: Approximately twenty years after the first convention of the Hindu Mela, the Indian National Congress was formed. There was a clear difference in the attitude and viewpoints of the organisers of the Mela from the tone of the policy of prayer and petition followed by Congress leaders in the years of its inception. The primary reason for this was a pride in swadesh, noticeable especially among such eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore, and other members of the Tagore family.3

The ideological stance and agenda of the Hindu Mela operated in a mould subtly different from C.A. Bayly’s model focusing on the precursors of Indian nationalism: conceptual realms of past patriotisms underpinned by patterns of good governance and ethical conduct, which the

3 Pratulchandra Gupta in the Introduction to Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri, ), p. .



chapter two

associational politics of the Congress brand drew upon and modified.4 Instead of simply linking political nationalism to earlier (precolonial and early colonial) cultural and political of expressions and forms of unity seen as a backdrop and basis of the political discourse and practice of Indian nationalism, I illuminate the intricacies of a parallel, simultaneously existing cultural stream which was contextually more significant than the political, and which was underscored in a discourse framed by a literati having multiple roles (social, cultural and political) within the colonial situation. The particular brand of patriotism which developed within such parameters connected love of the land to the predicament of a ruptured political history, and present (colonial) fragmentations of India. This led to the conceptualisation of the land and its inhabitants as a cultural unit underpinned by the connotative ramifications of jati. In the deliberations of the Hindu Mela, the significance of jati as a cultural unit was especially underlined. The Mela’s agenda of welding diverse jatis in Bengal and in India, and different classes of people, proved difficult to be translated into reality in view of the internal disunity among the Bengalis in particular, and Indians in general. Present disunity posited against the jati’s past explained the connection between identity and history. The re-imagination of the Bengali self, and dreams of future unity therefore coalesced in a quest for history, where the past, present and future of the jati interlocked to give a new expression to notions of identity. History thus became a site for rethinking jati, and bringing the collective self into existence, as has been argued by Sudipta Kaviraj.5 Intersecting loyalties to caste, sub-caste, religious community, professional group and sect need to be evaluated against a historical backdrop which investigated notions of jati and unity in the past. Deep and direct links between history and identity, consciously articulated by the literati well into the first decade of the twentieth century, were continuations of earlier tendencies. In , Saratkumar Ray remarked, “When the inhabitants of a province awaken to a new spirit of unity, they naturally wish to express this feeling in history.”6 4 C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , . 5 Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 6 Saratkumar Ray, “Shibaji O Maratha Jati” (), Introduction, quoted in Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana (reprinted Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla Academy: ), p. .

recreating a jati



What History? Colonial Discourse and its Impact An initial impetus for rethinking history came from colonial views that Bengalis had no history. James Mill’s convictions about the lack of historical sense among Hindus implied the portrayal of a dreaming ‘other’ incapable of writing ‘factual’ history.7 The colonial critique of indigenous historiography underlined the latter’s preoccupation with eulogy, rhetoric and metaphysics, and a lack of interest in documenting particular details.8 The conviction about a lack of historical sense among Indians was shared by W.W. Hunter, who related the absence of historical sense to a lack of nationhood.9 He believed that intellectual and spiritual life in India overwhelmed active and political life. Because of this Hindu society persisted while a Hindu nation did not arise. The Bengali literati, in whole or part, accepted such colonial views. The contention that Bengalis had no history in the Hegelian sense10 because they were dominated by society and religion so as to be incapable of politics, found echoes among the Bengali intelligentsia. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s views provide a good example of how colonial understandings were accepted in part, and then applied to the construction of jati. He agreed that the overwhelming importance attached to daiva (fate/providence) underplayed human endeavour and emphasised afterlife.11 The Bengali intelligentsia not only accepted in part colonial contentions about the lack of history, but also evaluated ‘history’ according to the standards and parameters of western positivist history. From the nineteenth century, the source-critical, scientific, positivist, empiricist historical standards of the Rankean model signified a turn toward professionalised accuracy. History of this variety, as well as other historical traditions—Hegelianism, historicism and social theory, emphasising progress, particularism, and social process—deeply influenced the 7

James Mill, History of British India, Volume I (London: J. Madden, Piper, Stephenson and Spence, ), pp. –. 8 D.P. Chattopadhyaya, “Itihasa, History and Historiography of Civilization” in Chhanda Gupta and D.P. Chattopadhyaya (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond (Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, ), p. . 9 W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. . 10 Hegel’s view of history referred to an individual’s awareness of self in a particular historical moment, as history moves towards a final goal. See The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Volumes III and IV (New York, London: Free Press and Macmillan and Co., ), pp. , –. 11 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ), p. .



chapter two

literati. Such ‘western’ historical standards and methods were applied in the context of Bengal’s history. Ramdas Sen, writing Bharatbarsher Purabritta Samalochan in , admitted, It is generally accepted that India lacks history of the ancient Greek or Roman variety. Hindus are lovers of verse, they have coloured historical events by fancy and supernatural description. It is very difficult to glean the truth from such accounts. Instead of detailed prose accounts, Hindus, to make memorisation easier, have composed abhidhans [vocabularies or dictionaries], chikitsa shastra [tracts on medicine], and history in the form of kavyas and slokas [verse], which lack precision and accuracy.12

Truth, precision and accuracy were evaluated according to positivist standards. Such evaluations of historical truth became quite common, even among eminent intellectuals who sought to outline a ‘new’ indigenous historiography. Rabindranath Tagore debated whether the latter could claim to represent truth, and if so, what kind of truth did it represent? We do not claim that our history is completely true, but that part of itihas which is reliant on human nature or prakriti, and the mental make-up of a people, rather than on irrefutable evidence—in that part we wish to see our swajati’s creative power and essence (srijankartritva).13

Conceptions about the veracity of indigenous reconstructions of the past were conditioned by ‘western’ empiricist fact-centric historiographic parameters. The literati admitted that it was difficult to reconstruct the history of Bengal because of absence of reliable documents and historical evidence. The impasse was sought to be countered in different ways. For instance, Ramgati Nyayratna speculated about the origins of Bengalis and used linguistic evidence, resting on philology a la western forms, The history of ancient Bengal is shrouded in obscurity. It is almost impossible to say when Hindu dharma became a way of life. I think that Hindus are not the original inhabitants of Bengal. Possibly, ancient hill tribes of the area west of Bengal were the original residents. Nor is it easy to say when the Bengali language got its present form, and what its actual roots were. There are many words in which are neither Sanskrit, nor Arabic, nor Parsi, and must have come from the dialect of the ancient non-Hindu inhabitants of Bengal.14

12 13 14

Ramdas Sen, Bharatbarsher Purabritta Samalochan (Calcutta, ), p. . Rabindranath Tagore, Itihas (reprinted Calcutta: Visvabharati, ), p. . Ramgati Nyayratna, Banglar Itihas (Hugli, ), p. .

recreating a jati



Ramgati’s assumption of a continuous Bengal applied the ‘western’ insistence on evidence in a history of ancient origins. Like other accounts of this kind, he wrote about an original people pushed into the hills by invaders, as the Celts had been in Europe, and the adivasis in India by the so-called Aryans. But Ramgati’s account interestingly suggests that these origins do not disappear; they are overlaid by the new, but continue to survive, especially in vocabulary. Simultaneously, he attempts to provide a cohesive unity to Bengal’s past by emphasising an overarching Hindu dharma, that to him characterised a Bengali way of life. The assumption of a continuous Bengal was a necessary pre-requisite for providing an integrative unity to the jati’s past. Re-imagining jati also implied a welding of the whole and the parts, and so a recovery of histories of specific districts and localities in Bengal came to be central. The Aitihasik Chitra pointed out—“Highly educated Bengalis meticulously study the histories of England, France and even America, but know nothing about the past of Birbhum and Bankura.”15 Such viewpoints implicitly affirmed that districts such as Birbhum and Bankura had a history, but this was not studied, or given a systematic form. Attempts to locate vestiges of the jatiya past in regional histories initially encountered a dismal state of affairs because systematic, well-connected, chronicled, eventcentric histories were absent in a dark, forlorn historical landscape, where only a few scattered remains of the past lay like forgotten relics. The predicament was worsened by the fact that European civilisation with its dynamism and message of progress confronted this history-less jati, and underlined the difference between the two.

Search for an Indigenous History Colonial allegations about Bengalis being a history-less people created deep feelings of unease among the literati, and led to introspections about their own past. While colonial views were accepted in part, and western, positivist empiricist methods were admired and emulated, the literati simultaneously sought a ‘new’ meaning of history through a redefinition of what history signified in the indigenous context. The reinvention of an indigenous history adapted ‘western’ historiographical standards and methods within an eclectic mould, that was not, however, 15 “Itihas Sangraha”, Tattvabodhini Patrika, Number  (Bhadra, ), quoted in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra (Calcutta, ), p. .



chapter two

a simple replication of historiography of the ‘western’ type. Some of the assumptions underpinning ideas of self-representation were legacies of Orientalist tenets of Indian cultural value and ideas of a classical golden age.16 These ideas were juxtaposed to James Mill’s convictions about the low place of Indian civilisation.17 Moreover, the downslide of a once-glorious civilisation, regarded as a colonial given, was reviewed and critically assessed in terms of future improvement. ‘Western’ influence was evident in many textbooks written around the s, in which ‘western’ historiographical standards, the western-inspired division of Aryan/non-Aryan, and the periodisation of history into Hindu, Muslim and British continued to hold sway.18 But most of these, as well as other tracts, also contained various strands of popular imagination and folklore, legend, myth and epic. That indigenous history-writing was not a simple uncomplicated derivative of the ‘western’ historiographical type is proven by the fact that though westerninspired divisions and periodisations continued, the history written by colonial authors was not always accepted. Denigration of Hindu glory, or accounts such as that of the conquest of Bengal by seventeen cavalrymen, were dismissed or contested.19 Efforts to reconstruct an indigenous historiography also contained veins of disillusion with the European method. Akshoykumar Moitreya in Gourer Katha remarked that histories of Bengal written by Englishmen were useless for reconstructing the heritage of Gour (the ancient name for Bengal). Brief descriptions and conclusions based on an analysis of architectural remains and epigraphic records did not fill a historical void where detailed, sequential history was missing.20 Intellectuals such as Akshoykumar therefore rethought history within a new framework where an empathetic understanding between a historian and the history of a specific district, province, country, and close connections with, and knowledge of the culture, language and the people of the land, were crucial for a ‘true’ history. The s witnessed a shift from mere translations 16 David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernisation, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. 17 James Mill, History of British India, Volume I (London, , reprinted New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, ), p. . 18 See Nilmoni Basak, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ). 19 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay dismissed accounts of the conquest of Bengal by seventeen cavalrymen as historical slander in “Banglar Kalanka” in Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. . 20 Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. .

recreating a jati



of histories of Bengal written in English. Jibankrishna Chattopadhyay in Bharatbarsher Purabritta () clearly mentioned at the outset that his work was not a mere translation, but embodied a new way of writing history in simple Bengali.21 This empathetic understanding and mental bond between the historian and the history of Bengal, expressed in histories written in the Bengali language, were to be supplemented according to Akshoykumar, by a use of varied sources including chronicled histories of India, such as Kalhan’s Rajtarangini. This, written in verse in , was a chronicle of the kings of Kashmir. It was therefore primarily a political history. Akshoykumar Moitreya’s recommendation of it as a source of itihas proves that despite the centrality of samajik itihas in the literati’s cultural-nationalist agenda, political histories were also considered important. In fact, samaj was never completely de-linked from polity, and references to sources such as the Rajtarangini reveals an eclectic use of indigenous sources, which were often grafted to ideas of history of the ‘western’ type.22 Akshoykumar’s attempts at reconstructing a Bengali past demonstrated a quest for a composite historical legacy that stretched back to a preceding era, and highlighted and unified continuities in past and present attempts to write history. He traced the beginnings of the ‘new’ endeavour to ‘rediscover’ the Bengali past and question some assumptions about it, to occasional writings of individuals, including Muslim authors in the early nineteenth century. Referring to an earlier genre of region-specific history-writing that unveiled the glories of Bengal, he mentioned Saiyad Elahi Baksh Al Husaini Angrejabadi,23 whose vast hand-written manuscripts were invaluable for reconstructing the history of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Bengal. These historiographical viewpoints shaped the organised expression of the literati’s historical consciousness, reflected in Akshoykumar’s trimonthly Aitihasik Chitra, which began circulating from . It agenda included—() translations of travel accounts and histories of India written in different languages, () arriving at newly discovered historical knowledge obtained from investigation and observation, () discussion and criticism of modern histories, and () publishing histories and genealogies of ancient Bengali ruling families (rajbangshas) and zamindari

21

Jibankrishna Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Purabritta (Calcutta, ), Introduc-

tion. 22 23

Moitreya, Gourer Katha, pp. –. Ibid., p. .



chapter two

families.24 Not all these were entirely indigenous in origin as was supposed by the literati; they actually reflected complex modes of selection, internalisation and eclectic adaptation of colonial tenets of historywriting. Whether western standards continued to influence such indigenous historical processes at a more subconscious level, the crucial point was that in their own minds, the literati were confident they were not emulating European modes. Haraprasad Shastri expressed the literati’s belief in their ability to recast their own past: We have to rewrite our history. We cannot continue to read history in the way we have read it so far. We had no history, and Europeans have taught us history. But we cannot listen to them anymore. They do not know all about our country, they have not read all our ancient texts, or mingled with the people of this country.25

This “autonomous assertion”26 captured in Haraprasad Shastri’s words was evident, according to Partha Chatterjee, in the textbooks written in Bengal around the s. To Ranajit Guha, the turning point in the literati’s redefinition of history occurred in the s27 when Bankimchandra’s classic essays in Bangadarshan outlined the parameters of this new quest for an indigenous history, and focused on the refutation of historical slander (kalamka) in a past misrepresented by foreigners. Sumit Sarkar pushes the date of autonomous assertion backwards to the Derozian era (late s and early s), when Hindu cultural glory was celebrated in works such as Pearychand Mitra’s State of Hindoostan under the Hindus.28 Existing literature, however, eludes finer nuances of intersections between jati and history in a cultural-nationalist site. Jati was deployed in a historical arena that rethought itihas by highlighting () history with myth and epic, and () history of culture and attachment. The point of departure from ‘western’ historiography lay in the shift from polity and political history to society and community (samaj), which was remarkable at a time when the turn towards professionalised accuracy on the Ranke model was marginalising such themes in western academic scholarship.29 Sarkar points out that the shift to samaj 24 Aitihasik Chitra, Suchana, in Bharat Itihas Charcha, Volume , p. , quoted in Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath, p. . 25 Haraprasad Shastri Rachanabali, Volume I (Calcutta: undated), p. . 26 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. .

recreating a jati



occurred in the wake of the Swadeshi movement. I will try to show how this had earlier beginnings, in the s, when the writings of Rajnarain, Bankimchandra and Rabindranath rethought indigenous history from such non-political, cultural and samajik standpoints. This preoccupation with samaj explained the deeper significance of assertions such as: “History cannot have the same meaning in all countries”. Rabindranath Tagore believed: The history that we read is like an unhappy dream in India’s night of gloom. The saga of political upheavals, violence and bloodshed is not the clue to real India. We have to discover real India, an India outside the textbooks popularised by the raj.30

History with Myth and Epic Indigenous historiography evolved in an eclectic grid which simultaneously drew upon ‘western’ positivist, empiricist tradition, as well as from various forms of indigenous popular knowledge and imagination. “Autonomous assertions” articulated within a ‘new’ historiographical framework did not represent a total or sudden break from precolonial history-writing, or a leap from myth to positivistic objectivity. There was no complete rupture between what Partha Chatterjee calls a precolonial “Puranic history”, archetypically represented by Mrityunjay Bidyalankar’s Rajabali (), and later works (the most typical of which was regarded as Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay’s Bharatbarsher Itihas), where myth was supposedly silenced to give place to a ‘new’ history, which was no longer the play of divine will, or the fight of right against wrong, but a “struggle for power”.31 Avinash Kumar has argued that an interesting fusion of myth, fiction and history went into the making of the grand narrative of Hindu/Indian history. The national past was re-written according to principles of modern western historiography without compromising the superiority of the ancient past of the Indians vis-à-vis the west.32 Ancient Indian history was therefore fitted into the modern linear timeframe, but also depicted against a mythic and timeless landscape. In mid 30

Tagore, Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . See Partha Chatterjee, “Claims on the Past” in David Arnold and David Hardiman (eds.), Subaltern Studies VIII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , –. 32 See paper presented by Avinash Kumar, “Defining the Disciplines: Hindi History versus Hindi Literature, –” (South Asian Seminar Series, School of Oriental and African Studies, March ), pp. –. 31



chapter two

and late nineteenth century constructions of a jatiya past, for Bengal too, myth and fact intertwined. Myth was often reinterpreted and fitted into modern, historical, linear time frames. In , Satishchandra Mitra, in Shishu Ranjan Bharatbarsha, narrated the legend of Adisur within a positivist, linear time frame, stretching back to the reign of Harshavardhana. Though the old, mythic and cyclical paradigm of Kaliyuga, explaining historical change by dystopia, disappeared in most texts, conceptions of puranic time still lingered, as in Nilmoni Basak’s Bharatbarsher Itihas. His periodisation distinguished the “Age of Hindu Empires” from “Muslim Kingdoms” but the yuga cycle was mentioned in the preface to his book.33 The reinterpretation of myth occurred in the cultural-nationalist milieu of recreating a jati and tracing the origins of Bengali society and castes. What was crucial to the literati was the recreation of a jati and a jatiya past, which was not fragmented by gaps and disruptions due to absence of reliable, empirical sources. In reality, however, history, especially of the political variety, based on reliable documentary evidence, was difficult to reconstruct because empirical sources were few. Amulyacharan Ghosh, in the Introduction to Jogendranath Gupta’s Bikrampurer Itihas admitted that myth and legend were indispensable because of the absence of reliable documentary and empirical evidence, relating specifically to the ancient period.34 The shift from political history to a history of culture and attachment (samajik itihas) was natural because the latter was a more viable project, aided by the vast array of sources for such itihas, including local myths, genealogies and legends. This underpinned the literati’s more significant aim of providing a cohesive unity to the past, to recreate a jati. Myth was also prioritised because it was supposed to reveal aspects of individual and collective mentality in a way that more ‘historical’ sources never could. The development of this collective mentality was indispensable for creating convictions of common origin, and beliefs in a common ancestry. Satishchandra Raychaudhuri’s deployment of the Adisur legend explored the roots of Bengali society and castes, and sociologically and genealogically connected the present Brahmans to their ‘mythic’ and ‘legendary’ ancestors of the Sena era. To Satishchandra, Adisur, the legendary Sena king, brought five Brahmans from Kanauj to Bengal. These five Brahmans got married to Brahman women of Bengal, and their children were 33

See Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . Amulyacharan Gupta, Introduction to Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. ii. 34

recreating a jati



known as Barendras.35 Literature too was believed to provide valuable insights into details of individual and group belief, cultural practices, and social mores, and convictions of a common ancestry. In this sense, literature was emblematic of jatitva. As Romeshchandra Dutt pointed out: The literature of every country, slowly expanding through successive ages, reflects accurately the manners and customs, the doings and thoughts of the people. And thus although no works of a purely historical character have been left behind by the people of ancient India, it is possible to gain from their literature and religion, a fairly accurate idea of their civilisation and the progress of their intellect and social institutions.36

Mythic and epic strands infused into historical trajectories refined and redefined itihas, which etymologically, implied—“thus it was”. Traditionally, however, itihas did not always prioritise factual narrative, and in Sanskrit poetics was considered a genre of composition, like poetry and drama. In English commentary, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were referred to as epics, but in Sanskrit, the first was kavya, and the second, itihas for Irawati Karve.37 They were also supposed to contain some ‘historical’ truth. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay also considered the Mahabharata to be itihas, and Priyanath Malllick in Balya Siksha Banglar Itihas explained the origins of different jatis with reference to an interesting legend narrated in the Mahabharata: In ancient times, there was a king called Jajati. He had four sons. Three of them were disobedient to him and he punished one of them by a curse that his sons would be yavans [foreigners, used in a pejorative sense], and would never ascend the throne. On being punished, Jajati’s three sons left their father’s kingdom, and one of them went to Svet Dip, or England.38

The above account illustrates how jati was deployed in an indigenous history developing in a colonial context to underscore differentiation between native / indigenous and ‘foreign’ (races), as well as relating the English (foreign) to the indigenous through an interesting reversing of the primacy and racial hegemony / superiority of the coloniser. A different world-view recast the familiar taxonomic scheme of racial theory (which assumed the English and other European peoples as superior to 35

Satishchandra Ray Chaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ), pp. –. Romeshchandra Datta, The Literature of Bengal (London, Calcutta, ), quoted in Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana, p. . 37 Irawati Karve in Yuganta, End of an Epoch (New Delhi: Manohar, ), mentioned by Minakshi Mukherjee in Realism and Reality: The Novel and the Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 38 Priyanath Mallick, Balya Siksha Banglar Itihas (Habra, ), pp. –. 36



chapter two

the Indians) as developed in Europe and by the British as an ideological rationale and basis for justifying imperial rule (a superior race would naturally rule over ‘weaker’ races in colonised worlds). This racial theory hardened and crystallised in the post- phase when earlier beliefs in kinship between Indians and Europeans woven around Max Muller’s linguistic-racial theories and ideas of the British Orientalists and Sanskritists were doubted. Thus an indigenous history with myth helped construct a jatiya identity which sought to counter the predicament of subjugation. This reflects the link between an indigenous history and the forging of a collective identity in specific ways, which was integral to the process of differentiating indigenous itihas from western and colonialinspired historiographical types. Itihas was related to historical kavya and epic poetry, especially gathas (epic song verses) and narasamsis (songs in praise of heroes) composed by minstrels in the ancient period. Unlike the Vedas, which were supposed to have a divine authorship, gathas and narasamsis were composed by humans. But itihas, used to mean legends of Gods and heroes, and puranas (legends of origins, including creation of legends and the origin of the four castes) were elevated to the level of the Vedas. Traditionally itihas was important for () its use in rituals and () its didactic, explanatory and injunctive role.39 The didactic nature of itihas can be related to its traditional meaning—advice or teaching handed down to generations, as traditional knowledge or aitijhya. Itihas was also closely related to, and used to mean akhyan (dramatic narrative).40 These meanings and significances fed into late nineteenth century reinterpretations of history by the Bengali literati.41 Though the didactic note was more predominant in tracts of the early nineteenth century, notably in Mri39 D.P. Chattopadhyaya, “Itihasa, History and Historiography of Civilization” in Chhanda Gupta and D.P. Chattopadhyaya (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond, pp. – . 40 Itihas as aitijhya or tradition was implied in its etymological meaning. Kautilya’s Artha Shastra equated itihas with tradition. See Artha Shastra :. This reference has been provided by Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Society and History: Some Interpretations (reprinted Delhi: Orient Longman, ), p. . For interrelations between akhyan, itihas and puranas, see Thapar, Ancient Indian Society, pp. –. Apart from implying advice and teaching handed down to generations, itihas also included certain customs and practices forming a part of tradition. See Sangsad Bangla Abhidhan (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 41 Bijitkumar Datta in his account of what itihas signified in nineteenth century Bengal, referred to purabritta, akhyan and other mythic forms of narrating the past. See Bijitkumar Datta, Bangasahitye Aitihasik Upanyash (Calcutta: th edition, Mitra and Ghosh, ), p. .

recreating a jati



tyunjoy Bidyalankar’s Rajabali (), puranic allusions, and mythic and epic strands were clearly discernible in mid and late nineteenth century tracts on itihas. In these, itihas could mean itibritta (account of the past), purabritta (narration of past events), purakatha (ancient lore), pouranik akhyan (accounts based on the puranas), aitijhya (traditional instruction), as well as brittanta (an event, or a fact). The connotative frame of itihas therefore stretched from myth to positivistic objectivity and historical truth based on irrefutable empirical evidence. In most tracts of this era, traditional and mythic components, expressed in terminologies of purabritta, purakatha and kahini intermeshed with factual narrative and sequential history. The intertwining of the factual, epic, legend and mythic meanings of itihas was evident in Bharatbarsher Purabritta (), Murshidabader Itihas (), Murshidabad Kahini () and Cacharer Itibritta (). In the latter, Upendrachandra Guha drew ‘historical’ conclusions on the basis of fables and hearsay. He also considered the Mahabharata and the Dharanisamhita, an ancient Sanskrit text popular among the Manipuris, to be ‘historical’ sources. Nikhilnath Ray in Murshidabad Kahini grafted fact onto legend in his description of the Kireetesvari temple in Murshidabad. To him, the Seir Mutaqerin, epigraphic evidence and fables—all were ‘historical’ sources.42 The identification of myth as itihas, and the blending of fiction and fact did not, however, rule out the literati’s simultaneous preoccupation with fact-based historical truth, and their attempts to extract myth from history. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, even while emphasising that the Mahabharata was itihas, clearly contrasted myth and historical truth, It is true that many descriptions in the Mahabharata are clearly untrue, impossible and un-historical. We can forsake those parts . . . but why should we ignore the other accounts, which are not untrue or un-historical? Among all jatis, in their ancient histories, fiction and fact have blended . . . if their accounts can be taken as history, why cannot we regard the Mahabharata as itihas?43

However, even while contesting the historical veracity of myth, and contrasting myth and historical truth, Bankimchandra seems to have been influenced by the idea that in certain ways, myth is truth, because 42 See Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta (Dacca, ), pp. –, ; and Nikhilnath Ray, Murshidabad Kahini (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. , , . 43 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Aprakashita Rachana, Mahabharat, p. , quoted by Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj, nd edition (Calcutta: Mitrani Prakashan, ), p. .



chapter two

it embodies an imagined past, which helps to constitute the present. In this sense myth was “not merely a story . . . but a reality lived”, the reality being myths as “characters of extant social institution”.44

History of Culture and Attachment The destiny of the jati was re-imagined in a historical theatre where myth and epic filled the void of a disrupted past. An imagined and continuous past as a site for jatiya glory was essential in welding a fragmented people. Drawing on an Orientalist heritage of Indian civilisational value, the Bengali literati as early as the Derozian era re-invoked a glorious Hindu past, which later had varied manifestations, one of which was the connection forged between Bengali and Aryan glory.45 In the mid and late nineteenth century, such identifications of Bengali and Aryan heritage in a re-imagined past, were also supplemented by the reification of Bengal as a site of patriotism and glory. In other words, the literati attempted to discover the link between the people and the land, between the historian and history, by a search for the origins of ancient Bengal (Gour), and its cultural and physical boundaries. In the literati’s mind desh (country, here meaning a specific locality, district, or the province, Bengal)46 needed to be transformed into an emotive arena inspiring love and patriotism. That the physical boundaries of ancient Bengal did not always correspond to cultural frontiers is evident from the literati’s reiteration of the idea of cultural oneness of the five Gours or Pancha Gour, facilitated by cultural interchanges between them.47 44 Borislav Malinowski’s words, quoted by D.P. Chattopadhyaya. See D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Interdisciplinary Studies in Science, Society, Value and Civilizational Dialogue (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, ), p. . 45 Rajanikanta Gupta forged a direct link between Bengali and Aryan glory. See Rajanikanta Gupta, Arya Kirti (Calcutta, ), Preface. The nuances embedded in the literati’s equation of ‘Bengali’, ‘Hindu’, and ‘Aryan’ have been dealt with in detail in Chapter VII. 46 ‘Desh’ during this period was multi-connotative, signifying sub-region, region and country. For details about desh as sub-region and region and its linkages with desh as country conceptualised within a mould of territorial fluidity and approximating the idea of India, see Chapter VII of this book. Also see Swarupa Gupta, “Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal”, in Studies in History, New Series, Vol. , No.  (New Delhi: Sage Publications, December ), pp. –. 47 I have discussed the notion of Pancha Gour in relation to Bengali treatment of neighbouring ethnicities and to ideas about pan-Indian unity in Chapter V. For details about Pancha Gour, see Dineshchandra Sen, Brihat Banga (Calcutta, ), p. , and S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat (Dacca, ), p. .

recreating a jati



Eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore attempted to trace the roots of the cultural and emotional attachment of Bengalis as a jati to their desh, and posited the concept of desh, inhabited by a jati in the modern context of the late nineteenth century cultural-nationalist scenario. Gour or Lakshmanabati (capital of the Sena kings) could not be taken to mean modern Bengal. How had Bengal come into existence, then? Where could Bengal, as a desh, inhabited by a jati, be located?48 In , Sebananda Bharati raised similar queries about desh: Where is Bengal as a desh? Was there any province or separate domain called Purba Bangla [eastern Bengal]? It seems that before Mughal rule, there was no Purba Bangla. During the Pathan era there were several small, scattered principalities in Bengal, and Tamralipta was one of them. Like Tamralipta, Gourdesh or Lakshmanabati under the Senas were only parts of Bengal.49

Tagore and Sebananda Bharati were voicing the literati’s introspective quest for the physical boundaries of Bengal, through attempts to historically discover the origin and boundaries of eastern Bengal, which according to Sebananda had not existed until the Mughal political division and demarcation of Bengal as a subah. Similarly, the belief that Gour and Lakshmanabati could not have been said to be modern Bengal seems to hint at quests for the boundaries of modern Bengal. At the same time, the literati underlined Sena dynastic rule to highlight a political uniformity linking the different fragments of ancient Bengal. The search for a continuous and unified Bengal seems fairly obvious in such convictions and views, and led logically to the prioritisation of cultural and emotional attachment. The latter was reflected in () the culturally incorporative idea of Pancha Gour, and () the underlining of connections between jati and desh. These connections were explored in past and present situations, and the question of desh was posited in ancient as well as contemporary contexts by the literati in their attempt to traverse the historical path from antiquity to modernity, and thereby provide a cohesive unity to Bengal’s past. The kind of history that could visualise a continuous past unbroken by a lack of empirical data therefore had to be a history of culture and attachment to the social entity and community. The desh/jati interconnection led to a logical prioritisation of samajik itihas. The historical landscape of samajik itihas was redrawn as an emotive arena where individuals were 48 49

Tagore, Itihas, pp. , . Sebananda Bharati, Tamluker Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –.



chapter two

linked by the more intangible but potent forces of mutual sympathy, affection and fellow feeling radiating outwards from the familial unit. This was the logically interconnective process binding the jati and its ithas with the concept of samaj that could at once encompass caste, region, province and nation, and imply a range of regulations, duties and codes of conduct subsumed within an overarching notion of unity.

The Impact of Colonial Sociology and Deviations Jati as an empowered collective identity, connected to a history of culture and attachment and ideas about desh debated within historical frames fed into a narrative of origins. This historical trajectory was joined and juxtaposed to a sociological framework. If history provided the basis for recreating a jati as a collective self, how could one explain the existence of fragments and diverse groups which the multiple uses of jati referred to? The deployment of jati to negotiate fragmentation implied constructions of identity in various forms, as well as conceptualised an overarching frame for situating, debating and connecting those multiple identities. The use of jati in multiple senses was especially noticeable from the second half of the nineteenth century, when colonial sociological exercises formed a comparative frame and provided a counterpoint to such reconfigurations of indigenous identity-categories. At the same time, such reconfigurations also drew upon older lineages. The literati’s redefinition of categories (race, caste, people, nation) was in many ways a sequel to colonial sociological exercises. Official and nonofficial writing remoulded ways of thinking these sociological categories and created a space for shifts in meanings and connotations. In  the first census report was prepared as part of the colonial endeavour to know the land and the people of India. The importance of the census, as R.B. Bhagat has pointed out, springs from the fact that it was not just a passive account of statistical tables but reshaped the world through categories and their definitions.50 The work on gazetteers was begun earlier by W.W. Hunter on the orders of Lord Mayo. The census of , in addressing the questions of caste and race, used religion as a fundamental category in census tabulations.51 The first series of District 50 R.B. Bhagat, “Census and the Construction of Communalism in India”, Economic and Political Weekly Commentary ( November, ). 51 Ibid.

recreating a jati



Gazetteers (), the decennial census ranked and classified by caste, ‘tribe’, and ethno-religious ‘community’.52 Provincial statistical reports such as W.W. Hunter’s Statistical Account of Bengal (–), Tribes and Castes Surveys (),53 and the  census emphasised race and physical anthropology.54 Works such as Risley’s The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary, Volume I () had a quantitative impact, helping the fashioning of arguments about number and category. Colonial sociology including W.W. Hunter’s Annals of Rural Bengal (), A Brief History of the Indian People (),55 and The Indian Mussalmans,56 and H.H. Risley’s contribution in  were especially relevant to the formulation of qualitative arguments about the Bengali selfimage. Risley believed that castes in each region were to be classified by social precedence as recognised by native public opinion. E.A. Gait interpreted this to mean that the decision rested on enlightened public opinion or the views of highly educated Hindus, mostly upper caste men.57 Directives of census commissioners indirectly/directly prioritising upper caste indigenous opinion, may explain the Brahmanical emphasis in indigenous responses and initiatives to redefine sociological categories in the discourse on samaj and jati. By situating the discourse on jati as connected to the twin agendas of recreating a collective self, and mediating fragmentations within the colonial context, the intent here is to trace consonance and dissonance between colonial official and non-official opinion about the Indian people, specifically the Bengalis, and the latter’s viewpoints. Official and nonofficial discourse was not monolithic. Colonial opinion about categories such as caste, pervading the Indian sociological landscape, was not uniform either. As Susan Bayly has pointed out—there was no all-powerful colonial consensus about caste. British Orientalists, officials and Indian commentators imbued various terms such as ‘caste’, ‘tribe’, ‘race’, ‘sect’, ‘nationality’, ‘religious community’ and ‘occupation’ with different mean-

52 Barrier (); Bernard Cohn, “The Census and Objectification” in Cohn (); Dirks (); mentioned in Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 53 Ibid., p. . 54 Bernard Cohn, in Bernard Cohn and Milton Singer (eds.), Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. . 55 W.W. Hunter in The Annals of Rural Bengal, and A Brief History of the Indian People (London: Trubner and Company, ) underlined the Aryan/non-Aryan dichotomy. 56 See W.W. Hunter, The Indian Mussalmans (London: Trubner and Company, ). 57 See Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. .



chapter two

ings. Thomas Trautmann in Aryans and British India has drawn attention to such complexities inherent in the colonial discourse.58 These complexities were more evident from the second half of the nineteenth century. During this period, colonial writers were still striving to mediate between contradictory strands of opinion. The idea of the low place assigned to Indian civilisation remained as a hangover of James Mill’s History of British India.59 This was juxtaposed to Orientalist notions of Indian cultural value, and the enigma of a dark-skinned people having an advanced civilisation. As said, beliefs in the link between race and language occasioned by the philological efforts of Max Muller and the British Sanskritists were doubted, challenging earlier ideas of kinship between Europeans and Indians. By the end of the nineteenth century, a consensus was reached regarding the “racial theory of Indian civilisation”, that is—Indian civilisation was produced by the clash and subsequent mixture of light-skinned civilising invaders (Aryans) and dark-skinned barbarian aborigines (Dravidians).60 The theory drew heavily from the ideas of H.H. Risley and W.W. Hunter. Risley assumed race to be the main classificatory criterion, from which derived the markers of caste and tribe.61 Central to this imagination was the Aryan /non-Aryan division.62 The latter remained the predominant theme in colonial discourse about the Indian people, and the belief of writers such as Nesfield, in the essential unity of the Indian race, was a back eddy in the mainstream.63 The racial dichotomy of Aryan/non-Aryan was fitted onto analysis of castes, which were considered as ‘races’. With the racial theory of difference between the ruler and the ruled gathering momentum from the post  period, the colonial method of setting castes in a racial model64 came under scrutiny. Whether rigid caste divisions had existed eternally in India or later hardened under colonial impact was a question revisited by the Bengali literati, especially in the light of shifting indices of social status in Bengal. Thus colonial sociology crucially influenced ways 58 See Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). 59 James Mill, History of British India, Volume I, p. . 60 Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. . 61 H.H. Risley, The People of India (London: Thacker, ), p. . 62 W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. . 63 Nesfield’s view, referred to in H.H. Risley, The People of India (London: Thacker, , reprinted ), p. . 64 E.T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta: Government Press, ).

recreating a jati



of thinking, and of evaluating ‘others’ including communal others such as Muslims. The dichotomy forged between Hindus and Muslims and their histories by writers such as Risley65 no doubt influenced attitudes toward the latter. However, there was no simple replication of colonial discourse. There was, rather, selective adaptation, internalisation and rearticulation of its basic tenets. The aim here is to focus on the symmetry and asymmetry between categories such as ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘caste’ as they developed in colonial as well as indigenous discourses, and to analyse how the borders of identity and the frontiers of language, religion and locality overlapped and faded off into each other. The interlocking of multiple identities in the site of jati opens an analytic terrain that complicates any simplistic transition from “fuzzy” to “enumerated” identity.66 It cannot be denied that enumeration was important in defining categories and quantifying them, but at the same time, identity in many ways remained hazy around the edges. The reification of categories operated in a mould of continuity and change. Colonial enumerations hardened categories such as caste, which had been relatively fluid in precolonial India. The changing social scenario witnessed a waning of the importance of birth (family/kula) because education and wealth became criteria for measuring an individual’s social rank. At the same time multiple loyalties toward sub-caste, region, village and town, or religious community and voluntary local associations complicated identity. Multilayered identities competed and interrelated with each other. Jati, in different contexts, interacted with more objectified frames resulting from British political practice (demarcating, objectifying and essentialising identities/categories), thus immensely complicating the vision of ethnic identity and its historical meaning. These analytic angles illuminate how jati epitomised a connotative spectrum of ethnological senses and nuances, showing how ‘western’/colonial ideas about race and ethnic identity were adapted, adopted and subtly metamorphosed in a discourse, which also refracted and redefined indigenous ideological lineages of negotiating identity.

65 See H.H. Risley, The People of India, p. ; and Montstaurt Elphinstone, History of India: Hindu and Mahommedan Periods (Bombay: Union Press, ). 66 By exploring the multiple meanings of jati, I seek to qualify Sudipta Kaviraj’s view that as a result of the colonial enumerative endeavours culminating in census reports and imperial gazetteer records there was a transition from fuzzy to enumerated identity. See Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness, p. .



chapter two The Multiple Uses and Applications of Jati

The reconfiguration of jati in the site of samajik history implied a crucial question—whose past was being re-imagined? In other words, who were they who were laying a claim to such history? In “Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Kayekti Katha,” Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay voiced the question preoccupying the literati’s mind—“Who will write the history of Bengal? You, I, all of us have to do it.”67 In the identification of this all was implicated the agenda of jatipratishtha or recreating a jati. This became especially relevant at a time when the intersection between itihas and jati shaped certain types and usages of history. These included history of race, of heroic ancestors and events, of religious and cultural identity, of linguistic groups and place. The monthly periodical Nadia Darpan () claimed that accounts of Nadia, an ancient historical site, was a crucial chapter in the history of Bengal.68 Each of these may be seen as contributing to a history-led refinement of the term jati. The crucial question, however, was that of the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups in this idea of jati. From the second half of the nineteenth century, jati became admittedly multi-functional. The swing toward underscoring its multiple meanings must also be seen as a sequel to colonial sociological taxonomies and enumerations, and segregations of people along lines of caste, religion and tribe. These classifications and hierarchisations reflected a recasting of indigenous identity through scientific practices and the technologies of imperial rule, as well as by western ethnological and ethnographic and race theories which gathered momentum from the second half of the nineteenth century. In a colonial climate of subjugation, the crucial question was: how was the indigenous term ‘jati’ a comparative or alternative identity-terrain which deviated from colonial and western tenets? Each of the multiple uses of jati as race, caste and tribe reflected colonial influences as well as indigenous traditions of conceptualising identity. While colonial sociological exercises undertaken from the second half of the nineteenth century formed a reference point for the crystallisation of the discourse, its ideological genealogy was embedded in preexisting social realities. The social and cultural milieu since the beginning 67 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Kayekti Katha” (Calcutta, Agrahayan, ), in Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. . Emphasis added. 68 Nadia Darpan (Krishnanagar, ), printed in Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume II (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. .

recreating a jati



of the nineteenth century provided the ideological ground on which ideas about identity woven around jati gathered momentum. How did these ideas continue as well as transform during the course of the century? Past sensitivities about jati (used here in the sense of caste) were renegotiated in the late-colonial social scenario, underscoring the continuation of an earlier semantic genealogy in an insiders’ discourse (indigenous agency remoulded colonial tenets by seeing them through the prism of an indigenous tradition). Past ideas about jati status and the importance of social institutions such as the kula-based (kula refers to family/clan) samaj (social collectivity) had a validity, deriving from native tradition, and was thus deemed ‘authentic’. In Bengal, the indigenous distinctiveness of jati and the trajectories of its deployment reflected a nexus between ethnography, history and nationhood.69 During the first half of the century, jati was used primarily to mean nationality. The semantic legacy can be traced back to the Orientalist (Asiatic Society’s) search for lost golden ages. It was in this sense that the Tattvabodhini Sabha (formed in ) and the Tattvabodhini Patrika in the s, and the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and Romeshchandra Datta referred to jati. Bhudeb’s “jatiya gourab” signified national pride.70 The Derozians’ use of jati as swadesh (own country) can be linked to the idea of jati as nation.71 This central connotation branched off into multiple connotative trajectories from the middle of the century.72 Under the impact of colonial sociology and ethnological principles, jati intersected specifically with race. But its

69

The practices of indigenous and nationalist ethnography were evident in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in emergent and modernising nation states such as Japan and Vietnam. While in Bengal, jati formed the conceptual terrain on which history, sociological realities, and cultural hallmarks intersected in the agenda of recreating a collective self via a negotiation of self/other relations and Aryan cultural values, intellectuals in Meiji Japan and Vietnam (post- and post-) sought to rejuvenate a “submerged authenticity” embedded in a folklorist (rural and populist) tradition. These views have been expressed in the works of Harry Harootunian: , xxvi; R. Morse: ; and Patricia M. Pelley: , –; mentioned in Kumkum Chatterjee, “The King of Controversy: History and Nation Making in Late Colonial India,” American Historical Review (), Vol. , No. , pp. –. 70 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay in Pramathanath Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ), pp. –. 71 In  Kasiprosad Ghosh referred, in the India Gazette to jati as swadesh or own country. In this use, the influence of the Orientalist legacy as well as of the nationalist messages of France and Italy was evident. See Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath, p. . 72 Vividartha Sangraha , Vol. .



chapter two

reconfiguration as race retained links with its earlier connotation of nationality seen through the prism of culture, prioritising self-help and attachment to the social collectivity (samaj). The following section explores the ways in which the two semantic streams—() earlier meaning as nationality () late nineteenth century reconfigurations—flowed into each other. The etymological meaning of jati (to be born, or birth) focused on the ethno-cultural inheritance of birth, not on elective membership. This meaning co-existed with other connotations, such as race, caste and tribe. Each of these connotations had an internal duality: it implied difference and division, as well as an inclusive nature. These elements of inclusion fed into the overarching nature of jati as an inclusive concept joining sub-types.

Jati as Race From the second half of the nineteenth century the use of jati as race gained ground. Though race was a major identity-marker and a capacious concept prior to the mid-nineteenth century,73 earlier notions of race in colonial and indigenous discourse underwent subtle transformations from the second half of the nineteenth century. The mutability of meanings in the idea of race during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Orientalist discourse and indigenous opinion seen in the development of samudrikvidya or knowledge of material signs74 impacted as well as differed from later representations. Post- exigencies of empire prompting the prioritisation of racial division and the deployment of the Aryan/non-Aryan binary moulded understandings of jati as race in indigenous texts, as evident in Lalmohan Vidyanidhi’s clear distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan jatis.75 What is significant is that cultural characteristics, sociological underpinnings and civilisational parameters were central in the literati’s use of jati-as-race. It did not really imply the question of Aryan racial stock. In that sense Bengalis were not Aryans either, but as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay asserted, an amalgam of many races or a bahujati.76 The prioritisation of cultural

73 Shruti Kapila, “Race Matters: Orientalism and Religion, India and Beyond c. – ”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ), p. . 74 Ibid., pp. –. 75 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Bharatiya Arya Jatir Adim Abastha (Calcutta, ), p. . 76 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. II, pp. –.

recreating a jati



differentials woven around the adoption of Aryan culture was linked to geographical division. Race, culture and territory thus intersected in the demarcation of Aryavarta (land/home/habitat of the Aryans) and Dakhyinatya (abode of the non-Aryans, especially the Dravidians). The recasting of the colonial Aryan/non-Aryan division in a mould of Bengali cultural and civilisational supremacy drew on the supposed AryanHindu-Bengali equation. This demonstrates that though internalised, the Aryan/non-Aryan division, which was the cornerstone of western ethnological thought, was recast in a mould which subtly metamorphosed the colonial racial-cum-cultural divide by underscoring its sociological underpinnings and cultural qualities rather than the physiological criteria, which some of the Victorian ethnologists emphasised.77 The understanding of race in terms of cultural and linguistic criteria, rather than in rigid ethnological terms may be regarded as an internalisation and a reformulation of the convictions of the early Orientalists (during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century). Though some western ethnologists (such as Elliot) allied physical characteristics and cultural markers such as religion, moral attributes and levels of civilisation in Aryan/non-Aryan, and internal (among the non-Aryan Dravidians) divisions, the intertwining of physiological characteristics and sociological and cultural markers in demarcating racial categories in colonial and indigenous discourses followed different trajectories. The Bengali literati, as insiders, were engaged in the crucial task of self-definition, and this involved a reconsideration of self-other dichotomies not only vis-à-vis the British, but also in regard to contiguous groups and other Indians. The adaptation of western physiological race markers into an indigenous framework, which classed people according to moral categories and qualities was evident in other parts of India too. For instance, in , Kasi Nath distinguished Khattris from Jats considering the former superior due to their scriptural learning and moral qualities.78 Often such analyses mirrored convictions about superiority in regional/sub-regional/subgroup terms, as evident in Kasi Nath’s conviction of Khattri superiority and the Bengali literati’s idea about themselves as an “aristocracy of culture.” However, the configuration of jati as race had a wider, trans-subregional/regional purpose. The ‘others’ were situationally co-opted into a wider scheme that conflated jati to mean more than ‘Bengali jati.’ It was 77

See E.T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Susan Bayly, “Caste and ‘Race’ in the Colonial Ethnography of India”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 78



chapter two

applied in situational inclusions of specific groups among the neighbouring ethnicities in the forging of a cultural constellation in eastern India, which intersected with notions about Bharatiya/Indian jati/jatis. Adoption of Aryan culture by certain neighbouring people, and references to their habitats in Aryan literature (epics and puranas) were often sufficient to bring them closer to the Bengali samaj,79 and in a more extended sense, to an Aryan, Hindu India. Such inclusion and conflation went beyond self-other dichotomies implied in western models of ethnicity.80 The inclusive angle reflected how the late colonial configuration of jati as race retained the ideological and semantic lineage of jati-asnationality. The inclusive logic of cultural Aryan-ness may be seen as a regional and late-colonial reworking of the idea of “traditional xenology”81 applied in ancient Indian contexts. Indeed, the emphasis on cultural Aryan-ness making way for flexible boundaries embedded in the ontology of nationhood grounded in culture, may be related to the fact that jati-as-nation continued to be central through the s. The idea was concretely expressed in the programmatic impulse of jatiya regeneration through organisations such as the Jatiya Gourab Sancharini Sabha (precursor of the Hindu Mela), drawing on earlier ideas about self help (articulated by the poet Ishwarchandra Gupta in the periodical Sambad Prabhakar during the early nineteenth century) and encouraging a return to Indian customs and practices.

Jati as Caste The etymological semantics of jati as birth was evident also in the application of the term to caste. In many ways the reconfiguration of jati and its application to various castes such as Brahmans (Brahman jati) and Kayasthas (Kayastha jati) were a sequel to colonial official and nonofficial opinion about caste in India.82 But caste was not entirely a colo79 Samaj is used here in the sense of social collectivity, and as a conceptual rubric that could include castes, jatis and regions, and symbolise nationhood and Indian-ness. For details see Swarupa Gupta, “Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, –”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ), pp. –. 80 Thomas H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, ), p. . 81 Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Idea of the Hindu Race in the writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the s and s: A Concept Between Two Cultures”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia, pp. , . 82 See Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India, pp. , .

recreating a jati



nial invention designed to demean and subjugate a supposedly dreaming, politically impotent Indian other.83 The comparatively fluid precolonial notions of caste interacted with ideas of it as a more rigid enumerated category in colonial sociologies, censuses, and imperial and district gazetteers’ reports. Though there was no all-powerful colonial consensus about caste, two main identifiable strands were: () caste was an allpervasive distinctive feature of the Indian sociological landscape; and () it was fitted into a racial model counterpoising ‘superior’ Aryans controlled by a Brahmanical system to ethnologically distinct Dravidians belonging to a non-Brahman social order. Bengal’s sociological landscape reflected a braiding of contrasts: though Brahmanical values were relatively alien in this late-Aryanised land,84 the inhabitants nevertheless belonged to the group of caste-fettered tropical lowlanders. Indeed, the social scenario offered a contrast: unlike the traditional fourfold classification into Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, there were only two major divisions—Brahman and Shudra, and all jatis (castes/sub-castes) were fitted into this framework. Jati as caste implied both the ethnocultural inheritance of birth as well as allegiance to an occupational group,85 which could also invest an individual with a caste-like belonging. In fact, jati was also used to refer to occupational groups in addition to castes based on birth. A tract entitled Tambul Banik applied the term jati to the occupational group of betel leaf sellers or Tambulis in Bengal.86 That caste and jati were used to mean divisions of both birth and occupation was obvious in caste gradations and classifications (jatibhed). As Bengal was gradually Aryanised, division of labour and the proliferation of occupational groups, known as jatis,87 catering to the society transformed the varna (Hindu ritual status 83

Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ). Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, th edition, ), p. . 85 Occupation as a distinctive feature of caste has been highlighted by scholars such as E.R. Leach. See Leach (ed.), Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, North West Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), mentioned in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ), p. . This chapter points to the specific ways in which occupation and occupational mobility operated within the contextual parameters of the deployment of jati as caste within Bengal. It explores how the interaction between cultural and functional aspects of caste shaped patterns of social ranking, and opened a space for intersections between caste and class. 86 See Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik (Calcutta, ). 87 Hitesranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta: Papyrus, ), pp. –, . 84



chapter two

rank) to the jati system. Occupational connotations encrusted the etymological, ethno-cultural significance of jati-as-caste, intersecting with birth88 and surfacing in connections with/distinctions from sampraday (group formed according to economic, cultural and occupational criteria, or religious sect).89 The understanding of caste as a category intertraversed by ethno-cultural, occupational and cultural (pertaining to conduct and character) criteria contrasted with the colonial idea that castes were really races. The point is illustrated in the difference between Bengali and colonial perceptions about the Rajbangshis. While Hodgson, Latham and E.T. Dalton underlined the racial/ethnological factor in their identification of the Koch-Rajbangshis,90 the literati emphasised cultural criteria, including adherence to specific social norms and codes of conduct in their description of the Rajbangshi as a caste rather than a tribe/race.91 The deployment of jati to mean caste as birth and occupational groups implicitly contained the idea of division between castes. There were Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha jatis (all meaning different castes and subcastes) in Bengal. How did the literati move from the divisive to the inclusive connotation? Late nineteenth century tracts on the social history of Bengal, quoted later in early twentieth century writings on similar issues offered explanations about the origins of jatibhed. Digindranarayan Bhattacharya in Jati Bhed attempted to integrate and evaluate late nineteenth century views on caste divisions including those of Nagendranath Basu: At the dawn of creation, there were very few human beings, and the bounties of nature were sufficient to furnish their daily needs. Envy, greed and selfishness had not clouded the simple and truthful disposition of humans. It was an era of happiness and peace when a division of the human samaj was unnecessary . . . because of this, in the beginning, that 88

Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ); Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, Jati Bhed (Calcutta, ), pp. –; Durgacharan Rakshit, Tambul Banik. 89 Debendranath Mukhopadhyay, “Hindu Samajer Prachin O Adhunik Abastha”, Nabya Bharat (Calcutta, Ashar, ), Vol. , No. , pp. –. 90 According to Hodgson and Latham, the Kochs shared ethnological affinities with the neighbouring Mechs and Cacharis, and were of Mongolian/trans-Himalayan extraction. Other writers such as Hunter differentiated between the Rajbangshis and the Kochs. See W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. X (London: Trubner and Co., ), p. . 91 They were essentially Hindus, identical with the Kochs, and formed a major segment of Assamese society, which comprised Brahmans and Rajbangshis. For details about the Hinduisation of the Koch-Rajbangshi (traced back to the end of the fifteenth century) see Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –, . Emphasis added.

recreating a jati



is in the satya yuga, there was only one varna, the Brahmans. Bhrigu’s description of the satya yuga could only refer to the ancient condition of the Aryans . . . later when these noble Aryans descended to the plains, and extended their sway by their valour, they came to be called Kshatriyas, and the period of their rise was the treta yuga . . . later there emerged another jati, the Vaishya jati, who were agriculturists and livestock rearers . . . the establishment of their samaj coincided with the origin of the Shudras.92

Nagendranath’s analysis focused on the primacy of Brahmans and Aryans in an idyllic, egalitarian “state of nature”. This scenario, located in the utopia of a satya yuga was implicitly, though sharply, contrasted to kaliyuga jatibhed, which evolved through the cyclical ages of treta, dwapar and kali. Kaliyuga dystopia with its caste divisions implied undercurrents of longings for progress, and samajik uplift. It seems as if the awareness of variations and fissures in the fabric of samajik and jatiya unity fragmented an overarching jatitva. The juxtaposition of these variations and internal differences, to a wider pan-Bengali jatiya unity was quite evident in late nineteenth century Bengali tracts on caste and internal divisions. Simultaneously preoccupied by these two themes, Nagendranath composed Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (the samajik itihas of a specific sub-caste of Bengal), and Banger Jatiya Itihas (a tract concerned with the jatiya history of Bengal as a whole).93 These ideas fed into a set of attitudes and parameters deriving from the literati’s consciousness of their own precedence as a middle class, shaped by western education, norms of cultural Aryan-ness, old kula values, and relatively ‘new’ patterns of social mobility due to changing indices of social status. While in the medieval period, social mobility and reordering evident in the transformation of the precedence of specific castes often came from above (royal/political initiative),94 during the colonial period, the thrust toward mobility and social elevation came through individual initiative.95 As mentioned earlier, wealth and education became important markers for measuring an individual’s social 92 Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ), mentioned in Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, Jati Bhed (nd edition, Calcutta, ), pp. –. 93 See Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ) and Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ). 94 Ronald Inden has drawn attention to the central role played by the king in accommodating new groups into a reordered hierarchy. See Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. A comparison of the Brihaddharma Purana and the Ballal Charit reveals how social transformation was effected during the Sena period through royal/political initiative. 95 Hitesranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, Chapters  and .



chapter two

rank in addition to inherited kula status.96 Further, conduct/character was regarded as a key criterion for social recognition. In this regard, the indigenous discourse shifted from the fixity of colonial enumeration and sociological crystallisation. The colonial census, aiming to create a permanent record of varna, jati and kula hierarchies was seen as occluding opportunities for upward social mobility. This led to a spate of caste movements and a “renewed interest in recovering old genealogies,” making them an integral aspect of caste politics in Bengal.97 Earlier fluidity interacted with “enumerated identity”98 to produce a complex pattern, where multiple loyalties co-existed and intersected. As Partha Chatterjee has pointed out, the central character of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Kamalakanter Daptar, when brought to court and asked what jati he was, had difficulty in replying to this apparently simple question. He answered after being questioned several times that he belonged to the Brahman jati, and in a more general sense, to maushya jati (the human species).99 The transition from “fuzzy” to “enumerated” identity was therefore not simple and uncomplicated, for an individual could simultaneously regard himself as belonging to a caste, sub-caste, samaj of a caste/sub-caste,100 religious community, as well as to a jati defined in a broader sense (Bengal, for instance, Bengali jati, and nation, signifying the Indian nation, Bharatiya jati).101 Thus the comparative language (of jati as caste) and the underlying inclusive connotation of jati as an overarching category created a space for inclusions within specific contexts. This comparative language of inclusive parallels and sociological 96 Shib Chunder Bose, The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, ), p. ; Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, Vol. II (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, –); and S.N. Mukherjee, “The Bhadraloks of Bengal” in Dipankar Gupta (ed.), Social Stratification (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 97 Ronald Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) mentioned in Kumkum Chatterjee, “The King of Controversy: History and Nation Making in Late Colonial India”, American Historical Review (), Vol. , No. , pp. –. 98 Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Imaginary Institution of India” in Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (eds.), Subaltern Studies, Volume VII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 99 See Partha Chatterjee, “The Manifold Uses of Jati”, in T.V. Satyamurthy (ed.), Region, Religion, Caste, Gender and Culture in Contemporary India, p. . 100 Nagendranath Basu traced the rise of a Kayastha sub-caste, the Uttarrarhis. See Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda. 101 Jati was used in the sense of nation in tracts such as Nandamohan Chattopadhyay’s Adhunatana Samaj (Calcutta, ) and in Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s “Jatiya Bhab”, a part of Samajik Prabandha (Calcutta, ).

recreating a jati



overlap cutting across the boundaries of fragmented identities and forging connections at a wider, overarching level undermines the element of division inherent in colonial depictions of caste as something inherently antipathetic to the formation of the idea of nationality.102

Jati as Tribe The use of jati to denote a specific tribe derived in a sense from its etymological meaning which focused on the ethno-cultural inheritance of birth. Ramgati Nyayratna’s categorisation of hill tribes of Bengal as “parbattya jati”103 and references to the Santhal,104 Kol, Bhil and Munda jatis of Bengal and the neighbouring areas reflect how ideas about primordial ties, clan belongings, dialects and belief in a patron deity were fitted into the framework of jati. The colonial Aryan/non-Aryan binary, working its way into other kinds of divisions and taxonomies found echoes in the opinions of well-known Bengali writers such as Durgacharan Rakshit (), Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri and Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay,105 who considered the Santhals, Mundas, Nagas, Sabars, Kols, Pulindas and Khasias as belonging to non-Aryan stock. The racial division of Aryan/non-Aryan as applied to tribes intersected with territorial demarcation, resonating to and sharing common ground with jati as race. Habitat, interwoven into racial dichotomisation, was considered a distinctive marker of tribal otherness. “The Santhals of Bhagalpur, Mayurbhanj, Balesvar . . . Singbhum . . . belong to the Dravidian stock of the Deccan.”106 But the intertwining of territory and race in the two cases of deployment (jati as race and as tribe) was subtly different. Jati-as-tribe applied the theme of racial-cum-territorial segregation to separate tribal pockets (from more Aryanised areas) within the landscapes of Aryavarta and the Deccan: such as the Santhal Parganas, seen as the meeting-place of Bengal, Bihar and Chhotanagpur, and the

102 J. Baines, quoted in Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, ), p. . 103 Ramgati Nyayratna, Banglar Itihas (Hugli, ), pp. –. 104 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini: Santhal Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 105 Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 106 Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat (Boishakh, ), Vol. , No. , p. .



chapter two

borderland between the civilised and the uncivilised.107 Familiar colonial representations such as T.H. Huxley’s depiction of Dravidian tribes driven into the hills like the Celts in Europe108 persisted in Bengali descriptions of adivasis (tribals) pushed into the hills. Such ideas about distinctiveness were bolstered by a romanticisation /exoticisation of tribal worlds (such as Santhal) as sequestered, often-idyllic, egalitarian and ‘different’ domains. But the nuances of the construction of such otherness were different from the idealisation of a pre-Aryan, casteless civilisation and valorisation of their romantic nationality by writers such as Elliot (who equated Santhals with the South Indian Kurumbas, and regarded the Santhal Rebellion of  as an example of the romantic notion of nationality embedded in the colonial ethnology of race). The deployment of jati as tribe implied a discourse on otherness conceptualised at two levels, distinguishing the educated, mainly high caste/ ‘Aryan’ literati from aboriginal adivasis, and non-tribal Bengal from the tribally-dense pockets within Bengal and in the neighbouring regions. The specific braiding of racial (physiological and biological characteristics) with cultural hallmarks such as language, civilisation, customs and manners, in the delineation of criteria determining the separateness of the tribes was different from the relative emphases on such hallmarks in jati as caste. These differences went into the making of a model of ethnic otherness. Applying the idea of goal-oriented, civilisational progress along a linear path, Durgachandra Sanyal distinguished between Bengalis on the one hand and uncivilised tribes on the other. He added that the Nagas were still uncivilised.109 This clearly set them apart from the Bengalis. The envisioning of tribes as a counter-facet of civilisation brings to mind the ancient Greek use of the term ethnos in the sense of foreigners who were generally deemed barbaric. This use may be compared to the modern English “tribe,” a term still used by many to describe all political units that are not of the familiar nation/ nation-state kind. Civilisational backwardness inhered in differences of language, religion and customs. The non-Aryan dasas / dasyus to whom the tribes were ancestrally linked, were amanush (inhuman) and mridhhravach (of unintelligible speech), 107

Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . In the s, T.H. Huxley divided Indians into Dravidians and Aryans. The Dravidians were driven into hills like the Celts of Brittany/Wales. See Susan Bayly, “Caste and ‘Race’ in Colonial Ethnography”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia, p. . 109 Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas, p. . Emphasis added. 108

recreating a jati



comprising a history-less jati (as they had no script), and having a different dharma (religion and way of life).110 Linguistic difference revolving around the Aryan (Sanskrit) / non-Aryan division, implied inferiority, premised on the idea that Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Punjabi and Hindi were derived from the language in which the Aryans wrote the Vedas (and thus belonged to the family of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian languages), whereas non-Aryan languages (of the tribes) did not belong to this group.111 Distinctions of the primordial givens of kinship (racial origin), language and territory enmeshed with social contrasts (differences in ways of social organisation). The Santhal world had no jatibhed (internal social divisions akin to the Bengali Hindu samaj, especially in terms of caste). Highlighting such difference, Probhash Chandra Ray outlined a society where the symbolic bonds of unity were very different, and jatiya solidarity was achieved in an entirely distinct manner, governed by kinship ties and egalitarian values.112 The members of the segregated tribal worlds were internally relativised, compared and hierarchised through the construction of a civilisational scale underpinned by the values and standards of cultural Aryanness.113 If civilisational and cultural differences were the manifestation of otherness, what was its origin? The conviction that tribes were descended from non-Aryan stock formed a starting point. The trajectory of ethnological otherness was developed further through an interesting internalisation and modification of colonial ideas. Transmuting the colonial argument that miscegenation between indigenous tribals and Aryan Brahmans had produced intermediate castes, the literati claimed that the intermixture (varnasamkar) of castes produced certain tribes (misrajati). The idea of mixed castes was fitted into the logic of tribal inferiority: the Mundas of Chhotanagpur were racially non-Aryan, and in addition they were considered ‘low’ because they had sub-categories (misrajati) such as the Khangar, Khobia and the Mohili which had originated as a result of intermixture.114 What is remarkable is that the literati problematised the issue of tribal misrajati in the context of the fact that the Bengalis themselves were a mixed jati (bahujati) having a mixed linguistic geneal110

Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, pp. , –. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in Bankim Rachanabali, p. ; Promode Bhowmick, “Adivasi”, in Bharat Kosh, Vol.  (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), pp. – ; Sukumar Sen, “Santhal”, Bharat Kosh, Vol. , p. . 112 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, pp. , –, –. 113 Ibid., p. . 114 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . 111



chapter two

ogy that included Austric, Munda and Dravid elements.115 This juxtaposition led to an ambivalence in the literati’s discourse on the separateness of tribes. The discourse on jati-as-tribe applied to neighbouring groups intertwined with the rhetoric of racial identity of the Bengali self. As Bankimchandra asked: How did the Bengali jati originate? Are all Bengalis Aryan? Brahmans may be Aryans, but are the Hadis, Muchis, Doms, Kaoras also Aryan jatis? If they are not Aryan jatis, where did they come from? Do they belong to some ancient Aryan family or vamsa? . . . Bengal was not Aryanised before Adisur . . . Bengalis are definitely a relatively adhunik jati [modern race] . . . They can be subdivided into () Aryan, () non-Aryan Hindu () Aryan and non-Aryan Hindu () Bengali Muslims.116

The above quotation makes it clear that the primacy and centrality of the Aryan/Hindu/Bengali equation co-existed with ideas about non-Aryan elements, intermixture, and the late Aryanisation of Bengal. While at one level, the neighbouring tribes were considered the uncivilised (barbaric) other of the civilised Bengali self, at another, they were considered parts (though very different in nature), in a loose and distant sense, of the multi-group Bengali jati. Thus jati constituted a site where the issue of ethnic otherness was mediated and contextualised with reference to wider conceptualisations of unity, diluting the polarity and finality of difference. While differentiation/segregation was the predominant note, contextual connections and parallels formed a sub-text of the discourse on jati as tribe. Such connections were worked out within the analytic framework of samaj, and seen as occurring through Hinduisation of tribes and adoption of Aryan cultural values. Such deployment of jati opens a window to how multiple forms and scales of identity were interrelated and linked to a wider discourse of conceptualising unities. Situating the discourse on jati within a wider historical process of the unfolding of identities, the chapter has shown how jati was linked (in part through Aryan theorising) to identity frames that simultaneously underscored division and hierarchy, and yet at the same time suggested participation in larger, unifying structures of identity. Its multifacetedness and overarching nature made it possible to simultaneously emphasise the distinctiveness of disparate units, and also weld them through a language of comparison and unity. By concentrating on the

115 116

Kamal Majumdar, Bangalir Itihas (Calcutta: The Author, ), pp. –, . Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. II, pp. –.

recreating a jati



encompassing significance of jati immanent in its deployment as race, caste and tribe, I have suggested that the strand of unity and inclusion was a more significant trajectory during the period under consideration. It formed a pivotal ideological axis, prioritising perspectives of cultural unity which approximated wider conceptions of unity. By highlighting the conjunctural nature of social identities and the interplay between identities and their contexts, this chapter has attempted to move beyond a “discourse of differentiation”.117 The uniqueness of jati as a conceptual category, modifying colonial tenets through an interplay of late-colonial sociological actualities and an indigenous semantic genealogy, inhered in the fact that it could not be simplistically equated with any western delimited use of either race, nationality, tribe or people.118 Rather, its uses reflected an intertraversing of multiple strands of identity—birth/origin, lineage/ancestry, language, occupation and conduct. The juxtaposition of these strands to ideas about social harmonies (myth-explained caste interconnections and cultural Aryan-ness situated in twin temporal contexts of the past and the present) reflected a reorientation, rather than an “invention” of tradition, facilitating interconnectedness between the uses of jati. This opens a heuristic field for comparing jati with the terms—‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic group.’ The relatively new term ‘ethnicity’,119 implying belonging-ness to a cultural community, myths of common ancestry and shared historical memories has resonances with the sociological connotations, ethno-cultural characteristics, language, customs and consanguinity that underpinned the use of jati as race, caste and tribe. The relative emphasis on these individual characteristics in each case of deployment was, however, different. Moreover, the intersection of jati with caste and social class/rank offers an instance of how the indigenous

117 Bernard S. Cohn, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command”, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol. IV (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 118 An element of overlap between categories was evident in colonial discourse too: Cf. Magrath’s District Census Compilation used the terms ‘nationality,’ ‘tribe’ and ‘caste’ to denote the groups enumerated. But there was no single term (like jati) that could encompass and denote all of them. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. X (London: Trubner and Co.), pp. –. 119 Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, ), mentioned in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. .



chapter two

term moved beyond ethnicity. The prism of jati did not view castes as natural essences, but as complex constructions overlaid with occupational and status criteria. As Thomas H. Eriksen has pointed out, ethnicity does not necessarily refer to rank: the criteria for ethnic ranking refer to cultural and racial differences, not achieved statuses.120 Jati reworked the idea of ethnicity through a contextual prioritisation of identities. While in case of tribal groups, an individual was first a Santhal or a Munda rather than an Oriya/Bihari, in case of other groups, the collective terms “Oriya jati” / “Assamese jati”, encompassing multilayered caste, sub-caste and class (social rank) identities, were applied. Thus in the conceptual site of jati, ethnicity was interfused with, rather than disentangled from concepts of race and culture.121

Jati as an Overarching Category and as Nation The deployment of jati as race, caste and tribe was an index of its multifacetedness and its specific uses. The term had a wider overarching connotative basis, which was clear (as a sub-text) in each case of deployment. Particularly in the years following the Hindu Mela, jati came to be deployed as an overarching category joining various sub-types. This application had consonance with the earlier (Derozian period: s) use of jati as nation and swadesh. After colonial sociological exercises gathered momentum (from the s), the unitary connotation split into multiple uses which could address the issue of manifold identities and fragmentations through an indigenous prism. This wider use of jati in the Bengali literati’s discourse was subtly different from the use of the term elsewhere in India. In northern India, membership of a particular exogamous section of a caste was known as biradari. Members have a face-to-face knowledge of each other and extend kin terms to each other. Bernard S. Cohn has pointed out that members of a biradari establish marriage ties with other such units which form a much wider circle of recognised caste fellows and potential mates and cognatic kin. This unit was called jati in northern India. It was a named, endogamous unit, had a myth of origin, and sometimes a sacred spot or temple. It also had

120

Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, ), pp. –. Frederik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference (Boston: Little Brown, ), pp. –. 121

recreating a jati



shared stories and legends about its history.122 This limitedness based on kin and marriage ties (endogamous unit) contrasts the Bengali use of the term in manifold senses, and as nation. The inclusive parameters of jatias-race in late-colonial Bengal partly resonated to configurations of the term in neighbouring areas, albeit differences of inflection and nuance. The inclusive universe of ‘Bharatiya jati’ in Bengal differed subtly from the Assamese word ‘jati’ (referring to an internally coherent people or a nationality within a broader framework of a pan-Indian civilisation), and forged more fluid boundaries than what has been designated as the Assamese configuration of jati as sub-nation.123 With the crystallisation of the discourse on cultural nationhood, the earlier use of jati in Bengal as nation came to be articulated in a new, more complex form. Jati came to be regarded as a conceptual rubric joining various sub-types. The emphasis was on forging linkages between various groups which comprised the nation. The multifacetedness of jati was linked to ideas about underlying connections and unities. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s belief that Bengalis were a bahujati (amalgam of many jatis)124 demonstrated two things. First, jati at this time was a multifaceted term encompassing multiple meanings and usages. To Bankimchandra, the Bengali jati was primarily divided into Brahmans and Shudras. In this division, jati was used to denote caste. Second, the fourfold division of Bengalis into Aryan, non-Aryan Hindu, Aryan and non-Aryan Hindu, and Bengali Muslims further demonstrated how various sub-types (pertaining to race, and religious and cultural community, in addition to caste) were made to fit into the overarching grid of jati. This categorisation of Bengalis as a bahujati cutting across caste, race and religious affiliations expanded and conflated jati to mean the Bengali jati. Bankimchandra’s classification of the Bengalis as a bahujati implied () jati as a term laden with ethno-cultural significance related to birth; () cultural characteristics as hallmarks of jatitva; and 122 Bernard S. Cohn, India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 123 It is difficult to agree with the contention that the Assamese configuration of jati as sub-nation, referring to the self-perception of the Assamese as a distinct and internally coherent people or a nationality within a wider pan-Indian civilisation /Indian nation state (Baruah, mentioned by M.S. Prabhakar ) used the term in a peculiarly extensive sense, “going beyond the relatively restricted meaning that the term has in other Indian languages.” For details about subnationalism in Assam see Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 124 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. .



chapter two

() divisions and variations within the overarching frame of jati in Bengal. Of these hallmarks, cultural criteria were seen as providing the scope for inclusions by widening the accommodative limits of the concept of jati. ‘Aryan’ defined in cultural terms specified certain criteria for inclusion within the Aryan fold,125 and included certain codes of conduct and moral behaviour.126 This made it possible to include traditionally ‘low’ groups such as the Rajbangshis of Rangpur in the Hindu/Aryan samaj as Kayasthas.127 Though the Bengali society was formed mainly of two castes, and Bengalis were actually a multiracial group, equations of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Aryan’ made the literati regard their samaj as Hindu/Aryan. Evidence that the Bengali jati included jatiya elements from outside as well included the examples of Kedar Ray, a legendary figure, one of the bar bhuiyans (legendary chiefs of Bengal in the medieval period renowned for their valour), and the ruler of Sripur, famous for his heroism. He had an ancestor called Nimray who was originally from Carnat. After arriving in Bengal, he established a kingdom and acquired the title of ‘De’.128 Inclusions of ‘low’ castes, specific groups among the neighbouring ethnicities, and other Indians showed how jati was reconfigured in conceptions of such wider unities in contexts approximating nationhood. Why was such deployment significant and necessary? Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s assumption of the continuity of jatiya feeling129 depicted a timeless and eternal jatiya unity, which had always been present, and now (in the late nineteenth century) had to be recovered. Bhudeb’s imagination of an eternal jati glossed over fragmentations of jati across historic periods, though admitting that there was a need to recover jatiya feeling, meaning that it was absent in the present context. Other viewpoints reflected 125 Rajnarain Basu, Briddha Hindur Asha (, translated to Bengali in ), mentioned in Rajnarain Basu, Atmacharit (Calcutta, ), p. . Also relevant in this context are the views of Manamohan Basu, “Hindu Achar Byabahar: Samajik” in Hindu Achar Byabahar (Calcutta, second edition, ), p. . These references have been provided in Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, ), pp. –. 126 The hallmarks of cultural Aryan-ness, especially the role of conduct have been discussed in detail in Chapters IV, V, and VII, in relation to the Bengali treatment of ‘lower orders’ within Bengal, neighbouring ethnicities, and pan-Indian unity. 127 Gobindachandra Basak, Bangiya Jatimala (Dacca, ), p. . 128 Shashi Bhushan Bidyalankar, Jiboni Kosh, Bharatiya Aitihasik, Volume II (Calcutta, ), p. . 129 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Jatiya Bhab” reprinted in Intermediate Bengali Selections (Calcutta, ), p. .

recreating a jati



a more sequential analysis of the gradual dissolution of jatiya unity. An article in Nabya Bharat () tracing the origin of jati, explained— The starting point was the establishment of family as the nucleus of the emerging society. This led to the development of familial rules, a common faith and religion, as well as a code of governance. Thus grew village communities, which developed into jatiya samajs. The force of religion which often acts as an overarching linking bond, transcending other barriers, did not prove to be the ultimate welding force, and differences arose.130

The idea of jati, as such viewpoints reveal, came to be woven around a number of nuclei—kinship, clan-groups, religion, language and culture. The late nineteenth century dilemma was to negate such fragmentations to recreate an empowered identity based on an imaginative welding of discrete elements through mystic bonds of sentiment and affection. Bhudeb’s jatiya bhab, drawing on this notion, had a non-political colour, and its overtones were different from the associational politics of the Swadeshi movement (). He emphasised, “When jatiya bhab awakens in us, we do not want to be traitors to the British Raj.” The longing to promote unity among different jatis of India: “Muslims, western Indians, such as Marwaris, and South Indians”,131 implicitly stressed an idealised unity, and strove to create a united self-reliant jati. The emphasis on the twin goals of unity and self-reliance was evident in the Hindu Mela’s agenda as well. The Mela’s primary aim of promoting unity among the Hindu jati conflated ‘Hindu’ to mean ‘Indian’, as was evident from Gnanendranath Tagore’s speech in the second convention of the Mela (), This Mela is not for dharmik or religious purposes, or for any joyful merrymaking, it is for our swadesh, for Bharat bhumi [the land of Bharat or India]132

These emphases endowed jati with elements of nationhood, reworked within a framework which drew simultaneously on the notion of an idealised and utopic unity, and the notion of self-help. This was the ideological backdrop against which the dream of uniting people of all srenis (social and economic groups) and of different religious affiliations— Vaishnava, Sakta, Saiva, Ganapatya, Buddhist and Jain acquired significance.133 The conception of jati portrayed in these terms to approximate 130 131 132 133

Nabya Bharat, Volume I, Number  (Phalgun, ). Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Jatiya Bhab”, Intermediate Bengali Selections, p. . Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . Ibid., p. .



chapter two

‘nation’, had certain inherent limitations. Articulated by a specific segment of the society, it inevitably contained the bias of a western-educated, mainly high-caste, professional Bengali literati. The obvious question that arises is—how were minorities and non-Hindu groups accommodated within such conceptualisations of jati as nation? In this context, I focus on the question of Muslims, and explore the complex trajectories of a predominantly ‘Hindu’ discourse.

Limitations of Jati as Nation: The Question of Muslims Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in his fourfold classification of multiracial (bahujati) Bengalis included Bengali Muslims. In Anandamath, however, he sought to recover a strong Hindu nation, taking the opportunity offered by the British. The words, “twice seventy million arms” of the Mother’s children in the immortal hymn, Bande Mataram, perhaps referred to the Hindus, but his use of the term janmabhoomi is open to conjecture and multiple interpretation, for it meant the country of birth, referring simultaneously to Bengal and to India, and perhaps utopically visualising the incorporation of varied jatis. These strands reflect the ambivalence inherent in the literati’s perceptions about the Muslim ‘other’ in late colonial Bengal. The discourse on jati framed in the late nineteenth century cultural-nationalist setting by a Hindu-Bengali, mainly high-caste, professional literati, for the most part excluded Muslims from a Hindu-constructed identity and constituted them as a different and single type. This ignored the divergent social, cultural and linguistic traditions of Muslims, especially differences between the ashraf, conscious of their “racial superiority”, and lower-class Muslim society. This society, in some parts of eastern Bengal, had subdivisions analogous to Hindu jatis.134 There were, however, complexities and multiple strands embedded in the Bengali literati’s exclusion of Muslims and their culture. They developed within a twofold conceptual framework set against a historical landscape—() memory of political subjugation of the Hindus by Muslims, and convictions of the beneficence of British rule, viewing a ‘tyrannical’ medieval as a dark foil offsetting modernity; and () the relationship of the Bengali literati to the Muslim samaj in Bengal, 134 Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), Introduction, p. x, and pp. , .

recreating a jati



and comparisons and assessments of Muslim culture. The impact of the first conceptual strand was evident in denigrations of Muslim rule in a strictly periodised history following the colonial model—ancient/Hindu, medieval/Muslim (implying misrule), and modern/British. The effect of the second strand was seen in terms of a history of culture and attachment. Firstly, there was a discourse on nation framed within an essentially Hindu cultural ethos. It had the obvious limitation of valorising and re-invoking a glorious Hindu past. A glorification of a composite cultural legacy (of Hindus and Muslims) did not occur. Rather, writers such as Bankimchandra focused on the efflorescence of Hindu learning and culture in medieval Bengal under the Pathans, when Bengal (understandably a Hindu Bengal) was ‘independent’. The rule of the Pathans, sharply contrasted to that of the Mughals, was viewed positively, precisely because Hindu learning and culture scaled new heights of glory, and Hindu zamindars in their respective domains exercised independence and patronised art and literature.135 This ‘independence’ was celebrated by Bankimchandra and Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, The Pathans reigned for three hundred and seventy two years, but could never rule the whole of Bengal. In the west, Bishnupur and Panchakot lay outside their sphere of influence. In the south, near the Sundarbans, there was an independent Hindu king . . . in the east, Chattagram, Noakhali and Tripura were ruled by the kings of Tripura and Arakan . . . at the time of the Pathan conquest of Orissa, Bengal was still independent.136

Cultural independence was seen in conjunction with political independence by delineating areas ruled by Hindu kings. This ‘independent’ era witnessed the glorious achievements of Bidyapati, Chandidas, Raghunath Shiromoni, Chaitanyadeb, and Raghunandan, because the intellectual, artistic and literary brilliance of the Bengalis had not been clouded by the presence of an alien ruler. Such viewpoints did not reflect the celebration of an alternative culture, grafted onto Hindu cultural legacy. Rather than accepting Muslim contributions to Bengali culture, they write it out of history, and instead prioritise a Hindu cultural heritage which flowered even in a Muslim political and cultural milieu. Exclusions of the Muslims were also reworked in a historical frame intertraversed by 135 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas” in Bangadarshan (), printed in Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. . 136 Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. , referred to by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. .



chapter two

cross currents of political and samajik realities. Bankimchandra’s idea of Hindu efflorescence in the Pathan era sharply counterpoised the ‘beneficial’ Pathan rule to that of the Mughals,137 construed as the ‘real’ enemy of Bengal, their reign signalling the beginning of a dark age of cultural eclipse. The glorification of Pratapaditya’s valour in his historic combat with Man Singh, commander of Akbar’s army, immortalised and valorised Bengali courage in the face of Muslim (Mughal) onslaught. Such depictions were connected with the survival of age-old samajik values (Hindu/Bengali, and for the most part, high-caste) in medieval samajs centred in Bakla (under the Hindu king Danujmardan Deb) and Jessore (under Basanta Ray and Pratapaditya)138 in an otherwise ‘dark’ period of samajik and political turmoil. Secondly, a middle position sought to incorporate Muslims on ‘Hindu’ terms. One of the complexities inherent in the literati’s discourse on nation rooted in Hindu identity, was a redefinition of ‘Hindu’/ ‘Aryan’ culture, and its accommodative ramifications. The extension of ‘Aryan’ to mean a specific code of conduct and cultural norms offered scope for inclusions (though at an inferior level) of groups and minorities, who were not Hindus by birth. Rajnarain Basu in Hindu Dharmer Sreshthattva outlined the cultural content of such identity and the norms it supposed. Convinced about the superiority of the Hindu dharma, he emphasised a syncretic identity, grounded on a definition of ‘Aryan’ in terms of cultural criteria. A ‘proper’ code of conduct including respect to parents and elders, generosity, hospitality, and modesty in speech and behaviour, also fed into this notion of cultural Aryan-ness. Such conceptualisation made it possible to include even some Muslims into the culturally ‘Aryan’ fold. In Saphal Sapna, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay portrayed Sabuktagin as possessing laudatory qualities and high ideals.139 Linked to his view that many Muslims of good families could be called Arya jatiya (of, or belonging to the Aryan jati), the projection of Aryan qualities in non-Aryan and non-Hindu contexts revealed his multilayered attitude to the Muslim ‘other’. Bhudeb also seldom used the pejorative term ‘jaban’ while referring to Muslims; on the contrary, he used the more respectful address

137 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. . 138 For details about the Jessore Samaj, see Satishchandra Ray Chaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –. 139 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Saphal Sapna, in Pramathanatha Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. .

recreating a jati



of “Mussalmans”.140 This attitude of a Brahman intellectual, steeped in conservative Hindu tradition, revealed subtle nuances of perceptions and sensibilities towards an otherwise denigrated other. Cultural inclusions, albeit in certain specific contexts, and framed within a grid of Hindu Aryan-ness muted the polarity of ‘Hindu’ and ‘non-Hindu’ in a discourse that was in a continual flux. Thirdly, within the predominantly Hindu rhetoric of the literati’s discourse on nation, there were voices which stressed plurality. Akshoykumar Moitreya, a Hindu Brahman, underscored a literature of nostalgia for precolonial conditions among Muslim writers, and glorified a joint Indo-Islamic historical legacy.141 He highlighted the value of the vast hand-written punthis of Saiyad Elahi Baksh Angrejabadi, containing descriptions of Bengal in the early nineteenth century.142 He also looked back nostalgically to the era when Sirajuddaula and the other nawabs had ruled Bengal, when divisions between Hindus and Muslims had not created conflict and disorder. On the contrary, mutual respect and interaction had ushered in peace and well-being: For a long time, this desh [meaning Bengal] has been known as the janmabhoomi [land of birth] of Hindus and Muslims. In villages and towns, Hindus and Muslims have joined hands . . . in unfurling the flag of janmabhoomi. During Sirajuddaula’s time, divisions between Hindus and Muslims were based on religion, not power, or the pride of position. Many Hindus and Muslims wore Muslim dress, adhered to Muslim manners . . . and used the courteous and pleasant yavanic [Muslim] language, and also adopted Muslim titles, conveying importance of position . . . The Emperor of Delhi was a nominal ruler; in reality, the Nawab of Bengal was like a mother and father to the people of Bengal. In his durbar there were no differences between Hindus and Muslims in respect of position and power. On the contrary, to a great extent, Hindus enjoyed a predominance . . . skilled Hindus became rajas, ministers, treasurers and army commanders . . . the Muslim Nawab did not feel ashamed to introduce himself as a Bengali, because Bangla desh had become his swadesh, and the Bengali jati, his swajati.143

140

Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, p. . Kumkum Chatterjee has referred to an Indo-Islamic genre of history writing in Bengal. See “History as Self Representation”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No. , (Cambridge University Press: ), p. . For details, see Chapter III. 142 Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha, p. . I have referred to this in the context of samajik itihas in Chapter III. 143 Moitreya, “Sekaler Sukhdukhha”, Sirajuddaula (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. – . 141



chapter two

Akshoykumar’s portrayal of this era cannot be regarded as an echo of the familiar colonial denigration of Muslim misrule (internalised and emphasised by many Hindu authors of this period). His description of general peace, prosperity and happiness, and intermittent tyranny and injustice, which did not affect the cultivators, conjured the image of an era longed for.144 Such a representation did not sharply counterpoise a dark Muslim age to a benevolent modern period which dispelled medieval gloom. Akshoykumar’s nostalgia for this bygone era indicated a desire to study the history of this period with the insight, vision and heart of that age. The subsequent history of the Nawab’s defeat, to Akshoykumar, was not merely Sirajuddaula’s anguish; it was the “history of our own revered ancestors.”145 However, Akshoykumar’s valorisation of a joint Indo-Persian historical legacy cannot be seen as representative of the predominant Hindu discourse that arraigned Muslims as an oppositional ‘other’ in significant contexts. This primarily stemmed from the samajik distance between the two communities, and the gap between Hindu and Muslim middle classes in Bengal because of their uneven development. Moreover, the ashraf, or the aristocratic Urdu-speaking Muslims, remained aloof to nationalist organisations. Nationalism in late nineteenth century Bengal, could not, therefore, as Tapan Raychaudhuri points out, absorb the Muslim intelligentsia.146 In the realm of social realities (samaj as an idea in practice) too, the western-educated, mainly high-caste professional Hindu Bengali samaj did not absorb Muslims through processes of social commingling and associations. Nonetheless there were two levels of perceptions and sensibilities in the literati’s jatiya consciousness. The first, as discussed above, was the arena of social actuality, where social and cultural distance explained the Bengali Hindu literati’s exclusion and denigration of Muslim culture. They superimposed a ‘superior’ Hindu culture over an ‘inferior’ Islamic culture, sometimes conflating the former as a syncretic Indian culture, ignoring and suppressing heterogeneities and diversities in non-Hindu (specifically Muslim) cultural traditions. The second was the realm of a jatiya utopia. In their imaginative and utopic construction of a jati, the literati situationally integrated Muslims in the world of an overarching samajik unity. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s deification of India as 144 145 146

Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. . Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, p. .

recreating a jati



Adhi Bharati Devi, embracing Kurukshetra, Dvarabati, Kamakhya and Kumarika, was not merely a Hindu India, for it conceptualised the incorporation of the Muslim samaj.147 Conceiving a higher unity that would embrace the whole of India, the organisers and protagonists of the Hindu Mela hoped that Muslims would be included in their scheme of unity. Manamohan Basu’s conception of jatidharma was underpinned by an incorporative ideal seeking to unite all sections and srenis of the swajati.148 The initial presence and participation of many Muslims in this Mela must have conditioned the literati’s conception of an overarching jatiya utopia.149

Conclusion Imagining the nation as jati therefore acquired emphatic overtones in mid and late nineteenth century Bengal, as a part of a wider project of reviewing identity through the prism of history. This chapter has addressed a relevant question—Did this ‘new’ use of the word jati have historic antecedents? In other words, was it wholly ‘new’? Nebulous notions of unity and seeds of a pan-regional patriotism were apparent in Bharatchandra’s glorified Bengal, portrayed as a patriotic and historic site, where Pratapaditya’s valour against Man Singh150 immortalised a premodern Bengali ‘jati’. The survival of samajik ideals in medieval samajs of Bakla and Jessore too created an overarching framework of unity cutting across boundaries of caste, sub-caste, and locality.151 However, a concrete expression to the feeling of oneness in the form of written records was absent, because no united group or sect was engaged in writing a detailed sequential history of either that sect or of specific societies in Bengal. Probodh Chandra Sen has drawn attention to the fact that lack of unity among distinct groups in Bengal and the absence of a united religious or social group or sect (similar to the Sikhs of Punjab) 147 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Pushpanjali (Calcutta, ), in Pramathanath Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, pp. –. 148 Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 149 In the fourth convention of the Hindu Mela, held in the year , on th and th February, many English, Bengali, Muslim, Hindustani, and man of various other jatis participated. See Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 150 Bharatchandra, Annadamangal in Bharatchandra Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta, second edition, ), pp. , . 151 See Satishchandra Ray Chaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –.



chapter two

lay behind a general absence of history.152 Connections between history and identity were therefore muted in a Bengal engrossed with afterlife, and daiva (fate), and fragmented by the lack of a region-wide religious or social impulse strong enough to give organised expression to unity. The sole exception to this was Chaitanya’s Vaishnava movement, which for a time, welded castes, sects, and communities in Bengal, including Muslims, taking them towards an emotive centre of unity. But this too was short-lived. After Chaitanya’s death, no single religious leader could personify such unity, nor did the Bengal Vaishnavas remain united or concerned with events of the practical world. Contrasted to this, the mid and late nineteenth century setting was different. The colonial predicament (sociological exercises and enumerations and more generally, the fact and experience of subjugation) speeded a process of self-discovery that found conscious and eloquent articulation from an internally-united social and intellectual group, the western-educated, professional, mainly high-caste literati. They could discover a living link between identity and history, and reconfigurate premodern notions of jati in an empowered discourse on nationhood.

152

Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana, pp. –.

chapter three SAMAJ AND PERSPECTIVES ON UNITY

In the previous chapter I have shown how constructions of jati were implicated in ‘new’ ideas about history in the literati’s discourse on an empowered identity during the second half of the nineteenth century. The imagination of the collective self through reconfigurations of jati attempted to conceptualise a basis for a wider unity that could weld discrete elements within Bengal (castes, sub-castes, regions, religious communities) as well as groups outside it. It was a complex process wherein the concept of jati as one of the indigenous identity-categories formed a starting point for the discourse on nationhood as it was an interactive frame for multiple scales of identity, and a site for joining various groups. Despite this, its multifacetedness left room for fragmentation and splintering of unities. It could signify both unity and division in different contexts. A stronger foundation and ideological basis for ideas about unity were needed. In this chapter I interrogate the relatively unexplored conceptual category of samaj as deployed by the literati to see how it acted as a means for negotiating complex sets of loyalties and identities, and envisioning a wider unity cutting across variations of caste, region and locality. The deployment of samaj by the literati reflected a nuanced interplay between the themes of continuity and unity in the ontology of nationhood. By illuminating links between ideas about the modern nation and the historical society from whence it emerged (as reflected in the literati’s discourse), I shift the focus from modernist definitions of the nation.1 Ideas about nationhood, I argue, had indigenous origins, which were oriented to a shared world of values and conduct. In highlighting 1 Echoing Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, later writers have seen the nation as a product of modernity. For Anderson, the critical moment of transformation lay in a fundamental change in modes of apprehending the world, resulting from the coalition of print-capitalism and Protestantism, which made it possible to imagine the nation. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, ), pp. , . Also see Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ); and Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ).



chapter three

such origins, I seek to demonstrate how the notion of a nation grounded in samaj moves beyond academic models which regard colonial nationalisms as ‘borrowed’2 and/or ‘derivative’,3 and stress the tremendous difficulty in transcending ‘western’ paradigms. This chapter illuminates how the notion of a nation in colonial Bengal was produced through a complex interaction between reorientations of indigenous ideas of past unities and the influences and contexts of the late colonial situation. Indigenous inheritances, reoriented and refracted through the prism of samaj, interacted with the associational ties of the ‘modern’ colonial civil society to produce the idea of a nation. To unravel the intricacies of such interaction and interconnection, I situate samaj in two interrelated connotative and temporal contexts, which fused the past and the present in the imagining of nationhood. First, it implied the historical community from whence the nation emerged. Second, it was a social actuality or an experiential reality having a modern functionality. The s constituted a watershed in ways of articulating and disseminating ideas. The aftermath of the Mutiny-Rebellion of , the Ilbert Bill Controversy () and colonial sociology metamorphosed patterns of interaction between the ruler and the ruled, leading to new ways of rethinking the self, which enmeshed with the cultural-nationalist agenda of the Hindu Mela (). I argue that during the period –,4 the conceptualisation of nationhood in terms of culture was a major trajectory in rethinking identity. As explained in the Introduction, this

2 Benedict Anderson has viewed nationalism as modular, which makes it possible to transplant it to a great variety of social terrains. It can merge with various political and ideological constellations. See Anderson, Imagined Communities. 3 See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. According to Partha Chatterjee colonial middle classes adopt the enlightenment world-view through education and their views become echoes of dominant western political discourses. Such a position ignores the fact that not all aspects of colonial power knowledge were accepted. Moreover, Chatterjee’s emphasis on the overwhelming sway of the state makes culture co-extensive with politics. Colonial western cultural hegemony is thus homogenised, allpervasive and irresistible within its own domain, and seen as being without internal tensions. Those touched by it become capable only of derivative discourses. Resistance is relegated to precolonial community consciousness. But this chapter shows that samaj was not merely an ur-traditional relic. Precolonial samajik unities were reoriented in the modern period and related to samaj as an experiential reality or an idea-in-practice. 4 As this line of argument focuses on conceptions of nationhood grounded in culture rather than politics, its outer limit is  when political action crystallised in the Swadeshi Movement.

samaj and perspectives on unity



does not involve a denial or elision of other, admittedly more political discourses. The definition of the nation as a cultural entity5 historically rooted in the evolution of samaj involves a shift from theoretical imaginings influenced by Saidian perspectives that see the nation through a political prism subject to the overwhelming sway of the state.6 Such positions de-link nationhood from culture and counterpoise community and fragmentation to the modern political nation state. From , the connection between culture and nationhood found concrete expression in the agenda of the Hindu Mela. It envisaged the progress of swadesh (own country) in terms of cultural identity rather than associational politics of the later Congress brand. By arguing that the trajectory of cultural identity, though more significant during the period under consideration, intersected with ideas about polity, I make the point that the social/political contrast as well as connection provide an analytic reference point for comparing the specific and selective emphasis on Hindu heritage in the early phase and later, emphatically political discourses. Rather than the militant construction of community, nation and history,7 ideas about nationhood were reflected in specific trajectories of an inclusive cultural identity emanating from samaj. Though even in the earlier discourse communal sentiments/divisions were embedded, they had not hardened into rigid lines. Moving beyond the idea that a nation is necessarily and inevitably rooted in the political ideology of the modern state,8 this chapter priori-

5

For details about the terms and trajectories of cultural nationhood as woven around samaj, see the Introduction to this book. The development of cultural identity pivoted around this conception of nationhood was underpinned by theoretical perspectives of romantic nationalism of the type discussed by Herder. This has been mentioned by Sumit Sarkar. See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . Also see Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,  Volumes (Riga, –), translated by T.O. Churchill as Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (London, ,  and New York: Bergman, ). 6 See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 7 Gyanendra Pandey “Which of us are Hindus?”, in Gyanendra Pandey, (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today (New Delhi: Viking, ), p. . 8 Viewpoints relating to the ‘modernity’ of the nation have been discussed in greater detail in the Introduction to the book. Echoing Benedict Anderson, later writers have seen the nation as a product of modernity. As mentioned in the Introduction, Anderson believed that the political community of nation superseded the preceding “cultural systems” of religious community and dynastic realm. The critical moment of transformation



chapter three

tises and contrasts nationhood to ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationality’ implying the ideology of the sovereign national state.9 ‘Nation’ and ‘nationhood’ are older concepts,10 which might not include the factor of common government. I focus on a definition of nation in the latter sense, exploring embedded mentalities and precolonial sentiments of community, which need not necessarily be relegated to a marginalised world of ur-tradition.11 Samajik unity was closely linked to the literati’s conceptualisation of cultural identity as a process. It was a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’,12 because sentiments of oneness rooted in the past were reinterpreted to envision a ‘new’ samaj. While recent studies recording shifts from political and modernist definitions of nationhood have focused on India as a whole,13 I trace through a case study of Bengal, the continuities and changes linked to fusions of tradition and modernity in the imagining of nationhood, through an ongoing process of transformation. This approach offers an alternative to the colonial discourse mode

consisted in a fundamental change in modes of apprehending the world, resulting from the co-alition of Protestantism and print capitalism, which made it possible to imagine the nation. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, pp. , . See also Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, A Derivative Discourse?, The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus, p. . 9 See Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community, Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 10 According to E.J. Hobsbawm, originally the concept of nation implied nothing but origin and descent, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that government was specifically linked to the concept of nation. See Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since : Programme, Myth and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –, mentioned in ibid., p. . 11 According to Partha Chatterjee, a non-political history denying the centrality of the state and instead prioritising the many institutions and practices in the everyday lives of the people is vulnerable to the overwhelming sway of the state. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus, p. . 12 Keith Jenkins has drawn attention to this hallmark of cultural identity. See Jenkins, From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London and New York: Routledge: ), p. , mentioned Surinder S. Jodhka (ed.), Communities and Identities, Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (New Delhi: Sage, ), p. . 13 This point has been mentioned in the Introduction. For related literature on this theme see C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism; and Prasenjit Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China”, in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India (Delhi: Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Gyan Publishing House, ).

samaj and perspectives on unity



of entry into the politics of otherness, which situates the otherness of the other wholly / solely in the colonial moment, thus erasing or marginalising the question of pre, or non-colonial differences of consequence.14

Meaning of Samaj Attempts to illuminate links between notions of nationhood in late colonial Bengal, and pre-existing indigenous unities are naturally connected to the meaning of samaj. Etymologically meaning “to move together, in a united manner”,15 samaj could variously refer to aggregate, collectivity of individuals, union of castes, or people of a specific region. It was therefore an umbrella-like concept that could accommodate different families, jatis, castes, and regions under its rubric by forging a network of linkages. The notion of samaj was grounded in two main elements. First was the familial nucleus, from which developed feelings of atmiyata, signifying relationship between blood relatives as well as non-relatives, friends and acquaintances. Samaj implicitly contained the notion of atmiya sajan. Unlike the western counterpart of this term (kith and kin), atmiya sajan literally meant “one’s own people”. It implied not only blood relatives and individuals related by marriage, but also people related by living together in the same house, neighbourhood, village, or by being members of the same school class, by working in the same office, by taking instruction from the same guru, and by going on a pilgrimage together. This idea endowed the indigenous notion of family with an open-ended, and continually incorporating character, moving from the immediate blood relatives, to family in the wider sense, or lineage, to distant relatives, and to atmiya sajan unrelated by blood.16 Second, samaj had a regulatory role. It regulated the individual and the social group according to certain specific norms, codes of morality, and rules. Rabindranath Tagore believed that samaj was a social and moral regulator,17 and could settle discord through 14 Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), Introduction, p. . 15 Sailendra Biswas, Shashibhushan Dasgupta and Dineshchandra Bhattacharya, Sangsad Bangla Abhidhan (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 16 See Ronald B. Inden and Ralph B. Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. 17 Rabindranath Tagore, “Brahman”, Bangadarshan (Ashar, ) printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta (Calcutta, ), p. .



chapter three

mediation. The literati resolved the basic opposition between the individual and the social community by emphasising that samaj existed for the individuals, and the latter were not subordinated to it. Haraprasad Shastri explained: “Samaj is an institution created for the good of the individual. Individuals cannot become subordinated to something that they have themselves created.”18 A tension, however, remained between the individual and the samaj, which came to the fore especially in the s and s due to the new message of Rammohun Ray’s Brahmo faith, the spread of western education, and John Stuart Mill’s liberalism. Rachel Van M. Baumer has pointed out that during the first decades of the nineteenth century, in the literati’s reinterpretation of dharma,19 while moral social behaviour and individual responsibility remained strong and personal, individual action and the sense of social involvement underwent a change. Men were obligated to act toward other men in a way they themselves wished to be treated. They were to respond to other men’s needs with compassion and sympathy.20 These changes fed into the literati’s re-evaluation of the relationship between the individual and the samaj. There were simultaneous attempts to prioritise the samaj over the individual, as well as harmonise them. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in Dharmatattva attempted to mediate between the elevation of samaj above the individual.21 These mediations redefined identity by envisioning samaj as a focus of familial and social linkages, and as an embodiment of an enduring idea of righteous life grounded in moral principles and codes of social behaviour. My concern here is to illuminate specific ideas of the literati with regard to samaj and how these subsumed unity. A methodological approach involving perspectives of social and intellectual history22

18

Satyanarayan Das, Bangadarshan O Bangalir Manan Sadhana (Calcutta: Jijnasa ), p. . 19 Dharma implied a righteous life and a set of duties and responsibilities to the family, society and community. Its meaning is discussed in detail below. 20 Rachel Van M. Baumer, “The Reinterpretation of Dharma in Nineteenth Century Bengal: Righteous Conduct for Man in the Modern World”, in Rachel Van M. Baumer (ed.), Aspects of Bengali History and Society (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, ), p. . 21 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatattva, th Adhyay (Calcutta, ). Also see Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatattva, in Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Bankimchandra (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ). 22 As explained in the Introduction to this book, the perspective of intellectual history attempts to trace the history of the literati’s ideas, locate them in the social and political context and explore the linkages they had with language and communications. The

samaj and perspectives on unity



is used to study interconnections between texts, and among the literati. This is helpful in mapping ideological rendezvous despite internal variations among the literati,23 and in tracing links between texts on the one hand, and belief and practice on the other. The ideological linkages situated in a historical framework help demonstrate how past unities were reoriented to the present. To the literati, the past samajs of Bengal, for instance, caste and sub-regional samajs, had certain Gemeinschaft-like qualities, such as kinship, territory, language and culture.24 They were not societies of atomised individuals. The literati reoriented the primordial sentiments seen as embedded in past samajs in the nineteenth century. More significantly, they projected feelings of atmiyata even in social relationships in a civil society in nineteenth century Bengal. This provided a means for rethinking unity within parameters, which were not premised on a disjunction between ‘public’ civil society and a ‘private’ familial space.25 Rather, they were interconnected arenas. This demonstrates that the literati’s re-imagination of unity within the conceptual framework of samaj was not grounded in iconic oppositions of Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft or traditional/modern.26 viewpoint of social history considers and assesses the social world of the literati, their customs and manners, and ideas about conduct reflected in their prioritisation of cultural Aryan-ness. The social history perspective is also implicated in the process by which the literati defined its relation to ‘others’ such as contiguous ethnicities and ‘lower orders’ within Bengal. 23 See Chapter I for social and ideological variations within and among the literati. The literati encompassed a multilayered social group including landed aristocrats, professionals, and even poor but educated and respected folk. There were internal social and familial, as well as ideological differences. Though this group broadly signified the middle class (madhyabitta), it intersected with categories such as ‘elite’ and ‘bhadralok’. For details about such intersections see John Mc Guire, The Making of the Colonial Mind (Canberra: Australian National University Press, ), pp. , ; and S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 24 For an elaboration of Gemeinschaft ties in the Indian context, see Carol Upadhyay, “The Concept of Community in Indian Social Sciences, An Anthropological Perspective”, in Surinder S. Jodhka (ed.), Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (New Delhi: Sage, ), p. . 25 See the Introduction to this book for details relating to the interpenetration between the domains of ‘inner’ (private) and ‘outer’ (public), and the related connectedness between culture/community and power/polity. 26 In Ferdinand Tonnies’ seminal analysis in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig, ), the theory of Gemeinschaft is based on the idea that in the original or natural state, there is a complete unity of human wills. Gemeinschaft, initially a community by blood develops into a community of place and then of spirit held together by kinship ties, neighbourhood and comradeship. Gesellschaft, on the contrary, is a group of people living



chapter three The Ideological Basis of Samaj: Dharma

The idea of samajik (social) unity in terms of radiating oneness from the familial nucleus was deeply rooted in dharma, the ideological basis and the welding force of samaj. Samajik unity rethought in terms of dharma presupposed a divide between indigenous and western/European society. Though these divisions had not crystallised into clear-cut stereotypes, a search for cultural identity in a colonial climate of subjugation needed a framework of distinction. The literati identified dharma as embodying the ‘unique’ nature of indigenous society differentiating it from the west. The state-centric character of the latter was contrasted with dharma, defined as righteous life, a set of duties and responsibilities to the family, society and community.27 Reinterpreted in late nineteenth century Bengal, dharma was contrasted with the essence of Europe—‘rights’. The former embodied the law of renunciation while rights implied the law of resistance.28 Anandachandra Mitra emphasised that civilisation and social progress in India and Europe had flowed along different lines. While dharma guided indigenous society toward salvation, the statecentric European civilisation had utility as its goal.29 peacefully alongside one another without being essentially united. Through convention and natural law, Gesellschaft forms a single aggregate of natural and artificial individuals. See Jose Harris and Magaret Hollis (ed.), Community and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –, –. It is important to note that in the context of colonial Bengal, the inchoate, early civil society from  could not be fitted into the classic Gesellschaft mould. While some societies used a principle of open access, there were other extremely powerful associations, such as the Kayastha Sabha, which were based on ascriptive, ‘gemeinschaftlich’ loyalties. See Sudipta Kaviraj, “In Search of Civil Society” in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. , . 27 Rabindranath Tagore, Bangadarshan (Ashar, ), pp. , ; and “Bharatbarshiya Samaj”, Bangadarshan (Sraban, ), printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat, Samajchinta, pp. –. Also see Tagore, “Samajbhed”, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta: Visvabharati, ), p. , mentioned by Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, ), p. . 28 Bipinchandra Pal, Soul of India: A Constructive Study of Indian Thoughts and Ideals (Calcutta: Chowdhury and Chowdhury, ), pp. –, quoted in Papia Chakravarty, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment: Bengal, – (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, ), p. . 29 Anandachandra Mitra, Prachin Bharat O Adhunik Iyurope Sabhyatar Bhinna Murti (Mymensingh, ), p. . Since the eighteenth century, European society was inextricably linked to Enlightenment notions of progress and utility. See Keith Michael Baker, “Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a Conceptual History”, in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society, p. .

samaj and perspectives on unity



Dharma was also applied to the realm of practice, and related to the uplift of the jati. The literati during this time stressed conduct and a specific culture more than birth in their discourse on identity. The notion of cultural Aryan-ness grounded in acceptance of the epics and puranas, sharing of Sanskrit as a common mother language (though some nonAryan languages which had incorporated many Sanskrit words could claim to belong to the Aryan fold), and worship of a supreme Godhead30 intermeshed with reorientations of dharma as a practice in textbooks for school children, tracts on history and autobiographies of eminent intellectuals. Gopal Chandra Majumdar discussed how the ideals of dharma were exemplified in acts and deeds of ancient rulers by referring to legends about Vikramaditya of Ujjain and Pratapjyoti of Matsyadesa.31 As late as , a text called Banger Ratnamala or A Collection of Moral Incidents and Characters in Bengal, included various anecdotes about the qualities of duty, empathy, self-transcendence, self-dependence, truthfulness, and familial values such as respect to elders and parents. These anecdotes interestingly showed how such ‘approved’ behaviour would be rewarded.32 Interestingly, qualities such as unselfishness and the need to inculcate moral values were also emphasised by Rajnarain Basu in Se Kal ar E Kal () in connection with social decline in Bengal, and were identical to the qualities valorised in the literati’s notion of ‘proper’ conduct forming one of the essential strands of cultural Aryan-ness. Such qualities were expected to promote closeness between unrelated individuals. At the same time, they were necessary for the development of individual personality. Dharma was especially relevant to the relationship between the individual and the society. To the literati, it was a mode of life and a code of conduct, which regulated a man’s work and activities as a member of society and as an individual to bring about the gradual development of a man, and enable him to reach the goals of human existence.33 The customary good conduct, implicit in observance of dharma, included caste 30 See Rajnarain Basu, Briddha Hindur Asha (, translated to Bengali in ), which appeared in Nabajiban, and was mentioned by Rajnarain Basu in his autobiography, Atmacharit (Calcutta, ), p. . 31 Gopal Chandra Majumdar, Niti Darpan (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 32 “Porer Janya Chinta”, in Kalikrishna Bhattacharya, Banger Ratnamala, Part I (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 33 See P.V. Kane, “History of the Dharmashastras” quoted in V.S. Sukanthar, On the Meaning of the Mahabharata (), p. . This has been mentioned in D.R. Jatava, Indian Society: Culture and Ideologies (Jaipur: Surabhi, ), pp. –.



chapter three

duties (jatidharma), those relating to one’s clan and family (svagotra and kula dharma), and to the country (desh dharma)34 The reassertion of traditional values and a code of conduct within the ideological framework of samaj stressed the development of the inner strength and potentiality of man who was to be a unit of the reinvigorated Indian nation and eventually of world humanity. He was not to be the component of the sectarian entity of a mere community. Moreover, a man could subscribe to this dharma without calling himself a ‘Hindu’.35 The flexibility of ‘culturally Aryan’ afforded scope for the inclusion of those who adhered to dharma, but belonged to ‘lower orders’ or to another community (such as Muslim). The centrality of dharma was depicted historically in an Aryan setting, but redefined as a culturally inclusive concept. The contextualisation of dharma in past and present contexts, and with reference to Bengal and India, is borne out by a description given in a tract written during the late colonial period about the everyday life and customs of the Bengali people. This tract claimed that the Bengali way of life and certain social practices were rooted in the codes of dharma of an ancient Aryan samaj. Of crucial significance, this tract claimed, was the encompassing nature of dharma, which implied an interconnection of duties toward the family and the society. Even politics and wars could not elude the influence of dharma. As dharma was an overarching guiding principle, the samhitas especially the Manusamhita were called Dharmashastras.36 Therefore, through a reinterpretation of its ideological focus, samaj was made into an outward-looking, overarching unit that could incorporate a melange of groups, and symbolise nationhood and Indian-ness. Voluntary organisations such as the Dharmarakhhini Samaj (), popularised by the poetry of Sri Sriram Palit, were emblematic of the literati’s perception that dharma had an all-pervasive impact on samaj.37 Redefined according to these criteria, dharma could create a samajik basis for unity, not by suppressing, but by accommodating the dissimilar. Indian 34 See J.N. Sinha, A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume I (Calcutta: Sinha Publishing House, ), p. . 35 Papia Chakravarty, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment, pp. , . 36 Samhitas were Vedic hymns written in verse. See Probhash Chandra Sen, Prachin Bangasahitya Hoite Bangalir Dainandin Jibon O Samajik Achar Byabaharer Parichay (Calcutta, ), p. . 37 Sri Sriram Palit’s poem in Som Prakash, Number  ( Joishtha, ), printed in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, Volume IV (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Bhaban, ), pp. –.

samaj and perspectives on unity



history was seen as a meeting-ground where discord was mediated and settled by dharmik consensus. Even when there was a clash of races and civilisations, the ideal of unity triumphed in the end. Thus the supposed violence and disruptive impact of the Aryan/non-Aryan clash was neutralised by assimilation, bonding the two races by cultural bridges, mythology and epics. Rabindranath Tagore believed that the victory of Ramchandra over non-Aryans was the outcome of a dharmik battle: he did not force the submission of the defeated, but won them over, receiving their devotion.38 Through such reinterpretations of dharma, the literati shaped the idea of unity (aikya), which () had been present in Indian history down the ages, but somewhere along the way, had been lost sight of; and () was indispensable in the present context of subjugation, and given the inner differences among Bengalis in particular, and Indians in general. The connection between samaj and unity lay in the creation of oneness, through a welding of diverse fragments into a complex whole. This idea of unity was posited in past and present contexts, and also envisioned in relation to two referential contexts—Bengal and India. Such interpretations redefined indigenous civilisation (sabhyata) as a blend of dharma, moral principles and intellect. Civilisation was further explained with reference to its familial connotation, which again was contextualised in terms of other sets of duties toward the samaj.39

Prioritisation of Samaj Samaj became a priority to the Bengali literati in the late nineteenth century because the redefinition of the Bengali historical view aimed at providing an imaginative unity to the past. As history and the recreation of a jati40 were closely related, the past was to be re-imagined as a background for re-forging unity. The lack of empirical and documentary evidence ruptured dynastic chronicles. It was difficult to reconstruct a political history of Bengal. Samaj was therefore prioritised over polity41 and 38 See Rabindranath Tagore, “Bharatbarshiya Samaj”, Bangadarshan (Sraban, ), printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat, pp. –. 39 Srikrishna Das, Sabhyatar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 40 Jati is used here in the sense of a collective self. 41 Sumit Sarkar has drawn attention to the prioritisation of society over polity in the literati’s appeal to culture that identified samaj as synonymous with religious community rather then territorial nationhood. See Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. –. The



chapter three

seen as providing continuity with the Bengali past, essential for bringing the collective self into existence. However, polity and society were not entirely segregated arenas. Even while highlighting the need of a history rooted in samaj, Akshoykumar Moitreya drew attention to the dual role of Hindu zamindars during the reign of the Muslim nawabs in Bengal. During the reign of Sirajuddaula, Bengal was divided into  parganas (administrative units). These parganas were placed under zamindars. They were chieftains of their respective realms (and had political duties) and were also samajik chiefs, mediating and arbitrating local dispute and social conflict.42 This local history emphasises the independence of many Hindu zamindars. Even after the fall of Kedar Ray,43 zamindars such as the Bharadvaj Chaudhuris and Raghunandan were known for their sense of justice, and social and political power. Raghunandan sought to increase his social power by inviting many socially high Baidyas to his zamindari.44 Such descriptions seem to fit the analytic grid of Nicholas Dirks, in which state forms, while not fully assimilable to western categories of the state, were powerful components in Indian civilisation. Indian society and caste were shaped by political struggles and processes.45 This perspective contextualises the prioritisation of cultural identity in terms of its contrast, as well as interconnection with polity and political processes. The recasting of identity within this mould cannot be understood in terms of any iconic or rigid divide between “cultural systems of religious community” and the “political community of the nation” born from fundamental changes in modes of apprehending the world and imagining the nation.46 Rethought within this concepintent of this study is to go beyond such analytic horizons by suggesting that society and polity were not always rigidly segregated, and that the preoccupation with samaj was evident well before the Swadeshi era. Moreover, ideas about samaj developed within contextual parameters closely related to notions of the Bengali self vis-à-vis ‘others’ such as the neighbouring ethnicities and other Indians. 42 Akshoykumar Moitreya, “Sekaler Sukhdukhha”, Sirajuddaula (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 43 Kedar Ray was one of the twelve chieftains of medieval Bengal known for their valour. 44 Baidya was a well known sub-caste of Bengal. For details about Raghunandan see Anandanath Ray, “Bir Kahini, Faridpurer Itihaser Ekangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, Second Year, Number  (Boishakh-Jyoishtha, ), pp. –. 45 Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, ), pp. –. 46 In Benedict Anderson’s view, the political community of the nation superseded the preceding cultural systems of religious community and dynastic realm. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. .

samaj and perspectives on unity



tual framework, the history of samaj found expression in the works of eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, as well as in tracts authored by famous historians such as Nagendranath Basu. Kaliprasanna Das’s comment in Barnasram Dharma O Hindu Jiban expressed the rationale behind the preoccupation with samajik itihas. The expression of Hindu collective life is not the state but the samaj. The key to its unity is not law, but dharma [religion and righteous way of living]; and the norms, customs, manners and practices approved by the chiefs of the samaj are an integral part of that dharma.47

The preoccupation with samaj and not polity was also a means to counter and erase the fact of subjugation by foreigners who had invaded India. It was asserted that as battles had been fought between kings, they were not people’s wars, and so the people who were the integral elements of samaj, had never been defeated. As Akshoykumar Moitreya explained—dynastic change did not mean a corresponding change in people’s social norms, and lifestyle. The fundamental nature of the commonalty remained unaltered.48 Political history, it was concluded, was not the means by which the secrets of the Indian past could be revealed. Writing in , Rabindranath Tagore recommended the use of history and historical memory in a way that would lead to the realisation that “the independence of samaj is greater than all other forms of independence.”49 The literati’s identification of samaj as an unchanging essence of Indian life, unhampered by political turmoil, shows an interesting use of colonial denigrations50 and Orientalist constructions of an unchanging, essentialised India51 lost in Hegelian a-historicism.52 47

Kaliprasanna Das, Barnasram Dharma O Hindu Jiban (Calcutta, ), p. . Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 49 Rabindranath Tagore, “Swadeshi Samaj”, Bangadarshan (Ashvin, ), printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat, p. . 50 Colonial writers such as W.W. Hunter believed that lack of unity among Bengalis had prevented them from becoming a nation in the political sense. See Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal th edition (London: Smith, Elder and Co.), pp. –. 51 Ronald B. Inden has shown that European ethnographers, and Orientalist scholars conjured an imagined India where institutions such as caste were construed as unchanging essences, designed to subjugate and demean a politically impotent, and dreaming Indian other. See Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ), p. . 52 The Hegelian notion of history embodies the idea of progress as history moves towards a final goal. To Hegel, the history of the Oriental world, including Mongolian, Chinese or Indian represents the first stage of the development of the principle of consciousness of freedom, when the spirit is immersed in nature in a state of unfree particularity. See M.J. Inwood (ed.), Hegel: Selections (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –. 48



chapter three Sources of Samajik History and Dissemination of the Literati’s Ideas through Periodicals and Family Histories

Unlike political history, which, as mentioned above, was difficult to reconstruct due to the absence of reliable sources, the history of samaj was a more viable project because of the vast array of indigenous sources relating to samajik history. These included kulagranthas (books on lineage and descent), ancestral accounts, and local genealogies. They were seen as commemorating the story of developments that were believed to have shaped the social and normative structure of society in Bengal over hundreds of years.53 To Nagendranath Basu, these were invaluable for writing familial, caste and sub-caste histories. Each samaj had ancestral texts offering valuable insights into that group’s origin, spread and status. Such texts were regarded as sources of national/racial pride.54 The use of these sources was highlighted by later authors too. Benoy Ghosh, for instance, drew attention to the importance of kulagranthas in reconstructing social history. Panchanan’s Kulakarika captured details of samajik decline in seventeenth century Bengal occasioned by the invasions of the Portuguese and the Mogs. Benoy Ghosh argued that the economic decline of the Brahmanical samaj in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century needs to be related to such antecedents of social ills. These facts were corroborated by missionary accounts in journals and reports.55 Combined with studies of social norms and customs, which varied from one region to another, sources of samajik history could overcome the shortcomings of documents relating to political history. A sociological orientation, focusing on local materials, was regarded as a new technique that would bridge the gap between events and mentalities, and connect seemingly discrete social events and instances of local culture.56 53 Kumkum Chatterjee has drawn attention to this socially significant role of kulagranthas. See Chatterjee, “The King of Controversy: History and Nation-Making in Late Colonial India”, American Historical Review (), Vol. , No. , pp. –. Chatterjee relates the significance of the renewed interest in recovering old genealogies to the spate of caste movements in Bengal, and connects the issue of their historicity to wider debates about what history meant to different groups of Bengali intellectuals, and to the rewriting of a social history of the land woven around samaj, but does not delve into the key ideological elements (governing notions of unity) emanating from it, or histories of earlier social formations (medieval caste and sub-regional samajs). 54 Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 55 See Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, ), pp. –. 56 Writing at a much later period, Benoy Ghosh remarked on this, explaining how

samaj and perspectives on unity



Evaluation of sources was accompanied by references, for example, by Nagendranath Basu, to samajik history over eras. According to him, descriptions of the indigenous samaj were given even in ancient texts like Rigsamhita, Ramayana and Mahabharata. At a more general level, therefore, the sources used for reconstructing samajik history included not only local genealogies, but also ancient texts and epics, and historical chronicles. Satishchandra Raychaudhuri composed Bangiya Samaj in  by relying on sources such as the Manusamhita, Mahabharata, Kalhan’s Rajtarangini, as well as genealogies of local royal families such as Raja Paramananda’s Ghatakgrantha and Brajasundar Mitra’s Chandradviper Rajbangsher Itihas, and even Muslim works, such as Ghulam Hussain’s Seir Mutaqerin.57 Reference to texts was accompanied by fieldwork. While writing the history of the Kayastha Samaj, Nagendranath Basu went to Dinajpur and Bhagalpur, and also to the main Kayastha centres including Kandi, Jemo, Rashra, Par Rashra, Chhatina, and Joyjan. Ancient family accounts were obtained from Premlal Ghatak of Shibrambati. The Maharaj Bahadur of Dinajpur sent ancient manuscripts.58 An urge for a social history of Bengal from the mid-nineteenth century made such sources valuable, and later historians developed the legacy. Benoy Ghosh mentioned that he obtained invaluable material from Dineshchandra Bhattacharya for reconstructing the samajik history of eighteenth century Bengal and even earlier.59 The question whether the kulagranthas qualified as history60 engrossed Bengali scholar-historians, and opinion was divided on this point. The answer depended on the definition of history itself in the indigenous context. Historians (such as Ramaprasad Chanda and Ramesh Chandra Majumdar) who regarded professionalised history (as a science of facts and details) as the only ‘true’ history, dismissed these

the project of samajik itihas gathered momentum. See Benoy Ghosh, Pashchimbanger Sanskriti (Calcutta: Pustak Prakashak, ), pp. –. 57 Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ), pp. –. 58 Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ), Introduction. 59 Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, p. . 60 A debate over the authenticity of the kulagranthas divided the Bengali intelligentsia and scholar-historians into opposed camps. While R.D. Banerjee and Ramaprasad Chanda, among others doubted their historical veracity, Nagendranath Basu, Lalmohan Vidyanidhi and Durgachandra Sanyal considered them to be invaluable material for reconstructing indigenous history. For details, see Kumkum Chatterjee, “The King of Controversy: History and Nation-Making in Late Colonial India”, American Historical Review (), Vol. , No. , pp. –.



chapter three

genealogical texts as un-historical and dubious sources. But if history was seen as a product of culture and tradition based on a prioritisation of samaj, the texts comprised an invaluable trove of historical material. A history of culture and attachment to the social community formed a more significant strand during the period under consideration, as it was the formative basis for forging an empowered identity. The issue of authenticity of the kulagranthas was intimately bound up with this redefinition of the historical view—expressed in a quest for a ‘new’, indigenous history signalling a turn from professionalised, source-critical, scientific, rationalist (western) paradigms of the Rankean type. Closely related to the participation and help given by local aristocrats to the literati engrossed in samajik history, was the issue of dissemination of notions of this kind of history and queries as to whether they were limited to the elite sections of the society. Most periodicals such as the Tattvabodhini Patrika, Arya Darshan, Nabya Bharat, and Madhyastha that helped disseminate the literati’s notions of samajik history had an elite and urban clientele. Regarded as a “high-class journal”, the Tattvabodhini was popular among educated, mainly high caste Bengalis, having a monthly circulation of eight hundred copies.61 Issues of rural uplift and improvement of the condition of the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal, though addressed, remained relatively marginal to the concerns of the Tattvabodhini. Similarly, the periodical Som Prakash circulated mainly among the elite and urban sections. Collaboration between the aristocrats and the professional middle class, and the popularisation of their ideas in Brahmo journals reveal how mentalities conjoined in an ‘elite’ view of samaj. What was lacking was an active participation of the ‘lower orders’ in the literati’s project of samajik itihas through a uniform and meaningful grafting and valorisation of histories of their samajs articulated in their own voice to that of the high-caste, professional, western-educated literati. The elite orientation was evident also in meetings and conventions held as late as the first and second decades of the twentieth century. In , an All-India Kayastha Sammelan was held in the Calcutta Town Hall under Maharaj Girijanath Ray Bahadur.62 Despite the elite bent / limitation, some groups among the ‘lower orders’ were included within

61 See James Long, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta, ), p. xiii. 62 This speech of Maharaj Bahadur of Dinajpur was printed in Ananda Bajar Patrika,  Magh, .

samaj and perspectives on unity



a re-imagined samaj approximating nationhood, and multiple shades of viewpoints relating to the lower ‘others’ created tensions in the rhetoric of a ‘Hindu’ discourse.63

The Formation and Types of Samajs Nationhood, redefined through a history of culture and attachment based on the idea of a harmonious social order, was crucially connected to the formation of samaj over historical eras. The roots of social formation were seen as embedded in interrelations between samaj and other social collectivities such as jati and sampraday.64 Even while distinguishing jati and sampraday, and specifically pointing out the ways in which they emerged and developed in Bengal, the literati considered samaj to be an accommodative conceptual rubric that could unite castes, jatis and sampradays. An article in Nabya Bharat written in the late nineteenth century construed the relationship between samaj and sampraday as that between the whole and the parts, and underlined the distinction between jati, sampraday and caste by arguing that the caste connotations of Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra were later encrustations on a sampradayik core. The early Aryan samaj consisted of three sampradays— Purohit, Kshatriya and Vaishya formed according to occupational criteria. The Purohits were not the Brahman jati; they later developed into the Brahaman sampraday. The Hindu samaj grew on the basis of these three sampradays and that of the Shudra, which emerged later. Brahmans were the leaders of this vast samaj-rajya, the Kshatriyas were its preservers, and the Vaishyas and Shudras were its component parts.65 This account resonates to Kaliprasanna Das’s view that jatis, castes and sampradays could be fitted into the overarching framework of samaj.66 Analyses of caste histories therefore became relevant in moves to re-configurate unity.

63

See Chapter IV for details. According to Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, jati approximated caste, while sampraday referred to groups divided according to economic, cultural, educational and occupational criteria. Sampraday could also mean religious community and sect. See Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, Jati Bhed (Calcutta, ), p. . 65 Debendranath Mukhopadhyay, “Hindu Samajer Prachin O Adhunik Abastha” Nabya Bharat, Volume , Number  (Ashar, ), pp. –. The expression samaj-rajya is indicative of the polity/society interconnection. 66 Kaliprasanna Das, Barnasram Dharma O Hindu Jiban, p. . 64



chapter three Caste Samajs

The intersection and overlap between the conceptual sites of caste and samaj had interesting reflections in the literati’s descriptions of the rise of specific caste samajs in Bengal. These were reconstructed on the basis of sources of samajik history including local genealogies. The notion of caste as samaj was a salient feature of such descriptions, which often contained mythic elements. The deployment of myth intersecting with historical and sociological narrative filled the void of a disrupted past and provided continuity to accounts of caste and sub-caste samajs. Local myths often shared familiar ground with ‘main’ legends explaining the rise of the Bengali society and the ramifications of the caste system in Bengal as a whole. Nagendranath Basu’s deployment of the legend of Adityasur in his account of the Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj closely resembled that of Adisur: “In , Adityasur, the king of Rarh, invited five Kayasthas to come to Rarhdesh who promulgated new social rules and regulations.”67 Other accounts of the Kayastha Samaj also revealed mythic strands. Kalinath Chaudhuri wrote that Parasu Rama killed the last Kshatriya, Chandrasen and had one son called Kayastha, who adopted Chitragupta’s dharma, and inculcated codes of conduct among Kayasthas.68 Samajs of other castes and sub-castes were also supposed to have puranic origins. Kalinath Chaudhuri’s graphic description of the emergence of the Baidya Samaj reflected lineages from the Skandapurana.69 His account traced the origin of specific caste and sub-caste samajs in Bengal to intermixture between the more well known castes of the fourfold caste system on the one hand, and intermediate castes on the other. At the same time it sought to demonstrate that the notion of caste as samajs had been present in Bengal for several centuries. How did caste samajs act as a site for forging unities? Samajik unity was supposed to have been personified in chiefs of samajs (for instance, Udaynarayan Mitra)70 who had been granted titles. Titled persons such 67 These was lack of consensus among Bengalis regarding the year in which Adisur was supposed to have invited five Brahmans from Kanauj to Bengal. While Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (basing his view on Kshitish Vamsavali Charit) believed it to be  ad, others believed that the import of Brahmans from Kanauj occurred earlier. Assigning an earlier chronology to Adisur’s invitation of Brahmans, Nagendranath Basu linked it to the legend of Adityasur. For details about the Adityasur legend, similar to the Adisur myth, see Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda, pp. –. 68 Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 69 Ibid., p. . 70 Udaynarayan Mitra became the chief of Bengal Kayasthas. See Shashibhushan

samaj and perspectives on unity



as Jagannath Sinha (titled ‘Sarbadhikari’) often rose to the rank of samajpatis (chiefs of samaj).71 Another notable leader, Lakshmidhar, given the title of ‘Kularaj’ (king of kula or family), won laurels in a conference of families.72 These samajpatis drew up rules and regulations, and approved certain customs and social norms which determined the structural, functional and connotative frames of these groups, as well as facilitated intergroup connections. Connections between caste samajs and the Muslim court of Bengal, as well as links with earlier (ancient and medieval) samajs of consequence, and with other caste samajs widened the basis of unity. Nagendranath Basu explained how these elements intersected in the rise of the Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj under Purandar Khan. His father Ishan Khan held a high post in the Muslim court of Bengal, and Purandar had connections with the Bangaja Kayastha Samaj. During the s he was connected with the Brahman samaj as well, and despite being a Kayastha, was involved in its improvement.73 Fusions between Brahman and Kayastha families were also highlighted through the evidence of scripts discovered in Bengal and elsewhere, especially fourth and fifth century texts from the Deccan, and Bangshabrahman (a text relating to the ancient Bengali samaj).74 These showed that Brahmans had titles like Basu, Sen and Gupta. The literati reasoned that as these titles were not in use in the present Brahman samaj, but were found among Kayasthas and Baidyas, many ancient Brahman families must have merged with the samaj of Kayasthas and others. Moreover, familial histories constructed from genealogical lists were often contextualised with reference to the wider stream of Bengal’s social history. For instance, Kalinath Chaudhuri traced the rise of the Lahiri family and their connection with a wider Bengali samaj.75 Emphasis on samajik unities forged through connections between premodern caste samajs can be related to late nineteenth century changes in the social scenario in Bengal. The relative fluidity of the caste system in Bengal (instead of the fourfold division, Bengalis were divided into Brahman and Shudra, and all forty-one jatis of Bengal fitted into this Bidyalankar, Jiboni Kosh, Bharatiya Aitihasik, Volume  (Calcutta: Debabrata Chakrabarty, ), p. . 71 Nagendranath Basu, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda, p. . 72 Ibid. 73 Nagendranath Basu, “Purandar Khan O Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj”, Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 74 Dineshchandra Sarkar, Sanskritik Itihaser Prasanga (Calcutta, ), p. . 75 See Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas, pp. –.



chapter three

classification)76 interacted with the waning of birth as the sole marker of social status. The latter now came to be governed by criteria of wealth and education. The projection of present identities into the past revealed a living link between late colonial realities and sociological lineages of a much earlier era. The link between the past and the present was also clear in the literati’s emphasis on continuities embedded in samajik transitions. Some samajik unions embracing people of different castes had existed for centuries, and acquired new dimensions during the second half of the nineteenth century. One of these was the ekjai, the organisation of a sub-caste, which represented samaj/society for all practical purposes.77 In  Purandar Khan formed an ekjai.78 The ekjai as a social forum continued through the centuries. During the colonial period Raja Nabakrishna Deb of Shobhabazar convened ekjais. In , the Ekjai Patrika was started by the Debs. Their initiative demonstrates how region-specific samajik chiefs joined in a caste-based ekjai to create a forum for unity. The Debs were helped by Rajnarain Basu of the Mahinagar Samaj, Brajakishor Ghosh of Bali Samaj and Joykrishna Basu of the Baganda Samaj.79 Samajik imaginings rooted in such traditions of unity and their re-orientations unfolded within a mentality connecting the thought processes of the ‘orthodox’ Hindu Bengalis (the Debs of Shobhabazar) and the reformist Brahmos (represented by men like Rajnarain Basu).

Sub-regional Samajs and Roots of Unity We have seen how connections between caste samajs and the mediating role of titled chiefs reconfigurated unity. Such linkages, asserted the literati, were also forged by sub-regional samajs of Bengal, which had existed since the medieval era. To the literati, the significance of sub76

Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba (Calcutta, ), pp. –. The Bengali Brahmans though enjoying a high ritual status, never held that exclusive high social and economic position that the Brahmans of South India had enjoyed in the past. They had to share economic and social power with other castes. See Andre Beteille, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –, –. 77 The leader of the sub-caste was known as the goshthipati. For details about the formation of ekjais in the late eighteenth century, see Pradip Sinha, “Calcutta and the Currents of History, –”, in Sukanta Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta: The Living City, Volume I (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 78 Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas, p. . 79 Ibid., pp. –.

samaj and perspectives on unity



regional samajs was threefold: () they acted as a platform for uniting people of different castes, but belonging to the same village and/or administrative unit such as pradesh (of the Sena era), pargana or subah (era of the Pathan nawabs and the Mughal period); () they had preserved unity in the face of foreign invasions; and () they were emblematic of a pan-Bengali unity. The literati highlighted the rise of the Bikrampur Samaj of Ballal Sen which included different castes such as Brahmans, Kayasthas, Baidyas, Nabashakhs and Baniks. Similarly the Jessore Samaj (sixteenth century) established by Raja Basanta Roy, ancestor of the Bengali hero Pratapaditya, during the latter’s lifetime, attracted different types of Bangaja and Dakshinrarhiya Kayasthas, Baidyas and Baniks. They were employed by Pratapaditya. Moreover, such sub-regional samajs proliferated into different branches. The Jessore Samaj got divided into the Sripur and Taki branches. Bhabanidas Raychaudhuri of Sripur gave monetary donations to many Brahmans, Kayasthas and Baidyas.80 Different branches of the same sub-regional samaj were connected through the leadership of certain individuals who controlled the working of the branch as well as the centre. Krishnadas of the Taki branch of the Jessore Samaj was one such leader, who became the Naib Goshthipati (deputy of an assembly of kindred families) of the Jessore Samaj.81 The instance of the Jessore Samaj showed that what originally started as a samaj of Kulin82 Kayasthas, later came to embrace many castes and social groups and provided the basis for a wider unity. Such bases of unity were considered to have been present in subregional samajs even before the formation of the Jessaore Samaj. In , Danujamardan Deb, a Bangaja Kayastha of the De family, formed the Baklanagar Samaj. It emblematised unity at several levels: co-operation among castes (Brahmans and Kayasthas) to maintain its internal order, a political-social unity as a counterpoint to Muslim invasion, and connections between sub-region and region. Satishchandra Raychaudhuri gave a graphic description of the rise and significance of this samaj:

80

See Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –. Ibid., p. . 82 The word ‘Kulin’ was taken from kula meaning family, and Kulin denoted a man of pure lineage. Kulins were orders of nobility introduced by Ballal Sen. The object of Kulinism was to maintain the purity of different families by dividing them into endogamous groups. For details on Kulinism see T. Raychaudhuri and B. Raychaudhuri, The Brahmans of Bengal (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 81



chapter three The Muslim invasions of Bengal led to social turmoil and decline . . . Following the ideals of the Brahman and Kayastha samajs, different jatis residing in other parts of Bengal formed their own samajs . . . leading to division and fragmentation. But this upheaval did not create divisions within the Bangaja Kayastha Samaj. When Bikrampur fell to the Muslims, Danujamardan Deb established a kingdom in the Brahmaputra delta in  and called it Chandradvip Rajya. He established a samaj in his previous capital Baklanagar. The Bangaja Kayastha Kulins . . . became members of this samaj, and invested the power of social control in Danujamardan’s hands . . . The internal organisation of the Baklanagar Samaj was facilitated by the appointment of a Brahman genealogist who maintained familial purity . . . a ranking of the Kayasthas, and composed books on family. This samaj later became the centre of Bangasamaj [Bengali samaj].83

Satishchandra Raychaudhuri’s description of the Baklanagar Samaj as a microcosm of the Bengali samaj reveals the inner link between a local samaj and the idea of a pan-regional samaj. These connections were mentally forged by certain social actualities. As the instances of Bakla and Jessore reveal, a sub-regional samaj, originally the preserve of a specific caste/sub-caste, could later embrace diverse castes and social groups, and provide a basis for a pan-regional unity. The Baklanagar Samaj, for instance, though originally a samaj of Bangaja Kayasthas, later inducted Brahman elements. Social inductions such as these helped forge an imaginative interconnection between a local samaj and a panregional identity. This in turn explained why Satishchandra Raychaudhuri named his book Bangiya Samaj, though it was primarily about the rise of the Jessore Samaj, and dedicated it to four samajik chiefs of Bengal, Ramkanta, Gopinath, Kalinath and Baikunthanath.84 In a similar vein, Nagendranath Basu’s deployment of the local legend of Adityasur (similar to the main legend of Adisur) in connection with the Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj revealed a linkage between the whole and the part. Nagendranath, though distinguishing the Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj from a pan-Bengali samaj, at a deeper level reworked local unity within a wider contextual grid of Bengali samajik origins and interconnections. Differences between particular sub-regional and caste samajs did not preclude an undercurrent of belonging to a larger entity. In a powerfully imagined regional samaj, distinctive essences were not diluted. On the contrary, through specific sub-regional variations, the many dimensions of the larger Bengali samaj acquired varied refinements. In some cases, 83 84

See Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –. Ibid., Preface.

samaj and perspectives on unity



the norms and practices of a sub-regional samaj spread all over Bengal. Satishchandra Raychaudhuri was convinced that the ideals of Pratapaditya’s Jessore Samaj spread to other parts of Bengal: The ideals of Pratapaditya’s Jessore Samaj were reflected in social formations in other parts of Bengal. From the time of Pratapaditya’s reign, Bengal’s samajik history has followed the ideals set by the Jessore Samaj . . . In order to elaborate the history of a local samaj, I have collected sources from the shores of Bengal’s jatiya [relating to the Bengali collective self] sea . . . I hope that these may help future historians of Bengal, and pave the way for the re-awakening of Bengal’s jatiya life.85

The spread of norms, practices and ideals of a specific sub-regional samaj to different parts of Bengal implied that certain social and cultural values and standards came to be emulated by different groups. The process seems to have some consonance with Susan Reynolds’ idea of specific patterns of action common to all kinds of groups, and their constitution into communities. In her analysis, the progression from local groups to kingdoms (a significant contribution to medieval politics) occurred through a particular grounding of the meaning of law. It implied a myriad of collective activities pursued by all groups: large, small, local, regional, central and national (which were all communities), and specialised knowledge in creating this law-learned community.86 Despite obvious differences of contexts (between Bengal and medieval Europe) and the particularity of constructions of larger communities (while in Europe the conceptual crux was the meaning of law and its transition; in Bengal it was the notion of harmonious society and the values and norms enshrined in that idea), the approach or analytic line taken here suggests that currently received historiographical concepts/categories (such as nation) should correspond to the “fluid and diverse past realities to which they are intended to refer”.87 Such past realities and their import were reflected in Satishchandra’s conceptualisation. It was emblematic of attempts to unite diverse elements of Bengal within specific pan-regional parameters, which were also underlined in sub-regional histories claiming to symbolise a people’s past. Jogendranath Gupta’s Bikrampurer Itihas envisioned the ideal of Bengali unity through a specific regional prism. To Jogendranath 85

Ibid., p. . See Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, – (Oxford: Clarendon Press, , nd edition, ). 87 See Piotr Gorecki’s Comment, “A View From a Distance”, Law and History Review, Vol. , No.  (), pp. –. 86



chapter three

Bikrampur symbolised the glory of entire Bengal. The history of Bikrampur was not merely the history of a single pargana. It contained elements of a pan-regional history applicable to Bengal as a whole.88 The logic of transition from region to nation, though internally contested,89 unfolded through intersections between caste and sub-regional samajs on the one hand, and the notion of a pan-regional Bengali samaj on the other. The idea of a Bengali samaj was then connected to that of an Indian (Bharatbarshiya) samaj through emphases on the incorporative nature of samaj rooted in dharma and atmiyata, and cultural Aryanism, which created a space for inclusions. This explained why and how a regional samaj could extend its limits to include ‘others’ such as the neighbouring ethnicities (Oriyas and Assamese) as well as other Indians adhering to the norms of cultural Aryanism. The demarcating line between the regional and a pan-Indian samaj was often blurred.90 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore referred to the unique features of a pan-Indian samaj, rather than narrowly focusing on the Bengali samaj. Bhudeb’s “Hindu samaj”91 and Rabindranath’s “swadeshi samaj”92 ideologically connected the region to the nation.

The Literati’s Imagination of Samaj: Influencing Parameters and Limitations The literati’s imaginings of nationhood underpinned by the ideology of samaj had inherent limitations. These limitations can best be understood by exploring the specific social parameters that underlay the literati’s thought-processes. As explained in Chapter I, their opinions actually formed a complex mosaic reflecting variations of familial background, upbringing and individual and group experiences. However, certain areas of consensus can be traced. The literati as a social group were influenced by the nature of transition that their own samaj was under88

See Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta, ), Introduction. The idea of a pan-Bengali, and indeed, a pan-Indian samajik unity was contested because it developed within the interstices of segmented identities. Unity co-existed alongside, and in contention with bonds of caste, micro-region and class. 90 This trajectory has been dealt with in detail in Chapter VII of this book. 91 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Samajik Prakriti: Hindu Ebong Oporapor Samaj”, in Pramathanath Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ), pp. –. 92 Rabindranath Tagore, Swadeshi Samaj (), printed in Sankalan (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 89

samaj and perspectives on unity



going. The colonial predicament unleashed changes that led to a rethinking of identities within the indigenous social hierarchy. Significant social parameters influencing the literati were changing criteria and indices of class, status, and titles reflecting social, and not political history. Criteria governing inclusions/exclusions of groups into the literati’s samaj stemmed from the social importance attached to class. Class here is not seen through the Marxian prism of economic divisions,93 but used to mean rank or status in society, and evaluated according to certain criteria including () education, especially western education, as well as erudition in indigenous traditional knowledge; () professional qualifications and employment under the raj; and () acquisition of wealth.94 Class, rooted in the above criteria, especially education, became more important than caste divisions based on familial pride. In late nineteenth century Bengal property/wealth could be acquired by taking up professions. These became more relevant than traditional caste status, although familial heritage and high birth were still significant social markers. S.N. Mukherjee has shown that the word ‘abhijat’ originally meaning high-born, or of aristocratic lineage, now even referred to ‘new zamindars’, traders, people of low castes who had amassed wealth, weavers (the Basaks of Calcutta) and the Baniks (goldsmiths). The latter belonged to the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy but were considered abhijat, and known by the generic term bhadralok.95 The juxtaposition of these criteria was evident in the acquisition of titles also. Earlier, as a continuing legacy of a tradition that stretched back to the medieval period, titles were granted to high-caste individuals who had distinguished themselves in their local samajs. These titles were conferred through local consensus and the intervention of samajik chiefs, as also by the ruling Muslim nawab. From the second half of the 93 Marxism holds that until the consolidation of socialism, societies are divided into antagonistic classes. In this scheme one’s class is determined by one’s relationship to the means of production. See Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 94 The importance of wealth as an index of social status was emphasised by Ramdulal Dey, a self-made man and a millionaire. He emphasised that money had the power of restoring caste. See Shib Chunder Bose, The Hindoos As They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal (Calcutta: Thacker Spink, ), p. . 95 S.N. Mukherjee, “The Bhadraloks of Bengal”, in Dipankar Gupta (ed.), Social Stratification (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . He clarified that high social status depended on both caste and class, and the literati were a group having upper caste and/ or upper class status.



chapter three

nineteenth century a more complex constellation governed status rules and social primacy. Girish Lahiri of Kasimpur, Rajshahi, acquired the title of “Ray Bahadur” from the British not merely because he was a scion of a local aristocracy, but also because he and his family members were educated, professionally qualified and associated with the colonial authority. Moreover, he was modest, courageous, determined and selfless. These qualities won for him, recognition from the Barendra Brahman Samaj.96 Conduct played a major role in determining a person’s social status. The relevance of conduct can be related to the earlier emphasis on caste and social supremacy deriving from high birth. The literati’s ideas were influenced by high-caste affiliation as well as the changing indices of social status mentioned above. The emphasis on education and professional qualifications as well as on a code of conduct ingrained in cultural Aryan-ness helped recast the literati’s self image as an aristocracy of culture. The literati, more specifically, the middle class was convinced of its superiority as a conscious social and intellectual group. Such perceptions had reflections in their ideas about nationhood underpinned by the notion of samaj. Their writings inevitably betrayed the particular bias of a professional ‘middle class’. As late as , Rabindranath Tagore stressed the Brahmanical basis of samaj. His views, expressed in a letter to Brajendrakishor Deb Barman, the son of the king of Tripura, revealed his convictions about the primacy of the Brahmans and Kshatriyas in the indigenous samaj.97 Tagore’s concern about the Brahmanical basis of samaj was related to his convictions about the duty of Brahmans to control and regulate society.98 These perceptions conditioned re-imaginations of samaj underpinned by the superiority and social roles of the higher castes. The remodelling of samaj according to these parameters involved a unity among the higher castes. Tagore regarded the Brahmans as the head of the samajik body, and in order to keep it high, the neck and shoulders also needed to be elevated. He argued therefore, that the samaj should accept the Baidyas, Kayasthas and Baniks as dvija (twice born, usually meaning Brahman).99 Thus the Brahmanical limitation of samaj was partially overcome by a redefinition of Brahmanhood itself. It was not a 96

Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rashahir Sankhipta Itihas, pp. –. Rabindranath Tagore’s letter to Brajakishor Deb, written on  Boishakh, , printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat, p. . 98 Rabindranath Tagore, “Brahman”, Bangadarshan (Ashar, ), printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat, pp. –. 99 Ibid. 97

samaj and perspectives on unity



matter of birth, but character. It was implicitly related to the idea of dharma, and the observance of a righteous life, by following specific social codes and practices. The crucial point, as Tagore explained, was that the Baidyas, Kayasthas and Baniks were not different from Brahmans in terms of their behaviour, intellect and ability. In other words, the qualities of cultural Aryan-ness were present in them. They were, however, very different from the true non-Aryans (the forest and hill tribes) who presumably did not follow the rules and regulations of dharma, and the cultural traits that comprised the essence of Aryan-ness.100 Defined within such parameters, upper caste/upper class bias though qualified in terms of cultural Aryan-ness had reflections in conceptualisations of samaj. An article in the periodical Som Prakash in  explicitly underlined the role of the social elite within and beyond Bengal in convening meetings to promote unity.101 However, there were complex strands in such attitudes. Responses and perceptions did not remain static over time, and were situationally altered. Tagore, for instance, later changed his patriarchal and Brahmanical stance.102 Other writers such as Dineshchandra Sen highlighted non-Brahmanical ‘folk’ elements of Bengali culture.103 The limitations of high caste affiliation and emphases on cultural Aryanism and the Brahmanical basis of samaj can be related to a more general overall limitation. The literati’s ideas about nationhood were undeniably framed within the cultural-nationalist parameters of Hindu identity.104 However, there was a tension in the rhetoric, and complex strands in an otherwise “Hindu discourse”. For instance, the literati’s conception of a social utopia based on their ideas about samaj and nationhood did not necessarily exclude non-Hindus such as Muslim in all contexts. The realms of utopia and reality converged in occasional and 100

Ibid., pp. –. “Hindu Samaj”, in Som Prakash ( Agrahayan, ), printed in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, Volume IV (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakash Bhaban, ), p. . 102 Changes in the attitude of an individual over specific periods have been mentioned by Sumit Sarkar. See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 103 See Dineshchandra Sen, Mymensingh Geetika (Calcutta, ) and Purbabanga Geetika (Calcutta, ). 104 According to Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta Bengali intellectuals in the late nineteenth century redefined identity in a hegemonic discourse that upheld a homogenised Hindu identity as Indian identity. See Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (unpublished thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, ), pp. , . 101



chapter three

situational inclusions of such communal ‘others’ into the re-imagined samaj. Satishchandra Raychaudhuri pointed out that during the rise of Taki’s Chaudhuri family in Basirhat, some high born Muslims acquired social status and were accorded respect.105 This can be related to the fact that, within a predominantly Hindu discourse, some voices stressed plurality. Akshoykumar Moitreya idealised an Indo-Islamic past.106 What was lacking, however, was a realistic integration of the histories of internal ‘others’ such as the ‘lower orders’ by tracing their own voice (as mentioned above), or of communal ‘others’ through social intermingling, or any significant and uniform valorisation of a joint Indo-Islamic heritage.

Towards a Better Samaj: A Paradigm of Decline and Progress Despite the limitations discussed above, samaj was situated within a historical context, with an aim to effect improvement and progress. To the literati samaj had an inherent life of its own, and this lay at the heart of its ability to harmonise difference. This inner dynamism also implied that it was possible to improve samaj and chart a future of betterment, crucially connected to the agenda of recreating the collective self. In  Kaliprasanna Sengupta’s lament compared the contemporary Bengali samaj to that in the ancient period and highlighted the need for change.107 Rabindranath Tagore in a similar vein, pointed out that present-day Bengalis had a duty toward improving their samaj: The root of social decline lies in the complacent attitude of those who say that samaj has been created by our predecessors and we have nothing more to do with it . . . Our ancestors have achieved great things, not because they shone in the reflected glory of their predecessors, but because they mediated . . . and effected changes . . . our minds and hearts must be linked with theirs. . . . It is only past achievement and present endeavour which awakens samajik strength . . . previously in the living entity of the samaj, the good of the community was related to that of the individual, and Brahmans, kings and householders [grihastha] supported the

105

Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, p. . See Akshoykumar Moitreya, Sirajuddaula. Also see Chapter II for details regarding Akshoykumar’s vision of a bygone Bengal ruled by the Muslim nawabs, which according to him formed a period of a common historical experience and legacy without oppositionally arraigning ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. 107 Kaliprasanna Sengupta’s article in Nirmalya (Bhadra and Ashvin, ), mentioned in Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, p. . 106

samaj and perspectives on unity



samajik structure through their respective duties and according to social norms and rules . . . Now the rules are there, but the consciousness is gone. There is no co-ordination between the whole and the parts.108

He recommended social improvement along courses charted by “our predecessors”, who identified the good of the community with that of the individual. The connection between individual consciousness and social rules would secure co-ordination of the whole and the parts, and awaken a living link between the nation’s past and its present.109 Writers such as Prasad Das Goswami also sharply counterpoised past and present samajs, and attempted to give positive guidelines for the improvement of samaj. Referring to samajs during the period of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the Bengali samaj during the Vaishnava era, he contrasted past harmony and righteousness to present decline. The crucial flaw, he argued, leading to decline, was the absence of concerted effort among Bengalis to effect improvement.110 In their endeavour to improve samaj, the literati were influenced by a social decline/progress paradigm, which traced the ascent and decline of particular social groups, customs and practices. Bengal became ‘unfortunate’ after social upheaval in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries splintered its unity. The survival of age-old social values in Danujamardan Deb’s Baklanagar Samaj could not entirely contain the downslide of the Bengali samaj.111 Such imaginings had repercussions, which were evident at a much later period also. Locating the cause of disharmony in social decay, Benoy Ghosh remarked on the stagnation in Bengali rural society from “the last years of the Hindu yuga”. Skilfully grafting sociological realities on to legend, he posed a significant question: Long before the Sena regime or the era of the imaginary Adisur Brahmans were residing in Bengal and had sufficiently high social status, but it had not been necessary bring Brahmans from Kanauj and teach them the Vedas and the Vedic customs. Nor had it been necessary to introduce Kulinism as a new social anchorage and an index to Brahmanical dignity and status. Why was it suddenly necessary to bring five Brahmans from Kanauj and why were Bengali Brahmans no longer well versed in the shastras [scriptural books including the Vedas and the puranas]?112

108 Rabindranath Tagore, “Bharatbarshiya Samaj” Bangadarshan (), printed in Satyendranath Ray (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta, pp. –. 109 Ibid. 110 Prasad Das Goswami, Amader Samaj (Serampore, ), pp. , –. 111 Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –. 112 Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, p. .



chapter three

Benoy Ghosh concluded that the idleness and decline of Bengali Brahmans and their incapacity to effect social progress reached a climax towards the end of Sena rule. Forsaking their calling as spiritual teachers, gradually, due to poverty, they turned toward priestly jobs only, but even in this task they could not maintain rules and norms. They took up the professions of other castes. Such stagnation and decay called for new social measures. One of these was Kulinism, introduced to resuscitate the high social position of the Brahmanic samaj, verging on the brink of destruction. But it was not possible to stall inner decay by an external regulation. Even Kulinism became an evil. The decline of Kulinism necessitated further social changes. Debibar re-arranged existing Kulin families according to the nature of the blemishes into different endogamous groups called mel.113 The degenerate social condition was worsened by the Muslim onslaught and the religious challenge of Islam. Moreover, the lure of patronage induced many Brahmans to engage in varied duties in the courts of Muslim rulers. This religious and social turmoil has been vividly portrayed in Vaishnava literature and Mangalkavya.114 This portrayal diluted the unifying force that samaj was envisaged to have. Connections between the modern nation and the historical society from whence it emerged were, as Prasenjit Duara has expressed, neither “simple” nor “continuous”.115 Conscious of these inner ruptures in Bengal’s social history, the literati problematised the issue of unity within the context of past turmoil, and then posited it against the current scenario of fragmentation, and shifts in indices of social status. In , the anonymous author of Hindu Jati lamented: Most of us have forgotten that we are integral parts of the samaj and have a special relation to it. Our indifference towards the samaj has made us apathetic to the Bengali jati also.116

The trope of social decline led to unease about the present samaj, and a dream for a ‘better’ samaj. The plan for improvement followed the twin 113 Nagendranath Basu contended that Debibar made this arrangement in . Dhruvananda Misra completed the arrangement a few years later, in the Mahavamsa, in . These details have been mentioned in ibid., p. . 114 Ibid. 115 Admitting the complexity of these connections and internal breaks helps one avoid being ensnared in myths of a continuous nation which Elie Kedourie warned against. In this context see Prasenjit Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China”, in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India (New Delhi: Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Gyan Publishing House, ). 116 Hindu Jati, by an anonymous author (Calcutta, ), p. .

samaj and perspectives on unity



trajectories of inculcation of dharma, implying the cultivation of certain qualities and social practices, and the inclusion of people who followed these practices within a remodelled Bengali samaj. Crucial in these imaginings was a rethinking of past samajs within two contexts. One was turmoil in past samajs, as described above. The other, more significant from the viewpoint of the literati’s cultural-nationalist agenda, was relating past unity to the present in a way that the past samajs served as a model for the improvement of the present samaj, and also provided a blueprint for a future ‘better’ samaj. In this utopic construction, nostalgia for the past played a major role, and history and literature intermeshed for instance, in Mukundaram’s portrayals of sixteenth-century Bengali society. These included idyllic pictures of self-sufficient village communities where different castes including ‘lower orders’ such as the Gandhabaniks, Malakars and Tambulis followed their respective professions and rejoiced in simple amusements.117 In these pictures the idea of the ‘lower orders’ as a distinct and excluded ‘other’ had not fully crystallised, a comment on the late nineteenth century hardening of such divisions. The portrayal has lasted and still serves its purpose as an ideal of social harmony. In , a social historian of Bengal referred to an ancient samaj, drawing from Manikchand’s Geet.118 His account resonates to Mukundaram’s views about social harmony resulting from people following their respective caste-based occupations. Such nostalgic representations highlighted certain supposedly enduring bases of samajik unity. Pilgrimages, for instance, bound people of different regions by the thread of religious sentiment. Premodern sources such as the works of Ketakadas Khemananda, cited by social historians of Bengal, made it clear that pilgrimages were frequently undertaken, especially to Allahabad.119 Also emphasised was the element of liberality, specifically the tolerance of Vaishnavism, which accorded status to ‘lower’ groups such as the Sahas and non-Aryan merchants in Hindu society.120

117 See J.N. Dasgupta, Bengal in the Sixteenth Century (Calcutta: Calcutta University Readership Lectures, ), pp. –, . 118 Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj (Calcutta: Mitrani, ), pp. –. 119 Ibid. 120 This spirit of liberality was referred to with substantiating examples in Nagendranath Basu, Pirali Kanda, and also in the genealogical work of Debibar and the Gaudiya section of Vaishnavism. For details see Tamonash Chandra Das Gupta, Aspects of Bengali Society from Old Bengali Literature (Calcutta, ), pp. –.



chapter three

These conceptions of harmony were redefined during the second half of the nineteenth century, and applied in interesting interrelations between Bengalis and other Indians. Mukundaram’s account portrayed Marathas as peaceful citizens, quite different from the plunderers of a later period.121 There was congruence between his account and Mirat Ahmadi, a work composed by a historian of Gujarat because both drew from a traditional account long prevalent in India.122 These seem to embody an inherent idea of the Bengali samaj as a part of a wider entity. An undercurrent of a syncretic identity is also evident from an earlier genre of self-representation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Kumkum Chatterjee has drawn attention to an Indo-Islamic genre of histories and treatises.123 Akshoykumar Moitreya also remarked on earlier occasional attempts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to ‘rediscover’ the Bengali past on the basis of regionspecific history-writing. He considered Saiyad Elahi Baksh Angrejabadi’s manuscripts invaluable in this regard.124 Thus aspects of the Bengali samaj in the ancient era and during Muslim rule were viewed with the aim of capturing continuities and changes as they unfolded through history.

Conclusion Samaj therefore became the site where the past, present and future of the jati interlocked in a meaningful relationship. As this chapter has sought to demonstrate, the idea of samajik unity was not an emergent or sudden phenomenon in late colonial Bengal. But it was only during this period that there was a conscious interplay between such ideas and notions about the collective self, reflected in a historically indexed and structured discourse on cultural nationalism. The re-imagination of a future, ‘better’ samaj, was in many ways a utopic construction, dissociated from social actualities such as a realistic integration of the ‘lower orders’ and Muslims into the samaj through social intermingling. But in the late nine121 J.N. Dasgupta, Bengal in the Sixteenth Century, p. . “Borgis” was the term given to bands of Maratha plunderers who extorted revenue after the Maratha invasion of Bengal during Alivardi Khan’s reign. 122 Ibid., p. . 123 Kumkum Chatterjee, “History as Self-Representation”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ), p. . 124 Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha, p. .

samaj and perspectives on unity



teenth century context of recasting identity, a dream-arena as the ideological foundation for change was especially significant. History became a theatre of hopes, dreams, and wish-fulfilment. In Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Svapnalabdha Bharbarsher Itihas, a different course of events was played out in the historical landscape. These led on to the ideal of unity that awakened in a new aurora. The paintbrush of time on the canvas of eternity moves over the dawns and dusks of eras long gone. Memory follows him, attempting to articulate these portrayals in language.125

The author is the companion of memory and calls himself “hope”. He traverses with dawn to a brighter tomorrow.126 Through such imagery and metaphors, dreams, hopes and a wish for a new samaj blended in the historical imagination of the Bengali literati. Thus the evolution of the notion of a nation cannot simply be abstracted from a tradition that went back five hundred years. The literati were not simply ‘inventing’ traditions or creating identities ex nihilo. The earlier instances of unity were not merely traditions that masqueraded as immemorial, but formed living links in the ontology of being and becoming a nation. They formed part of the complex weave of the idea of nationhood in Bengal. The past and the present fused into the imagining of nationhood because samaj was a continuity: it existed as a historical society (past), and an idea-in-practice (present/late colonial), and certain elements and features, codes of conduct, ‘Aryan’ values and the primacy of dharma persisted over time. The samajik chiefs and kings of premodern Bengal, and the Bengali intelligentsia during the late colonial period shared common ground in that they believed in these common ideals as forming the basis for forging a wider unity. Indeed, the manifold dimensions and trajectories of the late nineteenth century Bengali quest for an empowered identity had links with much earlier conceptualisations of samajik formation. So a nuanced appreciation of the historical process would require a more coherent investigation located within a longer and more continuous process of the unfolding of identities in Bengal.

125 126

Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Svapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas (Hugli, ), p. . Ibid., p. .

chapter four CASTE, CLASS AND INTERNAL ‘OTHERS’: ‘LOWER ORDERS’ IN BENGAL

Ideas about nationhood grounded in samaj problematised the issue of creating unity alongside, and in contention with fragmentation. We have seen how the splintering of identities along lines of caste, sub-caste and sub-region was negotiated via the conceptual category of samaj in Bengal. The literati’s discourse sought to forge an overarching unity among the upper castes in Bengal (Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas)1 between the interstices of difference through the deployment of samaj, seen as emblematic of unity in past (historical) contexts of medieval multicaste samajs, and juxtaposing it to colonial experiential realities of social mobility. What remained a significant issue was the mediation of the ‘others’ of high caste Bengali samaj: the ‘lower orders’ encompassing a multilayered group of low castes, low classes, adivasis (original inhabitants, usually applied to non-Aryan tribal groups), and untouchables. How was their ‘otherness’ reconstituted and mediated in the discourse on nationhood woven around the idea of samaj? The inclusion/exclusion of ‘lower orders’ was crucial because of two main reasons. First, they formed a contrasting image of the high-caste, professional, elite samaj of the literati, and helped define the latter through comparison. Second, they could not remain marginal to the discourse because the recreation of a jati through the conceptual tool of samaj implied conceptualisations of wider unities. By tracing the specific ways in which the idea of samaj mediated the otherness of ‘lower orders’ in Bengal, and co-opted specific groups among them, I suggest that the literati’s discourse cannot be simplistically considered as a hegemonic and homogenised high-caste and high-Hindu metanarrative absorbing the particularisms of ‘lower orders’ through discourses of power, which were seamless and without internal 1 The traditional fourfold caste division: Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras was absent in Bengal and there were only two major divisions: Brahmans and Shudras. The high castes in Bengal included the Brahmans and the Baidyas and Kayasthas (the latter two groups belonged to the upper section of Sat Shudras). The distinctive features of the caste system and its origins and development in Bengal are discussed in the course of this chapter.



chapter four

tensions. This chapter illuminates how samaj mediated the fragmentation of Indian society in vertical terms, that is as a hierarchical chain where each caste/group knows its own place and has a fixity,2 as well as in regard to peripheries or outer margins.3 Such mediations set the discourse on ‘lower orders’ in finer and nuanced contexts of multiple layers of inclusion, co-opting and situational exclusion of specific groups and categories. In tracing the main lines of the discourse, I consider how the axes of caste and class identity came to be interrelated in debating and addressing the issue of otherness of the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. In late colonial Bengal, caste and class intertwined in restructuring groups and imbuing them with social status, which did not, in all cases, derive solely from high caste affiliation (the pride of kula). Class, seen as social rank, paralleled and intersected with the importance deriving from inherited kula (caste) identity and status. This does not elide the use of ‘class’ in the sense of economic groups such as peasants, manual labourers and workers, who were also considered as contextual ‘others’ of high-caste Bengali society. The intersection of the categories of caste and class explains why I use the term ‘lower orders’ to include both ‘low’ and ‘excluded’ castes as well as ‘low’ classes. Stretching across a wide spectrum, the ‘lower’ groups and categories could include adivasis, lower castes, lower occupational groups (manual labourers, workers, coolies on Assam tea plantations), and villagers, as well as relatively lower urban groups verging on the

2 According to Louis Dumont, hierarchy is the core value behind the caste system. Though in certain cases hierarchy is associated with power, Dumont believed that there was no need for this. The ideological foundations of hierarchical values in India inhered in the fact that India has always been mired in spiritual and otherworldly concerns. See Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, translated by Mark Sainsbury et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. . This line of thought has been critiqued: Nicholas B. Dirks believes that this viewpoint is deeply problematic and as old as Orientalism itself. See Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, ), p. . 3 The margins imply boundaries which are seen as the segregated outer peripheries of the world of higher castes. See Partha Chatterjee, “The Nation and its Outcastes”, in The Nation and its Fragments (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ). The issue of marginalities has come to occupy a crucial place in current Indian historiographies. ‘Margins’ encompass a variety of supposed and stereotypical ‘others’ of the nation, including tribal others, women, adivasis, dalits and untouchables. Attempts to ‘rescue’ the forgotten and silenced others of the nation and bring them back or write them into histories of India have focused on dalit movements, constructions of identities on the part of ‘tribals’ and the ways such identities have figured in major watershed-events and movements (such as the recent engagement with how and what roles the dalits played in the Revolt of ).

caste, class and internal ‘others’



borders of poor but respectable folk (daridra athacha bhadra lok).4 I seek to show how within the terms and trajectories of the discourse, the lines dividing these social sections/groups were often overlapping and permeable. In an era of realignment of social loyalties, colonial appraisals and sociological stereotypes, insecurities and confident re-evaluations of the self existed simultaneously. The closely-knit social circle and interconnections among certain sections of the Bengali literati constituted, in a sense, an internal samaj as a microcosm of the wider notion of sub-regional samajs and a regional samaj encompassing the whole of Bengal. The idea of such a samaj, as mentioned in Chapter III, was present in Satishchandra Raychaudhuri’s Bangiya Samaj.5 The conceptualisation of such a samaj could not elude two interrelated crucial questions: How were the ‘lower orders’ within Bengal (constituting an immediate and more internal other than for instance, the neighbouring ethnicities) related to the literati’s internal ‘elite’ samaj? How were the ‘lower orders’ to be related to an overarching idea of a Bengali samaj? Lines of juxtaposition to, overlap with, and segregation between ‘lower’ groups and high castes and classes (the literati’s ‘elite’ samaj) were evident in many tracts on samaj and history. In the light of such comparisons and connections, the reframing of what it was to be ‘Bengali’ needs to be related to an enquiry whether the terms ‘jati’ and ‘samaj’ could be applied in the context of ‘lower orders’ within Bengal. In other words, was jati, in addition to being used alongside the name of a specific ‘lower’ group such as Santhal jati (here jati is used in the sense of tribe), an inclusive term which incorporated the ‘lower’ other/others? In what ways did the term ‘Bengali jati’ include or exclude the nimna (lower) jatis? The intent here is not to analyse individual lower caste histories, and protest movements like that of the Namashudras,6 tribal/adivasi histories, trace the various 4

This category has been referred to by Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . See Chapter I for details about how this category formed a part of, and interacted with other sections of a multilayered Bengali literati. 5 The Jessore Samaj in Bengal, as mentioned in detail in Chapter III, was originally a samaj of Kayasthas. It later came to include men of other castes, and was emblematic of a pan-Bengali samajik unity. See Satishchandra Ray Chaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ), pp. –. 6 This has been done by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in “Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, –” in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi: Manohar, ). Also see Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest



chapter four

stages and inner differences in ways of evaluating caste,7 or focus exclusively on contrasting or contesting urban worlds of the bhadralok and the commoner.8 Rather, it is to see specific groups and categories within the ‘lower orders’ through the prism of the samaj related to jati. This study seeks to analyse in detail the nuances of the literati’s treatment of certain groups and categories, traditionally excluded on the ground of imputed inferiority. Tracts and articles in periodicals relating to the ‘lower orders’ were written by three types of individuals. First were high caste, professional literati whose ideas about samaj (albeit conceptualised in Brahmanical/high-caste terms) could not elude discussions about the ‘lower orders’ as a marginal and contrasting other, viewed primarily in exclusionary terms. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, a Brahman author, whose views had an impact on Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, belonged to this group. The impact of changing social values and the importance of indices of status (other than birth/caste) resulted in more egalitarian expressions. Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, a professionally qualified Brahman, wrote Shudrer Puja O Vedadhikar () and Jati Bhed (): tracts advocating a more egalitarian social order than that afforded by existing caste divisions. The preface of Shudrer Puja O Vedadhikar was written by Banamali Chakraborty, a Brahman professor of Guwahati College. The egalitarian note found additional emphasis in tracts by high caste Brahmo authors such as Ramananda Chattopadhyay (a Brahman). Secondly, there were less well-known literati having relatively humbler roots, who were helped by professional individuals and the landed abhijat. Dineshchandra Sen referred to one Chandra Kumar De, the son of a poor man of Aithor village in Mymensingh. He was self-educated, and got the post of a rent-collector, which brought him into contact with the peasants. His direct experience of their culture, expressed in baramashi songs awakened in him a love of the folk element in Bengal, and he wrote several interesting articles in the local journal Sourabha. Its editor, Kedarnath Majumdar encouraged Chandra Kumar in his literary attempts, and later, Bijoy Kumar Lahiri, a zamindar of Kalipur in Mymensingh, became his friend and sponsor,

and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, – (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, ). 7 See Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). 8 Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Street: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull, ).

caste, class and internal ‘others’



and engaged him as his office clerk on eight rupees a month.9 Thirdly, there were educated individuals of occupationally ‘low’ castes seeking uplift. Barindrakula (), a treatise on the Barindra caste of weavers was written by two members of that caste, Radhanath and Haridas Basak. Attempts to improve the lot of ‘lower orders’ through discussions in tracts were often the result of joint help of individuals and groups of different social layers. High caste periodicals such as the Hindu Patrika () the Kayastha Patrika and the Aitihasik Chitra (), and lawyers such as Rashbehari Das and Satyacharan Chandra, as well as low caste individuals such as Kunjabehari Mondol and Abinash Chandra Mondol helped in the publication of Pitambar Sarkar’s Jati Vikas ().10 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, the Brahman author of Sambandhanirnoy (a tract concerned primarily with Brahmans, and other castes as supplements) referred to the work of Madhusudan Nandi (a man of the low, intermediate Tili caste), who was later helped by Kalidas Sharma and Ramgati Nyayratna (a famous Brahman pundit and historian).11 Complexities arose due to ideological shifts over time and variations across social layers and individuals due to familial upbringing and backgrounds. While at a more general level, criteria governing inclusion/exclusion stemmed from a common ideological framework underpinned by the values of samaj and cultural-Aryan-ness, subtle differences and variations remained. The borders were not fixed but variable: subject to change over time and situationally adjusted according to ideological shifts of the social group engaged with questions of identity. Digindranarayan Bhattacharya’s Jati Bhed () needs to be analysed in connection with the early twentieth century milieu of changing attitudes towards ‘low’ castes. During this time (post Swadeshi era) Rabindranath Tagore also moved away from his Brahmanical and paternalist stance,12 an instance of different reaction patterns in the same individual at different times. Attitudes also varied according to local influences, individual familial upbringing and early experiences. Ramananda Chattopadhyay’s empathetic treatment of the ‘lower orders’ stemmed from his familial background and early upbringing. Despite inherent tensions,

9

Dineshchandra Sen, Mymensingh Geetika (Calcutta, ) Introduction. See Pitambar Sarkar, Jati Vikas (Calcutta, ), p. . 11 See Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Sambandhanirnoy, Volume I (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 12 This has been mentioned in Chapter III. See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 10



chapter four

ambivalences and differences of opinion and outlook arising from such variations, there were certain areas of consensus and convergence, linking multiple strands in the discourse on ‘lower orders’. An involvement with specific groups belonging to the ‘lower orders’ and attempts to improve their lot through education was common in the works not only of well-known intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore, but also of writers of articles in periodicals such as Pradeep, and in travel literature relating to neighbouring areas including Assam. This consensus about educating the ‘lower orders’ can be traced to similarity of ideological roots among the advocates of such improvement. Rabindranath Tagore, writers of articles in the periodical Pradeep, and the authors of travel literature mentioned above were Brahmos, noted for their opposition to the iniquities of the caste system, and their belief in progress and rationalism. Other points of consensus included the view that the distance between the samajs of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ could be bridged by melas (fairs), and inculcation of a proper code of conduct through education of certain sections of the excluded. These overlaps, juxtapositions and convergences of opinion make the literati’s treatment of the ‘lower orders’ a sensitive, complex and contested terrain, where segregations and inclusions need to be assessed against the backdrop of historical and sociological considerations, and shifts within the bhadralok samaj.

Antecedents, Contexts, and Shifts from Colonial Sociology Though the treatment of ‘lower orders’ by the Bengali literati acquired a special significance from the second half of the nineteenth century, all ideas about the ‘lower orders’ within Bengal expressed in this discourse, were not entirely sudden or emergent in the sense of having no precedent. Various sets of opinion about the ‘lower’ others had been articulated in tracts, pamphlets and genealogical lists prior to the mid and late nineteenth century. The Mahavamsa (a genealogical list or kulapanjika) of Dhruvananda Misra, dating back to the fifteenth century () dealt with lower castes in Bengal during the Sena era, organising and reorganising various ranks and grades made by social reformers to meet the needs of changing circumstances.13 Medieval poetry contained

13 Promode Lal Paul, The Early History of Eastern Bengal, Volume I (New Delhi: Sharada Prakashan, ), p. .

caste, class and internal ‘others’



more detailed descriptions of ‘lower orders’ in sixteenth century Bengal. Kabikankan Mukundaram referred to itar jatis such as Kolu, Bagdi, Koch, Darji, Majhi and Kol. Most of these groups were occupationally ‘low’, in addition to being uneducated and low born.14 As the kulacharya of the Bhattanarayan family, Dhruvananda wrote about familial norms of Kulins, and also discussed details relating to the samajs of the lower castes in Bengal. His book was highly acclaimed by the Rarhiya Brahman Kulacharya Samaj.15 But the main concern of writers such as Dhruvananda and even of Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, writing at a much later period (s) was the social condition of Brahmans.16 However, these works could not elude discussions of the ‘lower’ jatis as a contrasting image.17 Responses to the ‘lower’ others during the late nineteenth century echoed such earlier ideas, but also acquired new resonances especially from the second half of the century. The momentous changes in Bengali society, evident from the beginning of the nineteenth century conditioned ‘new’ viewpoints about the ‘lower orders’. The samaj of the literati underwent transformations due to the impact of western education, the trials and tribulations of a madhyabitta caught up in the throes of educated unemployment, changing indices of samajik (social) status, and permeable borders relating to who could belong to the bhadralok class.18 In addition to the impact of changes within the literati’s own samaj, colonial sociology, taxonomies, labelling of ‘low’ castes, occupational groups, adivasis and tribes,19 formed a significant evolving context conditioning the literati’s evaluation of the ‘lower orders’, especially in regard to the question of their inclusion into a re-imagined samaj approximating nationhood. The conviction that caste opposed nationality was inbuilt into the technologies and strategies of imperial rule. Caste, seen as an ‘essence’ of the Indian sociological landscape, paradigmatically represented a divided and divisive country where imperial rule could not

14

Mukundaram’s description has been referred to in Ibid. Nagendranath Basu (ed.), Bisva Kosh, Volume IX (reprinted Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, ), p. . 16 Relevant in this context is the discussion of Vidyanidhi’s Sambandhanirnoy in an article, “Bange Brahmanidhikar”, Bangadarshan (Agrahayan, ), p. . 17 See Sumangal Rana, Shorosh Sataker Bangla Samaj O Sahitya (Bolpur, ), p. . 18 See Chapter I for details about changes in the literati’s social world during the nineteenth century. 19 I have discussed in Chapter II the impact of colonial sociological exercises on the reframing of identity by the literati. 15



chapter four

be threatened by a genuine nationalist movement: caste politics came to be trivilised as localistic, particularistic and divisive.20 Seen as being omnipresent in Indian history, caste explained why India had no history (or no sense of history). Relegated to the realm of ‘tradition’, it was considered the threatening ‘other’ of India’s modernity.21 This division and the idea of caste being antipathetic to the crystallisation of feelings of nationality found further resonance in the related colonial conviction that Indian society was controlled by a Brahman-centred system. The idea drew upon a racial model where castes were seen as races: while the ‘upper’ castes (particularly the Brahmans) were considered as ‘Aryans’, the ‘low’ castes were the descendants of the Dravidians (non-Aryans). Indians, apart from so-called tribals and followers of minority faiths were supposed to be slaves to rigid Brahman-centred caste values.22 That colonial sociology, or in a more general sense, the encounter between India and the British had a significant impact in ‘constructing’, shaping or reconstituting caste has remained a common argument among scholars of different persuations. This idea has recently been given a novel orientation by Nicholas B. Dirks. Qualifying the argument that the British ‘invented’ caste, or that it was a natural essence of a ‘traditional’, unmodern India, Dirks argues that caste, as we know it today, is a modern phenomenon. It is specifically the product of a historical encounter between India and colonial rule. His thesis about the ‘modernity’ of caste rests on the belief that it was under the British that ‘caste’ became a single term capable of expressing, organising, and above all systematising India’s diverse forms of social identity, community and organisation.23 These general identifiable strands embedded in the colonial sociology of caste were reflected in sociological tenets and ethnographical theories as applied to Bengal. Though Bengal was a late-Aryanised land,24 its inhabitants were nevertheless supposed to belong to the group of

20 See Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, ), p. . 21 Ibid., p. . 22 Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India, pp. , . 23 Dirks, Castes of Mind, p. . 24 Unlike the heartland of Aryan civilisation, Bengal was considered to be Aryanised later (th–th centuries). The idea found expression in the works of colonial scholarofficials such as W.W. Hunter as well as Bengali writers, writing at a much later period. See, for instance, Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas (Calcutta: Paschimbanga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, , reprinted ), pp. –, –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



caste-fettered tropical lowlanders.25 Here too, the motif of Brahman domination, and the centrality of Aryan/ non-Aryan dichotomy prevailed. The structuring of caste in terms of hierarchy was evident in works of scholar officials such as H.H. Risley. His view, reflected in the Census of , was that the caste system in Bengal was a rigidly structured hierarchy where everyone had a fixed location and a universal ritual rank.26 However, his own field reports suggest, as Sekhar Bandyopadhyay has pointed out, that caste rank varied enormously from district to district even within the same linguistic region of Bengal.27 Orientalist imaginings strove to retrieve and recover an ideal Hindu society governed by religion and ordered by caste. I argue that the colonial stereotypical imaging of caste (in Bengal too) as controlled by religion and a Brahmanical ethos was both drawn upon as well as subtly transmuted in the literati’s discourse. How did the literati mediate and adapt such viewpoints into their discourse and delineate a framework of unity despite the fact of caste division and the issue of ‘exclusion’ of ‘lower’ castes from a mainstream and dominant Brahmanical society? A study of ‘primary’ tracts reveals that there were various shades of opinion, which moved beyond any single explanatory frame claiming that indigenous (Bengali) observers writing about caste in the late nineteenth century could not get away from colonial stereotypical images.28 In contradistinction to this, I suggest that multiple viewpoints relating to ‘lower’ castes in Bengal in specific ways moved beyond such representations. I approach this theme of shifts from colonial discourses on caste (particularly low castes) in Bengal by tracking the ways in which modernity and earlier antecedents (including the pre and early colonial social and cultural climate/milieu and experiences) interacted to produce an analytic space which could forge contextual unities and connections between high and low castes. This line of argument re-appraises the twofold contrast implicit in prevailing convictions about the modernity/inventedness/constructed-ness/reconstitution of caste, that is: () modernity and caste; and () tradition and caste, encapsulated in the remark:

25

James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs,  vols. (London: White, Cochrane and Co., ). Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ), p. . 27 Ibid. 28 According to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Bengali writers such as J.N. Bhattacharya, who wrote Hindu Castes and Sects in  echoed familiar colonial representations of caste. See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony, pp. –. 26



chapter four . . . Caste haunts all assertions of return to a premodern past, all claims about the glories and values of tradition. Caste may be the precipitate of the modern, but it is still the spectre of the past.29

I argue that the Bengali literati in the late nineteenth century adapted specific colonial terms and concepts and grafted them onto categories shaped by earlier indigenous social ontologies. Such parameters redefined earlier thought-processes in a relational analysis incorporating perceptions of ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. The literati specified certain criteria which determined the limits of such inclusions, and also decided which among the ‘lower’ groups were to be excluded. At a time when colonial sociological and enumerative exercises and racial theories were gathering momentum, the literati adapted certain basic colonial dichotomies in their own classificatory scheme. One of these was the Aryan/nonAryan divide, grounded primarily in racial terms. But it was not an unmodified and simple adaptation, for it was influenced by intersections between other related classificatory criteria, such as codes of conduct, language, and religion. The Aryan/non-Aryan dichotomy was reinterpreted in terms of its cultural import, bringing into sharper relief comparisons between high-caste/ high-class professional literati and specific ‘lower’ groups such as the adivasis, tribes, occupationally lower categories, untouchables, and ritually low castes. The basic issue of Aryanness was complicated by the fact that Bengal was a late-Aryanised land, and the related belief that the caste system was not that rigid in Bengal.30 To such flexibilities were added egalitarian influences of Buddhism and traditions of tribal culture. Though the Sena period has been taken to be archetypically representing a resurgence of Brahmanical values, Brahmanisation has been endowed with an earlier genealogy by scholars such as Kunal Chakrabarti who argue that the post-Gupta period witnessed the Brahmanisation of Bengal. What emerged as a result of these multiple streams was the birth of what has been termed a “regional culture”31 or a syncretic socio-religious system. Flexibilities could also be traced to the Vaishnava ethos, and an earlier and continuing ideology of bhakti.32 The 29

Dirks, Castes of Mind, p. . Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas, pp. –, –. 31 Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , . 32 In the fifteenth century the Bhakti devotional movement was started by Chaitanya. This cult of devotionalism blended with traditions of Bengal (Gaudiya) Vaishnavism. See Ramakanta Chakrabarti, Vaishnavism in Bengal: – (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, ), pp. –. 30

caste, class and internal ‘others’



intersection between class and caste since the Gupta period, an index of the secular aspect of caste formation, as well as the proliferation of occupational groups (called jatis) transformed the varna to the jati system. The emergence of many subcastes and elements of social mobility33 operated within a nexus of social, political and material power. Such social mobility and elements of fusion evident in medieval Bengal and continuation of indigenous foci of social power (such as the dals or factions) in the early nineteenth century, as well as social mobility during the colonial period, qualify and interrogate, rather than entrench the ideology of hierarchy. Further, the dual social and political roles of earlier kingspundits and later dalapatis (chiefs of dals) do not imply segmented and sequestered spaces of social and political power.34 Contrarily, they imply a connection between polity and society. The idea that hierarchy was a continuing and dominant phenomenon from the precolonial (medieval) through the early to late colonial period needs to be set against a nuanced analytic background. Just as there was hierarchisation and division, with the ‘lower’ castes occupying the base of the social pyramid, unities forged by the medieval caste and subcaste samajs between the interstices of caste difference, as well as the regional reach of the dals (which was in a sense an inheritance from the medieval trans-sub-regional reach of the local caste samajs) implies that a more complex orientation and focus need to be formulated to understand how the literati’s discourse on the ‘lower orders’ subtly altered the rigidity and structuring of hierarchy.

The Context of the Changing Social World of the Literati: Parameters Governing Viewpoints Relating to ‘Lower Orders’ Against the analytic and historical backdrop delineated above, I set out to see how specific changes in the literati’s society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century fed into the reordering and structuring of difference, and the inclusion/exclusion of the ‘lower orders.’ In their definitions of jati, and nimna (low) jati, did the intelligentsia categorically dismiss the ‘lower’ other to the margins of social distance, or did they include, even at a partly utopic level, different srenis (social, occupational and economic groups) in their idea of a ‘new’ samaj? This 33

Hitesranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta: Papyrus, ), pp. –,

. 34

S.N. Mukherjee, Calcutta: Myths and History (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, ).



chapter four

conceptualisation of samaj, and of the place of specific ‘lower’ groups in it, is to be linked with the actual world of samajik experience, to samaj as a lived-in-entity or an idea-in-practice. Further, I also critically assess the limitations of the samajik world-view which situated the ‘lower orders’ within it. During the s the literati prioritised the issue of jatitva with special reference to the significance of the word ‘Hindu’. A connection between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Aryan’, and interrelations between ‘Hindu’ and ‘national’ were clear. “Let us hope that the [Hindu] Mela will be a binding power endearing the Hindu name to the Aryan people wherever scattered throughout India.”35 The National Paper further observed, We do not understand why our correspondent takes exception to the Hindoos, who certainly form a nation by themselves, and such a society established by them can very properly be called a National Society.36

The search for an empowered identity was undertaken by the Bengali Hindu literati, and therefore what became important in their scheme of jatitva was—who were/were not to belong to the Bengali Hindu samaj. The term “Hindu samaj” was emphasised in many tracts37 and had definite links with the partly imagined equation between Bengali/Hindu/ Aryan.38 This discourse, however, was not unilinear, and often, at least at the level of a jatiya utopia, a drive to include all srenis (classes) was noticeable.39 From the mid-nineteenth century, there was an acceleration of social changes of the preceding era.40 The rise of the abhijat to the topmost rungs of the social ladder was paralleled by the crystallisation of the bhadralok class, an open de-facto social group41 characterised by a common position along some continuum of the economy, enjoying a common standard of life, and conscious of its existence as a class organised to further its own ends.42 It was a changing world where, as mentioned above, nouveaux riches low castes could also work their way up. Such 35

National Paper,  and  February, , referred to in Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri, ), p. . 36 National Paper,  December, , referred to in Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 37 Tracts such as Tambul Banik emphasised and highlighted the connotations of “Hindu samaj”. See Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik (Calcutta, ), Introduction, p. . 38 See Chapter VII for details about the equation of Bengali/Hindu/Aryan. 39 Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, pp. , . 40 See Chapter I for a related discussion about the rise of the madhyabitta. 41 S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.) Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 42 Ibid., p. .

caste, class and internal ‘others’



social realities made distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ rather nebulous. This is not to deny that certain lines set apart the world of the bhadralok. These were not always very rigid and clear-cut, but certain hallmarks such as English education and generally high-caste Hindu status were crucial. There were, however, as mentioned above, instances of low-caste individuals becoming bhadralok. Certain individuals belonging to the Subarnabanik and weaver caste rose to the rank of bhadralok.43 Links with land and professional careers were also considered passports to the bhadralok /madhyabitta samaj.44 The importance of English education came into fore in view of the rise of a professional middle class (madhyabitta) or the grihastha bhadralok,45 an intermediate social layer between the abhijat bhadralok and the ‘producers’, dockers, builders, domestics and wage-earners. This madhyabitta sreni46 was caught up in a “crisis”47 because of problems such as educated unemployment, acceptance of low-paid jobs, and the rise of relatively ‘low’ (low caste) groups to social and economic pre-eminence. Below the rank of the grihastha bhadralok there emerged the “daridra athacha bhadra lok” (poor but respectable folk),48 making way for social complexity and blurring preexisting lines of division. Distinctions, comparisons and connections between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, and ideas about fitting in or excluding various ‘lower’ groups into the scheme of samajik hierarchy became relevant. There is no doubt that there was a bhadralok overtone in the discourse on jati which was inevitably reflected in the literati’s viewpoints about the ‘lower orders’. The protagonists of the Hindu Mela hoped that the Mela was not confined to the residents of Calcutta, and bhadraloks from other regions would also attend it.49 But Sumanta Banerjee’s view that the Mela was rigidly confined to the ranks of the bhadralok, segregated from the world of the non-elite and the ‘folk’50 seems open to interrogation. At the level of practical reality, there were attempts to include ‘lower 43 44

Ibid., p. . These hallmarks have been mentioned by Sumit Sarkar in Writing Social History,

p. . 45 This term has been referred to by S.N. Mukherjee. See “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia, p. . 46 This term was first referred to in Bangadoot ( June, ). See S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta” in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia, p. . 47 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. . 48 Ibid. 49 Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 50 Sumanta Benerjee, The Parlour and the Street, pp. –.



chapter four

orders’ in a common platform. People of different srenis attended the Mela until the introduction of an entry ticket worth eight annas from the eighth session ().51 In , in the Hindu Mela, , people belonging to various srenis had assembled, and on  and  February , “many Bengali Hindustanis and Muslims, and people of diverse jatis met.”52 Moreover, crafts of all srenis were exhibited, including that of kumbhakars (potters).53 Various dramatic exhibitions in the Hindu Mela included folk forms of entertainment as kathakatha.54 Many well-known abhijat bhadraloks of Calcutta also patronised kabiwalas, and reciters of kathakathas. Actual participation and concrete involvement in the Mela was linked to an ideological programme. The notion of jatisadharan (a united jati comprising different groups including the sadharan or the common people) was discussed in connection with samajik progress. Manamohan Basu, in the third meeting of the Mela emphasised: Jatidharma has to be freed, . . . all srenis of our swajati should meet and converse, and exchange views about how social progress has been achieved and what the causes of samajik decline are.55

The dream of including all srenis also existed at an imaginative level visualising a ‘better’, ‘new’ samaj. Even though ‘lower orders’ were most often directly excluded from the bhadralok samaj as it existed in reality, the new samaj rethought in a dream-arena was ideally to include at least some among the traditionally excluded. At the level of the idealisation of jatiya unity as well as in practical moves to include the ‘lower orders’ in the meetings of the Mela, there were ambivalences in bhadralok consciousness. The ‘lower orders’ were pushed to the margins of social distance unless they were culturally Aryanised, and in addition, possessed some ‘bhadralok’ hallmarks such as education, professional qualifications and a ‘proper’ code of conduct. Even when they adhered to ‘Aryan’ norms and customs, they were included within the samaj at an inferior level. However, deep empathy towards ‘lower orders’, as mentioned above, was evident in certain tracts written by Brahmans such as Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, as well as by lower caste bhadralok

51 52 53 54 55

Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . Ibid. Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



writing about the uplift of that caste. In this sense, the worlds of the bhadralok (elite) and the commoner or the ‘lower orders’ (folk) were interconnected realms, at a mental and emotive level. The trajectories delineated above indicate that certain criteria were relevant to the bhadralok while conceptualising the ‘lower orders’ of Bengal. The fundamental pre-condition of acceptance of culturally Aryan norms and customs forming a central feature of the discourse on identity in late colonial Bengal, was applied in the context of ‘lower’ groups too. This criterion is to be judged in the light of social change and mobility. Other criteria such as racial stock, caste (especially in respect to marriage and inheritance), occupation, religion, language, genealogy and upadhis (titles) were significant markers of social difference, segregating ‘lower orders’ such as adivasis (tribals), wage-earners and domestics. These criteria fed into the notion of cultural Aryan-ness and need to be logically connected to the deployment of specific categories relating to the ‘lower orders’ such as ‘sadharan’ (common), ‘samanya lok’,56 ‘janasadharan’ (commonalty), ‘nimna sreni’ (lower class), and ‘sramajeebi’ (workers), as part of the process of ordering and structuring difference. The next sections critically analyse how these criteria intertwined and which ones assumed greater significance in evaluations of and inclusions/exclusions of specific ‘low’ castes, ‘classes’ and the traditionally excluded groups such as tribes, adivasis and untouchables.

‘Low’ Castes: Occupation, Codes of Conduct and Social Flexibility The racial-cum-cultural divide of Aryan and non-Aryan was closely connected to the differential of caste. The Aryan/non-Aryan binary implicitly contained the notion of varna which also constituted an integral element of caste (though caste was also determined by other elements such as occupation and codes of conduct). A major trajectory of the late nineteenth century Bengali discourse on ‘lower orders’ was the intertwining of the dichotomies of race (Aryan/non-Aryan) and caste as a classificatory criterion. Many traditionally ‘lower’ groups in Bengal were considered mixed castes (misrajati), which had originated as a result of intermixture of castes (varnasamkar). Pitambar Sarkar pointed out that

56 Insignificant people, referred to in Ramananda Chattopadhyay (ed.), Pradeep, Collection of Volumes – (–), p. .



chapter four

the Chasadhobas were one such intermediate mixed varna (here varna is used in the sense of caste).57 Various authorities (ancient/traditional and more recent works) on mixed castes were also cited by the author, for instance, the works of Manu, Brahmavaivartta Purana, Padma Purana, and the more recent compilation, Jati Mala. Many lower groups were therefore identified and considered ‘lower’ because they were low castes originating from mixed or primarily non-Aryan stock. What makes the issue complicated is the fact that Bengalis in general were regarded as a mixed jati (blend of Aryan and non-Aryan racial elements) by renowned intellectuals as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. So, what separated the ‘higher’ and the ‘lower’ in Bengal? It was in answer to this question that the literati pointed to cultural Aryan-ness as the differentiating principle. The adoption and internalisation of the cultural markers of Aryan-ness determined which among the ‘lower’ groups were to be included into a wider re-imagined samaj. Belief in Hindu religious worship and ritual, and the use of relatively pure Bengali language (which was considered as an offshoot of Sanskrit) were highlighted in such adoptions of cultural Aryan-ness. Though, as said, contrary beliefs like connections with the Austric language family also existed, the general interplay of these factors with differences based on caste or mixed blood explains the evaluation of ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. The issue of caste divisions needs to be contextualised within the specific historical, social and sociological perspectives of Bengal. As briefly mentioned above, rigid caste divisions were relatively absent in Bengal due to the fact that the fourfold caste system (Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras) did not exist here. Originally there was no fourfold caste hierarchy built around a Brahman-centred system. There were no Kshatriyas and Vaishyas; the very few Kshatriya families in Bengal came during the historical period with Muslims.58 Similarly there were hardly any Vaishyas; only when Murshidabad was the Muslim capital,

57

See Pitambar Sarkar, Jati Vikash, pp. , . The absence of Kshatriyas in Bengal was explained through myth and legend in early twentieth century works on social history. Drawing on ancient lore, Dugachandra Sanyal narrated how Chandra, a Shudra king of Magadh, thwarted and insulted by Kshatriyas when he wished to establish matrimonial alliances with them, decided to destroy them. Many were killed, and the remaining fell from the Kshatriya samaj and got absorbed into the ranks of the Shudras. Because of this, there was no pure Kshatriya in the Magadhan empire. After the decline of the empire, the Kshatriyas reoccupied Mithila, Kasi and Magadh. But none of them re-occupied Bengal. See Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. , . 58

caste, class and internal ‘others’



a few Vaishya families settled there.59 In Bengal the major caste divisions were Brahmans and Shudras. All other (forty-one) jatis were fitted into this twofold framework. Satshudras (clean Shudras) were not Vaishyas, and were internally divided into sub-castes such as weavers and malakars (garland makers).60 Baidyas and Kayasthas (the two traditional upper castes in Bengal apart from the Brahmans), were also Satshudras. Caste divisions therefore followed a different pattern in Bengal, and were related to certain samajik needs that became crucial in specific eras of social upheaval. One such era of social transformation was the Sena period. This period witnessed a Hinduisation and Brahmanisation of Bengal, conversion of Buddhists, and reorganisation of castes and subcastes in specific ways. In the medieval period rulers sought to reverse samajik decline by the import and rejuvenation of Brahmanical values. Bengal under the Senas witnessed a renaissance of Sanskrit learning and a production of smriti books dealing with daily and periodical rites, purification, expiations, worship and consecration61 to meet the growing needs of Hindu society. The Senas actively associated themselves with the propagation of Brahmanical rituals and observances. Benoy Ghosh has related this social transformation to the decline of Brahmanical values,62 while various late nineteenth century Bengali intellectuals did not even admit the existence of a Brahman-centred value system prior to Adisur’s reign. Before  ad there were said to be only  families of Brahmans in Bengal.63 An evaluation of these variant opinions, however, does seem to point to convictions about a social era in transition, conditioned by earlier (different) antecedents of the caste system, as well as late colonial changes. Late colonial social actualities interacting with continuing and enduring social values went into the making of a conceptual grid which reconfigurated oppositions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ castes and the position/gradation of the latter in the samaj. Caste came to be redefined as a category intertraversed by birth and occupation, ritual purity and impurity, as well 59 See “A Discussion of Lalmohan Vidyanidhi’s Sambandhanirnoy” or “Bangadesher Adim Jati Somuher Samajik Brittanta”, a part of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s “Bange Brahmanadhikar”, Bangadarshan (Agrahayan, ), p. . 60 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, pp. , . 61 See Promode Lal Paul, The Early History of Eastern India, pp. –. 62 The decline of Brahmanical values as portrayed by Benoy Ghosh has been analysed in greater detail in Chapter III in connection with the Adisur legend. See Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, ), p. . 63 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Bange Brahmanidhikar”, Bangadarshan (Agrahayan, ), p. .



chapter four

as by codes of conduct, manners and customs, sanctioned by the shastras. Occupationally and ritually low castes could attain the status of higher castes if they followed a proper code of conduct. It was possible for Shudras to attain Vaishya status. Durgacharan Rakshit, to strengthen his argument that Tambulis (occupationally low betel leaf sellers) could claim Vaishya status, underlined the view of Raghunandan Bhattacharya, well versed in smritis. The latter believed that if Satshudras led a life of external and internal cleanliness, served and tended other castes, and were soft-spoken, gentle and humble, they could elevate themselves to Vaishya rank.64 Individual caste and social status depended not just on birth, but also on specific codes of conduct. The idea that a proper code of conduct was an integral component of caste present in the Mahabharata now came to be highlighted in the context of re-imagining samaj through situational co-opting of low castes. Pitambar Sarkar quoting the Anusasan Parba of the Mahabharata wrote: “If Shudras did good work and followed a code of good manners, they could become Brahmans . . . what is important is character, not birth.”65 Late colonial Bengal witnessed a reconfiguration of this (ancient conduct-caste relation) idea, which now came to be associated with the notion that occupationally low groups, not just ritually low groups, could attain higher social status by following a proper code of conduct. The reiteration of this idea in late nineteenth century Bengali tracts acquired a new overtone in view of the social changes within the bhadralok samaj. Conduct was related to education. An article in Pradeep observed: Just because a person was born in a high family it is not necessary to engage him in a high post. Choice of occupation is determined by individual merit, preference, talent, and qualification. The son of a barber, if suitably qualified, can become a High Court judge. If a Brahman is unintelligent, he should not be allowed to become a judge simply because of his caste.66

This conviction seems to point to a subtly different position than the claim that during the colonial period, social mobility was restricted to the three upper castes (Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha),67 and that this restricted social mobility, which was individual and not corporate, 64

Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . Pitambar Sarkar, Jati Vikash, p. . 66 “Samanya Loker Abasthonnoti O Siksha” in Ramananda Chattopadhyay (ed.), Pradeep, p. . 67 Nirmal Kumar Bose has argued that such social ascent was limited to the ranks of the three higher castes of Bengal. See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony, p. . 65

caste, class and internal ‘others’



resulted in class lines cutting across caste boundaries.68 The ideological stance I have highlighted here explains the inclusion in the Bengali Hindu samaj in the wider sense (not in select, elite bhadralok terms) of certain occupationally ‘low’ groups such as the cultivating Pods whose manners and customs were in conformity with shastric laws.69 It is important to note that such inclusions were endorsed by bhadralok, ‘high’ social organisations such as the All Bengal Bratya Kshatriya Samiti, which helped in publishing A Short History and Ethnology of the Cultivating Pods (). Occupationally ‘low’ groups such as the Gops (a pastoral group engaged in animal rearing) and the Tantis (weavers) were also included in the Hindu samaj provided they were culturally Aryanised, and followed a proper code of conduct. The literati interestingly related the current (during the period under consideration) customs and manners of occupationally ‘low’ groups to shastric reiterations in texts such as the Manusamhita. Colonial sociological views may also have played a role in such assessments. In , E.A. Gait asserted that Goalas (cattle breeders and graziers) were Hindus.70 Gobinda Chandra Basak revisited the question of Aryan-ness of Gops and Goalas in . Interestingly, what mattered to him in addition to codes of conduct, was the habitat of these groups. He believed that the Goalas in Bihar were non-Aryans. But in Dacca, Brindaban and Mathura, Gops were not non-Aryan. He quoted the th sloka of Manusamhita: The Gops and Gopis of Brindaban are Vaishyas, otherwise Basudeb would never have allowed Sri Krishna, born in a Kshatriya family, to be reared in the house of the Nandas.71

Gobinda Chandra then juxtaposed shastric notions about past identities to the present context: “If the Gops of Dacca, Mathura and Brindaban can prove Vaishya origin, there would be no obstacle in the way of accepting them as Aryans.”72 While the emphasis on codes of conduct (to claim Vaishya status) is implicit in Gobinda Chandra’s views, it is more explicit in other works. In this respect the viewpoints of a relatively

68 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal, – (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, ), pp. –. 69 Mahendranath Karan, A Short History and Ethnology of the Cultivating Pods: Their Status, Ways of Life and Social Manners and Customs (Calcutta, ), pp. , . 70 E.A. Gait, Census of India, Assam, Volume II (Shillong: Assam Secretariat Press, ), p. . 71 Gobinda Chandra Basak, Bangiya Jatimala (Dacca, ), p. . 72 Ibid.



chapter four

low-caste (the Basaks belonged to the occupationally ‘low’ group of textile weavers) author (Gobinda Chandra) coalesced with those of the renowned Brahman social historian, Lalmohan Vidyanidhi. He claimed that the Tanti jati was Aryanised because of adherence to a proper conduct. The Tantis are Vaishnava, devoted to God and to Brahmans, and occupied in a proper job. Some of them are educated, and most are even-tempered, polite and quiet.73

The coalescence of opinion between a relatively ‘low’ caste author, Gobinda Chandra and a Brahman historian (Vidyanidhi) opens a heuristic field for studying intricacies of connection between text and context. These intricacies and nuances reflect how certain criteria came to be underscored by writers of different caste affiliations while including the pastoral Gops into a samajik scheme. The ways in which this happened qualifies and extends the Sankritisation model of M.N. Srinivas, drawn upon and applied in regard to social mobility patterns in Bengal.74 Cultural Aryan-ness was linked to this paradigm, but extended into a realm or arena of social practice/experience, and connections of viewpoints between different sections (relatively ‘low’ and high caste) among the literati. Its horizons went beyond specific ways in which upwardly mobile families of Gops and Mahishyas (an agricultural occupational group) patronised Brahmans, constructed temples and adopted ritual symbols to legitimise their wealth and status. Indeed, the necessity of emulation of culturally Aryan standards was linked to longer traditions delving into ‘origins’ of inferiority. It surfaced as a recurrent theme in the elevation of occupationally lower groups: the Chasadhobas (farmers and washermen) Chasatis, Haladhars, and Haladhar Chasatis were descendants of ancient Aryan livestock-rearers and farmers, working according to Vedic prescription.75 They had socially fallen because of specific reasons. Pitambar Sarkar observed: In this country, during a specific period, the number of literate individuals decreased and that of illiterate people multiplied. The latter changed many existing words to the apabhramsa language, and could not understand 73

Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Sambandhanirnoy, Vol. I, p. . Sekhar Bandyopadhyay has explained how Hitesranjan Sanyal developed the theme of Sanskritisation in regard to social mobility in colonial Bengal. See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ), p. . 75 Pitambar Sarkar, Jati Vikash, p. . 74

caste, class and internal ‘others’



whether the terms had positive [good] or negative, derogatory meanings. In the era of darkness, this selfish, uneducated group drew up a scheme of regulations according to their own whims and fancies. We, in this modern era of civilisation need to change this, and not denigrate any particular jati or samaj on the basis of such false meanings attached to their names.76

Following this line of argument, Pitambar Sarkar claimed that Satshudras such as Tambulis could become Vaishyas,77 the Haladhars and other jatis preceded by the name “Krishi” (denoting agriculturists) were “actually Vaishyas, and a major, integral part of the Hindu samaj.”78 The society of these occupationally ‘lower’ but Aryanised groups (according to codes of conduct) formed a sub-samaj within a wider Hindu samaj.79 The situational underplaying of occupation and birth in judging who was to be higher/lower or which ‘lower’ groups could rise to ‘higher’ rank, did not mean an eclipse of traditional markers of social respectability like bamsas/genealogy. Social history in late nineteenth century Bengal was re-written with the help of kulapanjikas (genealogical books and lists), which recorded lineal descendants of important families, their branches and sub-branches with their social impurities and indignities, in order to gauge their social rank and status. Nagendranath Basu used rare kulapanjikas while writing Banger Jatiya Itihas (), and Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (). But in the changing socio-economic climate of the late nineteenth century, kula (familial heritage/pride of lineage) was increasingly giving way to britti (professions). Earlier shifts in indices of social status were increasingly underlined from the middle of the nineteenth century, and samajik marjyada came to be measured more by the criterion of class, than caste. Class distinctions in late nineteenth century Bengal stemmed more from ownership of bitta (property or wealth), which could also be acquired by taking up professions (britti), than from kula. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, during this period, low castes could work their way up the social ladder. In Chapter III I have referred to S.N. Mukherjee’s redefinition of the word abhijat (originally meaning high born). From the early nineteenth century onwards this term encompassed “new zamindars”, traders, people of low caste who had amassed wealth, weavers (the Basaks of Calcutta), and Baniks (goldsmiths). Such people were also considered abhijat and known by the 76 77 78 79

Ibid., p. . Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . Pitambar Sarkar, Jati Vikash, p. . Ibid., p. .



chapter four

generic term bhadralok.80 This trend accelerated in the late nineteenth century. These social realities show that class was becoming more important as an index of social status and as a criterion of classification than caste, though the latter remained important in matters of marriage and inheritance. The orbit of bhadralok samaj could and did include low-caste individuals who had acquired wealth through land-ownership, trade and professional careers, and at a subordinate level, certain traditionally low caste and occupationally lower groups such as Chasadhobas, Tambulis and Pods who were to be elevated on the ground of their adherence to Aryan/Hindu codes/shastras.

‘Low’ Classes: Workers and Manual Labourers The above section has delineated how situational elevations and inclusions of ‘low’ castes operated through juxtapositions of codes of cultural Aryan-ness and the idea of an inclusive samaj. How did the intertwining of the criterion of cultural Aryan-ness with reconfigurations of class (due to social mobility) apply in the case of ‘low’ classes such as manual labourers, coolies, and workers? While the lines of caste and class intersected and overlapped in delineations of specific and multilayered ‘low’ class groups, what was more significant in their demarcations from upper class/caste ‘elite’ samaj was their particular position in the economic structure. While the histories of these groups and laying a claim to such histories by these groups themselves have been written into the social history of Bengal as significant chapters of a richly-textured, nuanced process of mobilisation and identity formation,81 I focus on how these groups were viewed through the prism of samaj and the changing values of the literati’s society. Though the bhadralok samaj did not include certain categories of manual labourers, workers and labouring groups, such as the coolies of Assam tea plantations, there was partial inclusion of them at a utopic level of 80 S.N. Mukherjee, “The Bhadraloks of Bengal” in Dipankar Gupta (ed.), Social Stratification (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 81 Labour history narratives of Bengal provide valuable insights into the dynamics of worker mobilisation, the history of strikes and their roles in the national movement. See for instance, Subho Basu, Does Class Matter? Colonial Capital and Workers’ Resistance in Bengal, – (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) and Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).

caste, class and internal ‘others’



jatiya consciousness. Efforts to improve the lot of workers were premised on the idea that educating them would make them a conscious, united group, ideally following a proper code of conduct. Articles in Pradeep, the well-known Brahmo periodical edited by Ramananda Chattopadhyay, and works of Rabindranath Tagore such as Lokhit prioritised the issue of education of workers (sramajeebis) in rural and urban areas. The same view was shared by the Grambarta Prakasika, a periodical started by a man of an intermediary (Tili) caste. Undoubtedly, there was a high caste/bhadralok bias in these viewpoints. The literati highlighted their own central role in educating the ‘lower’ classes, rather than independent initiative taken by the latter. Still, bhadralok enquiries into their living and working conditions did reflect that the issue of sramajeebis was a major concern, integral to the process of rethinking jati. Jatitva could not be framed without reference to the notion of commonalty (janasadharan). Referring to Bankimchandra’s empathy for them in the well-known periodical Bangadarshan, an article, “Samanya Loker Abosthonnoti O Siksha”82 lamented the lack of actual endeavour to improve their state. The article disparaged those bhadraloks, who were reluctant to educate the workers: We do not believe [as some other bhadraloks do] that education of workers in night schools will result in their insubordination and disobedience. The workers of Barahanagar, who have been educated, do not behave in this way. On the contrary, their conduct has improved. We refute the view of those zamindars, who use the term chhotolok [poor and non-respectable folk] to refer to them, and who believe that the education of workers will result in the farmer not farming, and weavers and potters forsaking their respective occupations. Such ideas are baseless because we do not believe in occupational rigidity . . . kulin Brahmans are becoming shopkeepers and artisans, the sons of Brahmans are becoming leather merchants . . . we do not degrade manual labour . . . if a farmer is educated he will be able to do his job in a better way.83

The viewpoint reflected an interesting juxtaposition of reconfigurations of caste status and occupational mobility in relation to class. Further, it also pointed to the fact that there were multiple layers of opinion among the literati relating to the workers, but what was deemed necessary and vital was their uplift. Sasipada Bandopadhyay, in the face of bhadralok opposition in Barahanagar, started a night school for workers on  June , and in  established an organisation for shopkeepers 82 83

Ramananda Chattopadhyay (ed.), Pradeep (), p. . Ibid., pp. –.



chapter four

and artisans which stressed character-building, dharma siksha (teaching and inculcation of the principles of dharma), improvement of living conditions and the curbing of alcoholism. These endeavours aimed at uplift of the workers, linked to a broader process of jatiya progress of the Bengalis.84 Efforts were also made to improve the condition of labourers in villages through education. In such efforts, the role of the upper classes and the literati was underlined, but that of the ‘common people’ was also referred to. The Grambarta Prakasika reported: Formerly the zamindar of the village [Eteena in Narail, within the jurisdiction of Jessore] used to impose a tax of one anna [one-sixteenth of an Indian rupee] on respectable people, and one paisa on the common people . . . and with the proceeds of this rate maintain an English and Bengali school. The people also gladly paid this impost which used to amount to almost , rupees. Owing to the carelessness of the office of the zamindar as well as to his absence from the spot, the school died away: but not long ago the people of the village sought government aid and opened a Bengalee school, which, however, is not thriving. The school house was very much injured by the last cyclone and has not yet been repaired.85

Concerns about the working classes encompassed a rethinking of the conditions of labourers in neighbouring regions too. The Sanjibani (a Brahmo based periodical edited by Krishnakumar Mitra) in the s, and tracts such as Asam Bhraman () expressed concern about the coolies of Assam tea gardens and advocated their education. A Brahman pundit of Rangpur, Jadabesvar Tarkaratna also expressed concern for the coolies. He accompanied the author of Asam Bhraman in his visit to Assam. They enquired into respective ages and living conditions of the workers, and the nature of their work. The sardars (chiefs) who were with them replied to their queries, but when the writer wanted answers from the coolies themselves, the sardars tried to prompt the coolies what to say. The writer, to delve deep into the issue, spoke to the owner of the tea garden.86 The periodical Dasi () broached the idea of establishing asramas (residential work houses) for coolies. Ramananda Chattopadhyay, its editor, simultaneously advocated the establishment of orphanages and schools for poor children. These plans were translated into reality, and work undertaken in this direction spread to Surpanagar in 84

Ibid., pp. –. Grambarta Prakasika (April, ), Report on Native Newspapers for the Fortnight ending the  April, , Number  (Translator’s Office, May , Fort William, June ), p. . Seen in the National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi. 86 Asam Bhraman (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 85

caste, class and internal ‘others’



Bankura, Naldaha, and even to neighbouring areas such as Cherrapunji and Naogaon.87 The literati stressed education because that was supposed to inculcate a proper code of conduct. The latter notion reflected a blend of the idea of cultural Aryan-ness, and polite manners, temperance and education.

Samajs of the Excluded: Untouchables The contextual loosening of occupational rigidity and a consequent redefinition of social status on the basis of a code of conduct, however, did not unconditionally extend to certain low caste, ‘untouchable’ groups such as Hadis, Bagdis, Namashudras, Malos, Doms, and Bhuinmalis in Bengal.88 These groups remained on the extreme fringes of bhadralok samaj, even though untouchability was never as rigid in Bengal as in other parts of India. Differences between high-caste treatment of untouchables in Bengal and those in other parts of India were due to variations in the caste system itself. The thirteenth and fourteenth century puranas refer to the untouchables as an antyaja/low born and mixed caste/sankarjati. They do not indicate that they were untouchable.89 According to Raghunandan and the literary evidence of the Mangalkavyas, the touch of the Chandalas, for example, was not necessarily to be avoided. They could live within the precincts of the village (they were not regarded as antebasi or dwellers on the periphery). Manu (the author of the Dharmashastras or ancient law-books) however, had enjoined that they do so.90 These exceptions and finer nuances of viewpoints relating to the untouchables in Bengal acquire further refinement due to the fact

87

Santa Devi, Ramananda OArdha Satabdir Bangla (Calcutta, undated), pp. –. These untouchable ‘low’ groups did not comprise a uniform/ united group in their own eyes, as there was mutual competition as to which group was purer. There was a proclivity among them to assert mutual superiority in ranking. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 89 Haraprasad Shastri (ed.), Brihaddharmapuran, Bibliotheca Indica (Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, ), p. , and Panchanan Tarkaratna (ed.), Brahmavaivartapuran (Calcutta, ), pp. , , , quoted in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, “Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, –”, in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem Schendel (eds.), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi: Manohar, ), p. . 90 Sukumar Sen (ed.), Mukundaram, Chandimangal (New Delhi, ), p. ; and Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Bharatchandra Granthabali (Calcutta, ), p. , mentioned in Ibid. 88



chapter four

that some individuals/ groups among the literati were preoccupied by the issue of improvement of the condition of untouchable groups. This trajectory continued into the second decade of the twentieth century. Pamphlets such as Baishya Tantubay Jatir Jagaran () advocated the removal of untouchability of the Tantubay (weaver) caste, and recognition of it as belonging to the Vaishya caste. Improvement of the position of Asat or ‘lower’ Shudras was also a theme in the literati’s perception of the problem of untouchability. Tracts such as Shudrer Puja O Vedadhikar delved the dynamics and origins of the phenomenon of untouchability. But even groups which were not traditionally considered ‘untouchable’ were subjected of all kinds of social disabilities. They were still beyond the social pale of the educated middle class and abhijat Bengali bhadraloks. Negative perceptions were as real as empathy with the untouchables. Their exclusion can be explained by the fact that they were not caste Hindus and were, moreover, not sufficiently culturally Aryanised. The samajs of the untouchables were segregated and denigrated.

Tribes In their perceptions relating to the samajs of different groups which were situationally included/excluded, the literati laid selective/relative emphasis on the different criteria inhering in the idea of cultural Aryanness emanating from the conceptual nucleus of samaj. There were subtle differences, inflections and stresses in each case of deployment of the criterion/criteria in question in regard to different/respective cases of situational co-opting and exclusion/denigration. While in the case of ‘low’ castes, ‘Aryan’ was deployed more as a cultural category than a racial one, in case of tribes, the use of ‘Aryan’ as racial stock (a direct adaptation of the colonial Aryan/non-Aryan binary overlaid by racial characteristics) was predominant. This is not to say that cultural criteria such as language, religion and social customs and practices (inhering in the notion of cultural Aryan-ness) were elided. Rather, the way in which the racial and cultural intersected in the discourse on tribes was different from interfusions of the two as operating in case of ‘low’ castes. The picture of fair-skinned Aryan invaders defeating a dark-complexioned Dravidian race91 was a recurring image in depictions and descriptions of 91 Orientalists such as William Jones believed in the idea of migrations by members of a primordial ‘Aryan’, or sometimes Hindu ‘race’ or ‘nation’ of fair-skinned invaders.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



tribal groups in late nineteenth century tracts on the histories of ‘lower orders’, and persisted even in comparatively later writings. Those dasas [people of the Dravidian race] who did not become a part of the ancient samaj of the Aryans went to mountainous areas and lived there, and their descendants still stay there; they have an ugly appearance, dark colour, unintelligible language, and a lack of dharma. They include the Kols, Santhals, Mundas, Sabars, Pulindas, Khasias, and Nagas.92

Tribes such as the Santhals, Mundas, Nagas and Kukis were regarded as descendants of non-Aryans, born of Dravidian stock. “The Santhals of Bhagalpur, Mayurbhanj, Balesvar and Singbhum belong to the Dravidian stock of Dakshinapatha,”93 wrote Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri in the Brahmo journal Nabya Bharat. His views were similar to those of the famous Brahman historian Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay. He dichotomised the worlds of the literati and that of the ‘lower orders’ on the basis of the Aryan/non-Aryan (racial) divide. Interestingly, fitted into this scheme of racial division was the theory of mixed castes (echoing the process of varnasamkar creating misrajati, as mentioned in case of ‘low’ castes). In Chhotanagpur, among Mundas, there were nine mixed jatis: Khangar, Khobia, Konokpoth, Koronga, Mohili, Nagbangshi, Oraon, Sadmunda and Sabar.94 The Mundas were considered racially non-Aryan, and in addition they were considered ‘lower’ because they had sub-categories, which had originated as a result of intermixture. Evident in such dichotomisations were the intersection of race with habitat and territory. Racial difference was connected with territorial demarcation as evident in the separation of Aryavarta or land of Aryans and

See Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India, pp. , . Scholar-officials writing during and after the middle of the nineteenth century when the exigencies of empire transformed, and racial division was underscored in understandings of relations between the ruler and the ruled, also referred to the ‘Aryan’ conquest in specific ways. W.W. Hunter portrayed the Bengal region as a living ethnological battleground. Its social order was shaped by a history of titanic warfare between Sanskrit-speaking Aryans and the rude aboriginal races, which had been overrun in primitive time by the bearers of a supposedly superior Aryan civilisation. See W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, th edition (London: Smith, Elder and Co., ), pp. , . 92 R.C. Majumdar and Probodh Bhowmick’s viewpoints in Bharat Kosh, Volume I (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), pp. , –. 93 Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat, Vol. , No.  (Sraban, ), p. . 94 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. .



chapter four

Dakhyinatya or land of Dravidians.95 Though opinion was divided as to whether the Santhals belonged specifically to the Dravidian race, their non-Aryan origin was admitted. Some Bengali writers believed them to be descendants of the Kol family (non-Aryan),96 while others thought that they were related to the ancient inhabitants of Australia.97 The theme of racial-cum-territorial segregation was specifically applied in the context of separating Bengal from the Santhal Parganas: The picturesque area in the central part of Bengal is called Santhal Pargana about which many pleasing historical tales and fanciful legends are heard. The rules, regulations, customs and manners of the adivasis here are entirely different from other parts of Bengal; this is the meeting place of Bengal, Bihar and Chhotanagpur, and the borderland between the civilised and the uncivilised.98

Thus the Santhal ‘other’ was sealed off in a half-mythic, half-known land contrasted with a civilised Bengal. Santhal Parganas was located at the junction of the civilised and the uncivilised: a confrontational site which had been the battleground of the invading superior Aryans and the original inhabitants of this country (reminiscent of Hunter’s portrayal). It also implied the primacy of an ‘Aryan’ civilisational and social order into which tribes were not included. Racially-governed lines segregating tribal worlds deepened because of cultural and civilisational ‘inferiority’. The non-Aryan dasas or dasyus were avratas, amanush (inhuman) and mridhhravach (of unintelligible speech), comprising a different jati, and having a different dharma.99 Aboriginal groups, tribals and adivasis such as the Santhals, Mundas, and hill tribes of neighbouring regions such as the Nagas and the Kukis were also excluded, because they were—() racially primarily non-Aryan () not sufficiently culturally Aryanised, in terms of language, education, and customs and manners. This demonstrates that the criteria governing tribal otherness encompassed racial difference at a primary, significant level, as well as civilisational difference. An article called “Bangadesher Adivasi” in Arya Darshan asserted:

95 Kshirodachandra Ray Chaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat, Volume , Number  (Boishakh, ), p. . 96 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . 97 Sukumar Sen, “Santhal”, Bharat Kosh, Volume V (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 98 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini: Santhal Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta, ), p. . 99 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, pp. –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



It is impossible that the civilised Bengalis of Calcutta and its environs, and the uncivilised cave-dwelling Santhals of Birbhum belong to the same vamsa [race, family, lineage] . . . The latter and other adivasis are inferior to the Aryans in every way . . . including language, . . . physical characteristics and varna, . . . and customs and manners.100

The Santhals were segregated because they were culturally primarily nonAryan (though there were some instances of Hinduisation). The conceptualisation of a half-mythic Santhal land also implicitly contained the conviction that adivasis were to be excluded all the more because they had no history or script. Their pasts could be reconstructed only through hearsay, folk tales, oral myths and upakatha, which told the tale of warring tribes wreathed in semi-oblivion and mystery.101 This was interesting at a time when the Bengalis themselves were considered to be a history-less people by colonial writers such as W.W. Hunter, and relevant in context of the Bengali project of redefining the meaning of history to counter colonial opinion. To the lack of history was added linguistic otherness as a divisive parameter. During the second half of the nineteenth century, language was one of the predominant themes in the Bengali literati’s cultural characterisation of ‘Aryan’ and ‘nonAryan’. The connection between Sanskrit and Bengali was specially highlighted at a time when a major section among the literati was obsessed with ‘Aryan’ roots of Bengali heritage. Tribal groups having non-Aryan languages residing not only in Bengal but also in neighbouring areas were ‘inferior’ because this showed that they had not been culturally Aryanised: The adivasi jatis of eastern India, settled in Mayurbhanj [in Orissa], Jharkhand [in Bihar], Santhal Parganas, Hazaribagh, Manbhum and Singbhum, and in some areas of Medinipur, Purulia, Bankura and Burdwan districts of West Bengal have a different language; it is an offshoot of Khoari, and it also includes the Santhal language.102

The languages of the Kols, Bhils, Santhals, Mundas, Sabars, Pulindas, as well as that of hill tribes like Khasias, Bhutiyas and Nagas were markedly different. This differentiation underlined inferiority, premised on the idea that Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Punjabi and Hindi were derived from the

100 “Bangadesher Adivasi”, Arya Darshan, Volume I, Number I (Chaitra, ), pp. –. 101 Ibid., p. . 102 Sukumar Sen, “Santhals”, Bharat Kosh, p. .



chapter four

language in which the Aryans wrote the Vedas (and thus of the family of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian languages). But non-Aryan languages did not belong to this group.103 Instead they belonged to three categories: (a) Dravidi, (b) the Austric languages of north and central India, and (c) the Bhot Chiniya languages of people residing in the Himalayan foothills. In a more limited sense non-Aryan languages referred only to Austric languages, namely Santhali, Mundari, and Khasi.104 Other markers of religion, customs and conceptualisations of society and social practices were allied to linguistic difference. The Santhals were a different jati because of their belief in superstitious myths. Their samajik norms were very different from the ‘Aryanised’ Bengali Hindu samaj. In the Santhal samaj there was no jatibhed (internal divisions, especially in terms of caste). A separate Santhal samaj was formed when they had settled on the foothills of the Rajmahal hills. Their samaj had different forms of religious worship and social organisation. Probhash Chandra Ray highlighted such difference: Near Santhal settlements there is usually a stretch of forest land, this is the johorthan [place of worship and the abode of their gods]. At the end of the village there is a mud-built, raised seat where the Santhal men gather at a specific time to discuss their samajik problems . . . in the Santhal palli [village] the majhi is the head, he is also the revenue officer, and is helped by a paramanik/purohit called Nareki. The parganayit rules over several Santhal pallis, unlike the people of Bengal who go to law courts even for solving minor legal matters, the Santhals . . . solve their problems in the gramya panchayets [local village courts and seats of authority].105

This graphic description outlines a samaj organised along lines different from the samaj of the Bengali literati. What was even more important was that, in this Santhal samaj, the symbolic bonds of unity were very different, and jatiya solidarity was achieved in an entirely distinct manner. In summer, before the commencement of agricultural activities, the Santhals have a festival called jatiya shikar [hunt]. The Santhals of one pradesh [specific administrative and territorial unit] assemble and hunt together in a specific forest. Their leader is called the dihari. After the mrigoya [hunt] there is a feast and later the dihari, parganayit and majhi occupy their

103

R.C. Majumdar and Promod Bhowmick, “Non-Aryans”, Bharat Kosh, Volume I,

p. . 104 105

Sukumar Sen, “Santhals”, Bharat Kosh, p. . Prabhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, pp. , –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



respective places. Many matters are discussed in this assembly, which also acts as a high court. Those who are not satisfied by the village majhi’s verdict can appeal to this higher court. The most serious punishment given by this court is excommunication from the jati [jatichyuti].106

Therefore, internal social classifications, ways of forging jatiya unity and primarily the prevalence of non-Aryan customs and codes of conduct were the deciding criteria in excluding adivasi and tribal groups such as the Santhals. This logic of exclusion was extended to tribes beyond Bengal such as the Lusais, Mundas, Nagas and Kukis. Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri expressed: In the north east, near Manipur, there are many uncivilised races . . . the uncivilised people of Chittagong can be divided into two sampradays: Nadiputra and Giriputra. Others included the Jumia and the Chakma Mogs. The Jumias reside in different villages and in each there is a sardar/roaja [village leader] . . . the Chakmas are uncivilised because their marriage customs, dress, and death ceremonies are entirely different from those of the Bengalis. For example, in their samaj men and women meet and dance together . . . they often do naat worship; they are very cruel and do not believe in certain codes of civilised etiquette; they do not respect kings and pradhans. Common civilised forms of greeting by folding hands, or being grateful are alien in their conduct . . . Some sampradays are worse than others. For instance, the Riyangs are the most uncivilised, and the Kiratas are infamous for their lying.107

Neighbouring ‘uncivilised’ tribes were treated as exotic, ancient, sociological and anthropological artefacts described in extremely pejorative terms.108 Ridiculing the Naga tribe, the author of Asam Bhraman underlined their difference from the Bengali Hindu samaj by referring to specific characteristics of their lifestyles, and social situations. The Nagas were segregated in a different sociological and cultural world governed by different samajik rules, kinship ties and egalitarian values. “Each village has a king and their overlord is the Naga-Samrat [higher king] in the remote mountains.”109 This segregated world also had its own hierarchies. There were differences between various uncivilised jatis, implied within a scheme of gradation and ordering.

106

Ibid., pp. –. Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat (Boishakh, ), pp. , –. 108 Asam Bhraman (Calcutta, ), p. . 109 Ibid. 107



chapter four Among all the uncivilised, ancient, non-Aryan jatis of Bengal, the pahariyas [hill tribes] belong to the lowest rung. It is impossible to discern where they came from. Maybe they sought refuge in the hilly tracts after being vanquished by a stronger jati.110

Culturally thus differentiated, these groups were ‘uncivilised’ because they were not Aryanised. Being ‘civilised’ was an essential hallmark for belonging to the Bengali Hindu samaj because sabhyata (civilisation) was an inbuilt and indispensable feature of the Bengali samaj.111 This reflects the fact that the term ‘Aryan’ applied in segregations of tribes was imbued not with a mere racial content but also a cultural and civilisational significance, encompassed in definite cultural connotations including language, religious forms, familial types, and the adoption of, and adherence to the Vedas, puranas and epics. These were essential passports for belonging to the Aryan fold. Non-Aryan tribes could be co-opted at a subordinate level, provided they accepted these cultural norms. The partly imagined equation between ‘Aryan’, ‘Hindu’ and ‘Bengali’ was seen as being present, or written back into the concept of an ancient Aryan/Hindu samaj,112 a historic and sociological entity, which had included some non-Aryan dasas (those who were culturally Aryanised) as well. The ancient family of the Aryans was a composite patriarchal unit where the Aryan master was the familial lord over his wife, son and dasas. This notion of family transcended blood ties and referred to a group of individuals living under one shelter, distant relatives remotely related by blood, and friends having no blood ties with the familial lord. This extended sense of family (also present in the indigenous notion of atmiyata embedded in samaj) transcends nuclear bonds of the western family. So families in the ancient Aryan age were not segregated units but had wide social ramifications and extensions, comprising a samaj. Such samajs were considered as forerunners of modern-day village (palli) samajs,113 thus providing an instance of how past identities provided legacies for rethinking the present samaj. The racial and civilisational difference of the tribes no doubt fed into the construction of a model of ethnic otherness. But the conceptualisation of a (past) extended ‘Aryan’ samaj and its lineages

110

Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . See Anandachandra Mitra, Prachin Bharat O Adhunik Iyurope Sabhyatar Bhinna Murti (Mymensingh, ), p. . This has been mentioned in Chapter III in connection with comparisons between European and indigenous society. 112 Ibid. 113 Arya Darshan, Volume I, Number I (Jyoishtha, ), pp. –. 111

caste, class and internal ‘others’



of unity (applied to present contexts) left room for situational inclusions of culturally-Aryanised tribes. Interwoven into this conceptual position were other strands, which formed a subtext in the discourse of differentiation. The following section tries to segregate and highlight those strands to weave an argument about complexities within a discourse which cannot be seen as uniform, monolithic and built on de-contextualised oppositions.

Complexities in the Discourse Though for the most part, the literati’s discourse on tribes was worked out within an exclusionary framework, there were situational transmutations of otherness and co-opting of specific tribal groups (this co-opting was different from the co-opting of ‘low’ castes). As the inclusive dynamic of cultural Aryan-ness could not be applied on a significant scale in regard to tribes, an alternative logic and paradigm of inclusion were framed to situationally situate the tribes within a broader discourse on nationhood grounded in samaj. This does not elide exclusions as the main theme of the discourse. Rather, this analytic line suggests that within and alongside an overarching exclusionary frame, polarities were contextually muted. This formed a sub-text of the discourse on tribes. What is interesting is that this sub-text prioritised the late Aryanisation and non Aryan-ness of Bengal as a counterpoint to the dominant Aryan-Bengali-Hindu equation to create a space for situating tribes within the discourse. The emphasis on Aryanisation of Bengal was countered by other sets of opinion, which underscored the much valorised, partly supposed, Bengali-Aryan identity. The late Aryanisation of the non-Aryan land, Bengal, set the non-Aryan tribes in a different mould. As the conceptualisation of unity floundered over the issue of tribal otherness, a mechanism of situational inclusion had to be devised, which downplayed the Aryan-Brahmanic rhetoric. Various late nineteenth century tracts and articles in periodicals referred to the late Aryanisation of Bengal,114 and some, such as Tambul Banik, even went to the extent of saying that Bengal was primarily a non-Aryan land,115 which was Brahmanised later by importing Brahmans from Kanauj (the Adisur legend). Thus, if Bengalis were Aryanised

114 115

See, for example, “Bangadesher Adivasi”, Arya Darshan (Chaitra, ), p. . See Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. .



chapter four

later, and if they were a bahujati (a conglomeration of many races, including non-Aryan),116 then non-Aryan jatis (including tribes)117 could claim a higher status than was traditionally accorded to them. These non-Aryan jatis were, however, discussed more in the sense of demographic groups in outlying and adjacent areas of Bengal, and incorporated in a discourse on desh/territory. But they were elided in accounts of samaj, or in discussions of desh, where desh was imbued with a patriotic and samajik content. Negative assessments of ‘Aryan’ surfaced in much later works, which claimed that the ancient indigenous samaj of northwest India was destroyed by the Aryan tribe which replaced a better samaj by a materialistic, basic and primitive one.118 This Aryan samaj mingled with preexisting Austric and Dravid samajs. The Aryanisation of Bengal resulted in a racial blending of the Austric and the Aryan, and this process continued during the hundred years after Sasanka’s death. Such portrayals imply that Bengalis were a mixed race, and were linguistically Austric— “The most ancient language of Bengal was Austric . . . the intermixture of Munda and Dravid languages also had deep repercussions in Bengal.”119 This kind of emphasis on a disjunction between Aryan-ness and Bengali identity sharply contrasted the general tone of Aryan civilisational primacy and its connection with Bengal, emphasised by well-known writers such as Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay and Chandranath Basu. They claimed a heroic Aryan glory as a common legacy in which Bengalis were co-sharers. Ways of evaluating the ‘lower’ others therefore varied in accordance to divergences in beliefs connecting/de-linking ‘Bengali’ and ‘Aryan’. What is remarkable is that the literati problematised the issue of tribal misrajati in the context of the fact that the Bengalis themselves were a mixed jati (bahujati) having a mixed linguistic genealogy that included Austric, Munda and Dravid elements.120 This juxtaposition led to 116

Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Bangalir Utpotti”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ), pp. –. 117 These non-Aryan jatis included the Nagas, Kukis, Mikirs and Jaintiyas of Assam, Mogs and Lusais of the eastern borders of Bengal, Rajbangshis and Naotiyas of Tripura, and Kols, Santhals, Khariyas, Mundas and Dhangars of the west of Bengal. These jatis and their habitats have been mentioned in Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . 118 In Chapter VI, I have discussed Niharranjan Ray’s view that the non-Aryan element was present in the worship of certain specific deities in villages of Bengal. See Niharranjan Ray, History of the Bengali People, Ancient Period, translated by John W. Wood (Calcutta: Orient Longman, ), p. . 119 Kamal Majumdar, Bangalir Itihas (Calcutta: The Author, ), pp. –, . 120 Ibid., pp. –, .

caste, class and internal ‘others’



ambivalences in the literati’s discourse on the separate-ness of tribes. As mentioned in Chapter II, the discourse on inclusion/exclusion of tribes intertwined with the rhetoric of racial identity of the Bengali self: How did the Bengali jati originate? Many say that Bengalis are an Aryan jati. But are all Bengalis Aryan? Brahmans may be Aryans, but are the Hadis, Muchis, Doms, Kaoras also Aryan jatis? If they are not Aryan jatis, where did they come from? Do they belong to some ancient Aryan family or vamsa, when did their ancestors come to Bengal? . . . Bengal was not Aryanised before Adisur . . . Bengalis are definitely a relatively adhunik jati [modern race] . . . They can be subdivided into () Aryan, () non-Aryan () Aryan and non-Aryan Hindu () Bengali Muslims.121

This classificatory scheme has inner complexities because it is not clear whether the non-Aryans, non-Aryan Hindus and Bengali Muslims were to be included in the Bengali Hindu samaj. At a crucial level these groups lay beyond the orbit of the primarily high caste/high class Hindu samaj of the Bengali literati during the second half of the nineteenth century. But alternative strands also remained, and were sometimes present in the works of the same author writing in different contexts.122 The above quotation makes it clear that the primacy and centrality of the Aryan/Hindu/Bengali equation co-existed with ideas about non-Aryan elements, intermixture, and the late Aryanisation of Bengal. While at one level, the neighbouring tribes were considered the uncivilised (barbaric) ‘other’ of the civilised Bengali self, at another, they were considered parts (though very different in nature), in a loose and distant sense, of the multi-group Bengali jati. Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, convinced as he was of the otherness (constructed through civilisational backwardness) of the tribes, called his article: “Banglar Borbor Jati”, or the uncivilised jatis (tribes) of Bengal. These portrayals must be seen as qualifying the otherness of the tribes, which was also approached via an analysis of ‘Hinduisations’ of specific tribes. This, of course, derived from the emphasis on cultural Aryanness. The otherness of the tribes was actually mediated at two levels by two seemingly opposite ethnic/cultural/sociological streams: () the

121 See Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Kayekti Katha” and “Bangalir Utpotti” in Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ), pp. , . 122 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s emphasis on Aryan-ness of the Bengali society (seen from a distance the Bengali samaj seems Aryan) co-existed and paralleled other sets of opinion as mentioned in the quotation.



chapter four

non-Aryan primordiality of tribes was negotiated by emphasis on Bengal’s late Aryanisation and multi-ethnic character; and () their civilisational backwardness was simultaneously sought to be erased via Hinduisations. While the main theme was segregation, occasional Hinduisations of these groups were seen as bringing them closer to the Bengali samaj. Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri’s account contained the contrasting strands of cultural difference on the one hand, and observance of Hindu-like religious norms on the other. He denigrated the Chakma Mogs (a non-Aryan neighbouring tribe) because of their cultural difference, calling them “uncivilised”, “cruel”, and lacking values and social etiquette and disparaging their customs: They do not greet the elders, the king or priest by touching their feet. They do not know how to thank people, and swear by touching . . . rice, water, and cotton-wool.123

But he also pointed out the Hindu-like customs of Jumia Mogs: The religion of the Jumia Mogs of Chittagong is Buddhism but they also worship mountains and rivers . . . their attire is also very different from that of Bengalis. But the way Jumia boys are taught to read and write, and the way they are dikshita [trained] is very similar to the upanayan [initiation] ceremony of Brahmans. After cutting off their hair, the boys sit around the purohit [priest]. They recite the mantra according to his instructions. After the diksha they stay as disciples for seven days in the place of worship . . . Though Jumia marriage ceremony is very different from that of Bengalis, yet there are similarities with the saptapadi [seven steps taken by the husband and wife during marriage] of Hindu Bengali weddings.124

Social similarities and Hindu-like modes of worship were also described by the same author: The Daiganaki sampraday of the Chakma Mogs claim that they belong to a Hindu vamsa [lineage/family]. Champanagar’s Hindu prince occupied Magadha and settled in their land. His courtiers married local women, and their descendants are the present Chakmas. The Chakmas like the Magadhans also became Buddhists. They are divided into forty gojas or gotras [gotra referred to familial sub-divisions based on supposed descent from one of the twenty four sages including Sandilya, Kasyapa and Saktri], and the leader of a gotra settles minor disputes. In some ways they are more Hindu than the Buddhists. They worship Hindu goddesses like Durga and Lakshmi, and have eight festivals—Bishu, Tumutong, Hoiya, 123 Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat (Boishakh, ), pp. –. 124 Ibid., pp. –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



Nabanna, Magiri, Kher, Sumulanga and Shongbora. Of these the last is the most ancient, it involves the worship of the river god—Nat, which is not observed by the Buddhists.125

In quite a similar way, Probhash Chandra Ray in though referring to the very different samajik practices of hill tribes residing in the Rajmahal area implied their Hinduisation through the process of naming individuals and groups. In one of Tulsidas’s dohas it is mentioned that a woman of this jati was devoted to Hari. Most probably, because of this, a specific sreni among this jati was called Souriya.126

The Hinduisation of the Santhals was a common theme in many other tracts written during this era. Though the Santhal samaj was deemed to be different from the Bengali Hindu samaj, adoption of Hindu practices partly bridged the gulf between the two samajs. Hinduisation, moreover, had a long history. The Santhal kings in the early phases of their settlement in Jhalda, Patkum and Pachet came in contact with Hindus, and adopted the Hindu faith. They were henceforth called Rajput. Such antecedents explain similarities in Santhal and Hindu religious tenets. Their god is another form of the Hindu God, Narayan. In Hinduism, Brahma is Narayan’s helper in creation. The Santhal God Buru Thakur is similarly helped by Morang. There are similarities between the avatars of Hinduism and those of the Santhal religion . . . Due to long association with Hindus, Santhal festivals are very similar to Hindu ones . . . they observe Durga puja and Doljatra . . . their jhumur dance is very similar to the Hindu raas . . . even Poush Sankranti has its counterpart among the Santhals.127

Simultaneous portrayals of a denigrated and different samaj and of the Hinduisation of adivasi groups such as the Santhals, complicated the issue of inclusion/exclusion. An analysis of various articles concerned with Hinduisation of tribal groups reveals that some sections were assimilated contextually and situationally at a lower level on the basis of their adherence to Hindu customs and modes of worship. The theme of ‘Hinduisation’ applied in regard to tribes, was however, subtly different from the way in which it operated in regard to the ‘Hinduisation’ of ‘low’ castes. In outward form, the way in which adivasis became Hinduised closely 125

Ibid., p. . Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . 127 Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Barbar Jati”, Nabya Bharat (Boishakh, ), pp. –, –, . 126



chapter four

resembled the Sanskritisation of lower caste Hindus. They attempted to become a part of the Hindu samaj by adopting the sacred thread, worshipping some specific Hindu god, celebrating Hindu festivals, observing Hindu rites, claiming a common gotra with a renowned sage, and eating vegetarian food. In , the Census Commissioner, J.A. Baines remarked, “Many tribal people have become Hindus . . . it is not possible to segregate the dharmas of non-Hinduised adivasis.” Risley commented in a similar way in the  Census Report: “In addition to adoption of Hindu customs, they [aboriginal tribes] adopted the Indo-Aryan language.” This was especially done by the Bhils, Bhumiyas and the Beerhor jati.128 But as this “Hindu method of tribal absorption”129 was not based on any uniform valorisation of non-Aryan/tribal culture or any realistic social integration, ‘Hinduised’ tribes remained outside the social orbit and were far less parts of the social collectivity than the Hinduised or culturally-Aryanised ‘low’ castes. The difference stemmed from a prioritisation of specific cultural markers over others while expanding the social limits of samaj to include ‘others’. What limited the social integration of the ‘Hinduised’ tribes was the difference of degree in their adoption of the norms of cultural Aryan-ness and codes of social conduct, reflected in their everyday practices as well as in the distinctive symbolic bonds of unity in their social worlds. Despite such limitations, the idea of samaj did create a space for situational inclusions. The contextual acceptance was based on a connection between dharma, samaj and conduct. As said, at this time, a reinterpreted notion of dharma was the ideological focus of the Bengali Hindu samaj. Some, among the Bengali literati believed that dharma was a pervasive ideological influence even in the samajs of adivasis and tribes. The primacy of dharma in India is an admitted fact. No jati, even adivasis, is devoid of dharma. Even uncivilised jatis have a dharma . . . compared to aborigines and lower jatis of other countries, those of India have a strong sense of dharma. Even Santhals have their own Gods and worship them in times of distress, or before embarking on some important task.130

A meaningful connection between belief in dharma and righteous conduct was the basis of a unifying bond. 128

Ibid., p. . See Nirmal Kumar Bose, “The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption”, Science and Culture, Vol. , , pp. –, quoted in S. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony, p. . 130 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . 129

caste, class and internal ‘others’



The Santhals seem to be united. In important matters they consult each other . . . they respect the local zamindar like a God, they try to meet their revenue demands on time. They are truthful.131

The link between dharma, righteous conduct and jatiya welding was intrinsic to the model of samajik correlation rethought within Bengali, Hindu, bhadralok parameters. Interestingly, the literati used the same model connecting dharma, conduct and unity while evaluating the ‘lower’, ‘uncivilised’ others. The use of this model definitely reveals that the comparison between ‘our’ samaj (of the literati) and the samajs of the ‘lower orders’ was reworked in the late nineteenth century. But they were still not an integral part of the Bengali Hindu samaj as it existed in practice. The samajs of the adivasis was still a separate entity. In terms of social actualities, difference was the predominant note in the literati’s discourse on tribes, adivasis and untouchables. At a utopic level, however, these samajs were given a higher position than in terms of living, social realities of late nineteenth century Bengal. The Bengali imagination of a jati envisaged a wider commingling across different social cross-sections. Some works dealing with the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal referred to their own historic-mythic accounts of their origins. These accounts were strong counterpoints to the Brahmanical basis of a supposedly uniform hegemonic discourse. Further, the relating of these myths explaining tribal origins seem to point toward attempts to capture their (tribes’) own voice in a multilayered discourse on identity. The Adisur myth popularised among the literati and accounting for the origin of higher castes in Bengal was paralleled by myths of ‘lower orders’. Probhash Chandra Ray, in Parbattya Kahini, referred to a fable that invoked mythic linkages between the Pahariyas and other jatis: At the beginning of creation, the major part of the world was filled with water, and the Gods descended from heaven to Mondar mountain, located near Goddar subdivision of Santhal Parganas. Pahariyas believe that the Gods sent seven brothers to Mondar hill. They settled in different areas . . . and each became the ancestor of a separate jati by accepting a specific item of food. When all arrangements were made for the feast, the eldest brother, being unwell, did not like any food item. The second brother then decided that fruits were the best food, and decided to settle on the plains where these could be easily procured. He became the ancestor of the Hindu jati, who are basically vegetarian and have fruits and vegetables. The third brother did not accept any food except the meat of wild animals. The fourth brother became the ancestor of the Kharoar jati. As the fifth brother 131

Ibid., p. .



chapter four accepted the remnants of the meat eaten by others, he was called Kirat, the ancestor of the Kirat jati. The Kol jati originated from the sixth brother, who accepted rice, and the meat of wild animals. The youngest brother, after accepting the remnants of the food consumed by the others, went to a remote spot. When the Europeans came to India from a distant land, the pahariyas began to believe that they were the descendants of their long-lost ancestor, because the Europeans do not have any restrictions about food, nor do they have jatiya divisions like the other jatis of India. The eldest brother who had fallen sick, accepted the food given to him by the other brothers and settled in the area where all the brothers had initially arrived. The Pahariyas are descended from him.132

This mythic account contains specific strands which are interwoven into an alternative world-view contrasting that of Brahman-centred explanatory paradigms. Claiming divine origin, the Pahariyas both segregate (by mentioning differences between jatis) and link ‘Hindus’ to tribes such as Kirat and Kol (as they were jatiya ‘brothers’ of the ‘Hindus’). While this connection is admitted, social and caste classifications are sought to be utopically erased by egalitarian tones which are interestingly related to ideas about linkages of ancestry between the Pahariyas and the Europeans. Reminiscent of Orientalist and British Sanskritist imaginings of racial kinship between Indians and Europeans on the basis of linguistic connections, the Pahariya fable reworked this connection in a subtly different context and in regard to a different agenda: the obliteration of classificatory disabilities seen as being inbuilt into upper caste Hindu society. This world-view also implied a forging of jatiya linkages in a specific way, which was different from the literati’s imagination of bonds of unity among different jatis of Bengal. Nevertheless, the literati obviously found these lower orders’ myths and ideas of unity interesting enough to act as an alternative mould for re-evaluating social connections and harmonies in Bengal. The synergetic interaction between such symbolic bonds of unity reworked in different ways in the worlds of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ set the issue of samajik unity in Bengal in a different perspective. At one level it reworked alignments and differences between the literati and the ‘lower orders’, and at a higher plane, it served, through an association of myths (such as that of Adisur, and of the Pahariyas), as a meaningful site for linking the various jatis of Bengal. The Pahariya world-view cannot be fitted into a simplistic mould of contending discourses arising from diametrically different visions of society by upper-caste (Brahman) and non-Brahman alternative and opposite viewpoints challenging the 132

Ibid., pp. –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



dominant Brahmanical religion. It suggests that there were connections between worlds, intermediate ideological zones, and multiple strands in ways of imagining identity on the part of the ‘excluded’. Unlike the Balahadi sectarian ideology which has been regarded as an archetypical antiBrahman revolt against subordination,133 the Pahariya fable envisaged a social world in which the ‘lower’ other is not condemned to “eternal marginality” by a hegemonic Brahmanical metanarrative.

Concluding Remarks The conceptual tenets explored above demonstrate that the otherness of ‘lower orders’ in Bengal was mediated in specific ways through the prism of samaj, and the related notion of cultural Aryan-ness. While some groups (especially occupationally ‘low’ castes) were included into a reimagined samaj by deploying the criterion of cultural Aryan-ness, other instances of situational co-opting (in case of tribes) drew upon a subtly different model in which the emphasis was on the multi-ethnic character of Bengalis, its late Aryanisation and the presence of non-Aryan elements. This brings to light the important point that there were differences or layers in the ways in which various groups among the ‘lower orders’ were included. While occupationally ‘low’ groups such as the Krishi Vaishyas and the Pods could claim Vaishya status, and belong at an inferior level to the wider Bengali Hindu samaj, ‘low’ class workers (who were educated) were situated at a different level in the class/caste nexus. Specific ‘Hinduised’ tribes occupied a lower place and remained beyond the social orbit though co-opted at a plane significantly different from that of ‘low’ but ‘Hinduised’ castes. What was common to these different instances of co-opting was that the idea of samaj opened up a space for contextual inclusions worked out at specific levels, via specific relative emphasis on the different criteria underpinning the notion of samajik unity. Occupational and social flexibility and inculcation of proper conduct through education provided a space for inclusion of some among the ‘lower’ others. Social borders between the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’

133 Balaram Hadi (belonging to the ‘untouchable’ Hadi caste) founded the Balahadi sect in Nadia district of Bengal. His teachings were directed against the Vedas, the ritual injunctions of the shastras and the practices of castes. Hatred towards Brahmans was a distinctive hallmark of this sect. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, pp. –.



chapter four

samajs of bhadralok and loksadharan were redrawn according to these parameters.134 It was, however, unrealistic to hope that inclusions of the educated sections among the ‘lower orders’ could effect a meaningful or uniform integration of the ‘lower’ other as a whole with the wider stream of Bengali jatiya unity, and change the literati’s idea that Bharatbarsha (India) was the Bharatbarsha not just of bhadraloks, but even of ‘lower’ sections and groups.135 Such a Bharatbarsha was a utopia in the sociocultural and intellectual milieu of the late nineteenth century. Further, to draw attention to conceptualisations of unity contextually integrating some sections of the ‘lower orders’ is not to deny the fact that the literati’s gaze viewed the world of the ‘untouchable’ ‘lower’ others as well as specific tribes as constituting primarily different and ‘inferior’ samajs. The adivasis and the untouchables occupied a much lower rung in the literati’s classificatory scheme. The point here is that despite such limitations, the conceptual category of samaj and its thematic and ideological underpinnings provided a counterpoint to fragmentations along ‘low’ caste and ‘low’ class lines. This alternative motif and conceptual stance affording space for inclusions reflected subtly different viewpoints and complex strands. An individual’s familial background, upbringing and local influences could also account for subtle differences in treatment of the ‘lower’ others, and in the degree of segregation of traditionally excluded groups. The difference between Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay’s treatment of the ‘untouchable’ Bagdis and that of Ramananda Chattopadhyay is relevant in this context. Bankura, the district where Ramananda was born, was dominated by Brahmans, and had a strong Brahmanical inherited tradition. But divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ were not very clear-cut. Bagdi women used to clean utensils for Ramananda’s mother, Harasundari. These utensils were used after pouring water over them once. The sons of the Brahmans of Pathakpara (Ramananda’s native village) used to refer to the local cowherds (rakhal balak) as dada (elder brother).136 There was thus a semblance of familial bonding (atmiyata) between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’. In the Bengali school he attended, a carpenter’s son used to sit beside him, and Ramananda was on very friendly terms with him.137 Initially edu134 Rabindranath Tagore, “Lokhit”, Kalantar, in Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta: Visvabharati, ), pp. –. 135 Ibid., p. . 136 Santa Devi, Ramananda Chattopadhyay O Ardha Satabdir Bangla (Calcutta, undated), pp. –. 137 Ibid., p. .

caste, class and internal ‘others’



cated in a Bengali school, and having studied history and other subjects in vernacular, the formative influences of English education did not have a deep imprint on his mind. He remarked in Probasi, I do not think that fifteen or sixteen year old boys studying in English schools and giving the Entrance examination learnt more than what we did at the age of ten or eleven.138

Ramananda’s father Srinath also did not know English and lost his job because of this.139 Attitudes inbred as a result of an early formative impact of English education might have been partially absent in Ramananda as a result of this. Ramananda’s empathy towards ‘lower orders’ and the absence of a rigid distanciation from them can be traced to these early influences. These parameters and repercussions may have partly neutralised the internalisation of colonial beliefs such as the Aryan/nonAryan dichotomy, leaving Ramananda with a vision of a more egalitarian samaj based on a more empathetic understanding of ‘lower orders’, and an involvement with their problems. These experiential and familial parameters and personal experiences were the foundation of Ramananda’s understanding of, and involvement with the ‘lower orders’, vividly portrayed in various articles in the periodicals Dasi and Pradeep. He firmly believed in the process of disseminating the literati’s ideas about jatiya regeneration to the poorer classes through newspapers available at low prices. Keshab Chandra Sen’s Sulabh Samachar, for instance, was one of the favourite papers of Ramananda.140 It was very popular in Bankura, and cost only one paisa. A master of a local zilla school used to buy  copies and sell them. Ramananda was also committed to the improvement of the condition of the labourers and workers. He wrote eloquently about the coolie problem in Sanjibani ( and ) and in Dharmabandhu ().141 His attitudes and sympathies thus varied the discourse of binaries such as urban/rural, high-caste/low-caste, Aryan/non-Aryan. Ramananda’s familial background and experiences no doubt interacted with his Brahmo ideological mooring to act as potent factors shaping his vision about ‘lower orders’. Another eminent Brahmo intellectual Rajnarain Basu’s viewpoints were subtly different. These differences may have stemmed from the particularities of his background. They 138 139 140 141

Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –.



chapter four

explained his valorisation of village society as sequestered from urban modernity, and from the challenge and subjugation due to the colonial presence. Born into a middle class Brahmo family142 of Boral village, Rajnarain regularly wrote articles in the Brahmo-based Tattvabodhini Patrika ().143 Simultaneously fascinated by western education and European culture, and deeply influenced by an indigenous legacy of specific samajik codes and Sanskritic learning, Rajnarain’s deepest beliefs were grounded in reverence to an inherited tradition, and faith in the “superior spirituality of Hindu civilisation”.144 Hence he lacked a realistic grasp of the problems of the ‘lower orders’. The horizons of his samaj sometimes stretched to idealised conceptions of the traditionally excluded, but their own viewpoints were not his focus. Implicit was the conviction that decisions to include or exclude them were to be taken unilaterally by the high-caste literati. Rajnarain’s Gramya Upakhyan, published in the weekly paper Surabhi in , described a utopic village samaj through the lives of the inhabitants of his native village Boral, spanning  years. It was based on Rajnarain’s experiences, and included the ‘lower orders’, but as part of a romanticised rural Arcadia. To Rajnarain, the everyday lifestyles of the “ordinary, common people of the village” comprising a sadharan (plebeian, mass-based) Bengali samaj, were emblematic of the life of the Bengali jati of those days. The jatiya character was woven around certain ideal qualities (exalted moral character, generosity, hospitality) supposed to have been present in ancient Indian samaj and civilisation.145 Rajnarain’s wistful longings for these ideals (present in a past samaj) looked forward as well. Village life was a dream and a retreat for the English educated Bengali bhadralok “ensnared by European luxuries and selfishness” that eroded “old norms of kinship and hospitality” and mutual sympathy, which only lingered in faroff villages.146 A different approach, such as that followed later by Dineshchandra Sen in Mymensingh Geetika (), might have blended ‘elite’ and ‘folk’ elements, rural ballads, details of everyday rural life, and fragments of popular imagination. These found expression also in Gram142 See Asru Koley, Rajnarain Basu, Jibon O Sahitya (Calcutta: Rabindranath Kole, ), p. . 143 See Mriduchhanda Palit, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, ), p. . 144 Rajnarain Basu, Atmajibani, p. , referred to in Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 145 Rajnarain Basu, Gramya Upakhyan (reprinted Calcutta, ), Introduction. 146 Mentioned by Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. .

caste, class and internal ‘others’



bartaprakasika (–), a periodical initially started by a man of an intermediate (Tili) caste. Later the Tagores and Akshoykumar Moitreya became actively involved in contributing articles to this periodical.147 These differences in evaluations of the ‘lower’ other, and of village life, counterpoised to the ‘urban’, ‘modern’ world of the literati’s samaj, do not constitute the sole key to understanding the subtle variations in perceptions among the literati. But they do provide a means for comparing attitudes within the discourse. The social distance between the literati and the ‘lower orders’ was an undeniable fact; the differences of view related to the extent of that distance, and the ways in which it was to be bridged or widened. The self-conscious benevolence of the literati towards supposedly inferior orders, incapable of dealing with problems by themselves, fed into most attitudes of concern for them. What was common was a conviction in the literati’s capacity to order the samaj. Even inclusions were conditional, and granted at an inferior level. The predominant note of exclusion or inclusion at an inferior level made actual or real attempts to integrate ‘lower orders’ within the samaj, and idealise the contributions of their culture a relatively marginal theme. However, there was occasional acceptance of their heritage, and cultural and civilisational potential. Dineshchandra Sen in Mymensingh Geetika idealised local, rural ballads (pala-gan) including Mahua, Molua and Dewana Modina as sources of samajik itihas and repositories of Bengali jatiya essence.148 He underscored a different, more tolerant and multistranded/multilayered Hindu culture and society devoid of caste divisions. An import of the Hindu dharma of Kamrup in Assam, and containing Buddhist tenets, this Hinduism was accepted by the people of Mymensingh. Here, a more egalitarian samaj existed, almost as a parallel to the high-caste Hindu samaj with its innumerable regulations especially those introduced by Ballal Sen.149 Reference to these egalitarian samajs were, however, made within an overarching framework of mainstream Hinduism. It was an attempt, nevertheless to counter the predominantly elite and high-caste note of the discourse on samaj, and bridge gaps between ‘high’/ ‘low’ and ‘folk’/ ‘elite’. The latter was sought to be done also by emphasising the role of local melas (fairs), samajik anushthans, or forums for linking diverse groups, and the meeting ground of sampradays, and high and low castes. These 147 148 149

Ibid., p. . Dineshchandra Sen, Mymensingh Geetika (Calcutta, ), p. . Ibid., pp. –.



chapter four

loosened rigid differentials of caste, language, and dharma.150 Melas were often symbolic of local heritage. The Uttarayan Mela was held in Krishnapur, Hugli, and the Shibaratrite Jater Mela (an assembly held on the night of Shib puja or worship, attended by people of many castes and classes) was held in Mahanad.151 As early as , an article in Som Prakash gave a graphic description of Ghoshparar Mela: Many may have heard about this famous mela. The Kartabhajas [a low caste heterodox sect] organise this mela on Doljatra . . . This year, . . . sixty five thousand people have come to the mela. Many of them are women. Most of the men who have come to this mela are illiterate. Here there is no caste division and social ranking. All the jatis accept food from each other. In this respect, Ghoshpara has defeated Jagannath Khetra because there, Muslims cannot gain entry. But in Ghoshpara, Muslims are giving rice to Brahmans.152

The fact that this article was published in Som Prakash, edited by Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan, a Brahman by birth, a professor of Sanskrit College, and an important member of the Baidik Brahman Samaj,153 shows the high-caste literati’s preoccupation with samajik unity forged through such diverse means as local melas. These melas, often organised by heterodox religious sects such as the Kartabhajas, understandably invited the entry of Hindus of ‘lower orders’ as well as Muslims. The article in Som Prakash while denouncing the Kartabhajas, nevertheless noted, “Low or itar classes belong to this religious sect. Bhadraloks look down upon it. But some Kayasthas and Brahmans are found among its followers.”154 Within the high-caste orientations of samajik unity, there were internal variations, thus qualifying the viewpoint that samaj was all too often conceptualised in high-caste, paternalistic terms.155 Though the scale and depth of inclusions of specific groups among the ‘lower orders’ were not far-reaching enough to create a casteless and classless utopia, the deployment of specific criteria embedded in the idea of samaj does constitute 150 Asok Mitra, Paschimbanger Utsab Parban O Mela (Calcutta: Anu Press, ), Introduction. 151 Details about such melas held in Bengal down the ages can be gleaned from Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj (Calcutta: Mitrani, ), pp. –. 152 “Ghoshparar Mela”, Som Prakash ( Chaitra, ), Number , printed in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, Volume IV (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakash Bhaban, ), pp. –. 153 Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, Volume IV, pp. –. 154 Ibid., pp. –. 155 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. –.

caste, class and internal ‘others’



a different analytic lens which sets the issue of otherness of the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal in a light which contrasts continuing and conventional portrayals of de-contextualised oppositions between contending worlds fractured along lines of caste and class.

chapter five CONTIGUOUS ETHNICITIES

The literati’s quest for identity brought into focus their relationship to ‘peripheral’ social groups such as the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. The conceptual category of samaj linked to jati mediated fragmentations and distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ castes and classes. As identities were fractured also along ethnic lines, the discourse on nationhood attempted to provide a framework for dealing with ethnic divisions. Imaginations of union between samajs in Bengal were paralleled by a rethinking of unities between a regional selfhood and external ‘others’ such as the immediately contiguous ethnicities. Through a reconsideration of cultural unities entwined in the concept of samaj, the literati sought to situate neighbouring ethnic groups such as the Oriyas, Assamese, and the people of Manipur, Tripura and Cachar within a wider discourse on nationhood.1 This chapter explores various aspects of Bengali viewpoints relating to neighbouring ‘others’, and focuses on the making and remaking of identities though a complex oscillation between inclusion and exclusion of these ‘others’. The Bengali re-articulation of the collective self reworked a notion of the neighbouring ‘others’, which was situated vis-à-vis the self in a complementary, as well as a disjunctive relationship, woven around identities/differences of religious belief, ritual regulation of life, common customs, and actualities of language, locality and tradition. As in the case of the literati’s discourse on ‘lower orders’ within Bengal, certain key criteria intimately bound up with ‘Aryan’ cultural and social

1 Existing literature has analysed the dynamics of identity formation in Assam, Orissa and other neighbouring regions in colonial and postcolonial contexts, emphasising political, economic, social aspects, and particularly separatist and subnational movements. See, for instance, Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); Bisvamoy Pati, Situating Social History: Orissa, – (New Delhi: Orient Longman, ); and Anjelika Malinar, Johanns Belts and Heiko Freses (eds.), Text and Context in the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa (New Delhi: Manohar, ). The point of departure of this study lies in shifting the light of enquiry to Bengali ideational contexts, and exploring the contexts and parameters underpinning the forging of an eastern Indian cultural unity through an imagination of nationhood entwined in samaj (idea of social collectivity).



chapter five

values, and the supposed Bengali-Hindu-Aryan equation,2 were the pivots around which the relationship between Bengal and her neighbours was constructed. Adherence to specific aspects of cultural Aryan-ness including acceptance of the epics and puranas (texts comprising traditional knowledge), familial norms based on dharmik sanction, linguistic connections with Sanskrit, and belief in a supreme Godhead conditioned the situational co-opting of culturally-Aryanised (neighbouring ethnic) groups within a wider samajik universe. This thematic exploration would demonstrate how, despite complexities, differentiations and multilayered viewpoints, the trajectory of inclusion was a significant one, and ideas about nationhood emanating from samaj undergirded this incorporative framework. In delineating this interpretative pathway, I try to show how the deployment of samaj and cultural Aryan-ness redefined ethnicity as a site for forging cultural unities across self/other boundaries, rather than a conflict-ridden terrain fractured by political antagonisms and separatist divisiveness. 3 Viewed through the prism of samaj, the relation between Bengal and her neighbours may be fitted into a specific paradigm of ethnicity in South Asian contexts, in some respects intrinsically different from ‘western’ models. The dynamics of distinctiveness and similarity fed into a comparative framework which prioritised the trajectory of cultural affinities and situationally co-opted some groups among the neighbouring ‘others’ as contextual sub-selves, thus forging a cultural constellation in eastern India. The location of ethnicity within an interactive framework of samajik identities and larger structures of unity sets the case study of Bengal’s relations with contiguous groups within a nexus of ethnic identity and nationhood developing in a comparative grid. While identity movements across the world involving historic quests for origins, and 2 The Bengali literati equated ‘Hindu’ with ‘Aryan’ in many contexts. Whether ‘Hindu’ can be taken to mean ‘Aryan’ is debatable, as has been pointed out by Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). The literati during the period under survey valorised a glorious ‘Aryan’ heritage, and believed that Bengalis were co-sharers of this heroic lineage. 3 This contrasts sharply with the postcolonial predicament of ethnic conflict, fragmentation, separatist demands and subnationalism. Though divisive tendencies were present at subterranean levels even during the late colonial period, and the discourse on unity was contested at various levels by counterdiscourses (alternative, oppositional representations that sought to subvert the supposed metanarrative of Aryan lineage or Bengali cultural supremacy) and breakaway tendencies such as the Bihar movement (), the conceptualisation of unity under the rubric of samaj offered a strong counterpoint to divisions and separatisms.

contiguous ethnicities



reworkings of cultural ties reflect the connection between ethnicity and nationhood as it unfolded in a historical longue duree, the forms of these connections vary. The reconsideration of cultural affinities between Bengal and her neighbours, which shaped the ontology of a nationhood grounded in culture, was rather different from the politicisation of identifications reflected in core ethnies exercising political domination in the road to nationhood.4 The very ways of negotiating issues of ethnicity were bound to be different in India because it was a ‘beehive society’,5 characterised by ethnic variation. In countries less ethnically diverse, such as Japan, sub-regional, subnational and ethnic conflict was muted and mediated through political intervention, seen especially in the central government’s control over various clans in post-Meiji Japan.6 In contrast to sharp, politically-grounded ethnic antagonisms, as in Indonesia,7 and erosions of ethnic particularisms in China through the hegemonic imposition of Han-Chinese identity,8 Bengal’s reworking of the idea of ethnicity by deploying jati was not overtly political or primarily conflict-ridden. To situate such differences in more nuanced contexts, I trace how and why the literati’s discourse on contiguous ethnicities moved beyond colonial sociological, ethnographic and cartographic principles and practices.

4 Cf. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ), pp. , . 5 India was a multi-ethnic society where the identity of the people was rooted in a plural culture, not in political institutions. Accordingly, unlike Japan, Vietnam, and to some extent China, a simplistic connection could not be drawn between love of the land, ethnicity and the imperial idea. Moreover, ethnicity in the Indian context needs to be seen through the prism of culture, and not as a category imbricated with ideas about blood and race. See Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , –; and C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 6 Stephen Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ); Prasenjit Duara, “Postcolonial History”, in Sarah Maza and Lloyd Kramer (eds.), A Companion to Western Political Thought (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, ), p. , ; Ian Nish, “Nationalism in Japan”, in Michael Leifer (ed.), Asian Nationalism (London: Routledge, ), pp. –; and Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry (London: Routledge, ). 7 Michael Leifer, “The Changing Temper of Indonesian Nationalism,” in Michael Leifer (ed.), Asian Nationalism, p. . 8 Torbjorn Loden, “Nationalism Transcending the State: Changing Conceptions of Chinese Identity,” in Stein Tonnesson and Hans Antlov (eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, ), pp. , .



chapter five Exploring Contexts: Colonial Sociology and Cartography, and Indigenous Shifts

Colonial sociology, reflected in the views of European surveyors and ethnographers, formed a significant evolving context which crucially influenced ways of rethinking, comparing, and connecting identities in Bengal and the contiguous regions. Enumeration, quantification and taxonomies helped crystallise identities and categories that were relatively fluid. By emphasising racial,9 religious, and caste divisions,10 colonial sociology made communities more self-aware, and identity was redefined through contrast and otherness.11 A growing concern about neighbouring groups was a marked feature of the Bengali intellectuals’ quest for identity from the second half of the nineteenth century. As Ramananda Chattopadhyay observed in : “A deeper and wider knowledge of our neighbours through the media of literature and art is essential for self-definition.”12 Evaluations of contiguous ‘others’ naturally became integral to the recasting of the Bengali self. This explained why there were independent indigenous attempts to ‘know’ the neighbouring others, as well as joint endeavours of colonial writers/administrators and the indigenous literati (Rajendralal Mitra, associated with the Asiatic Society, was asked by Lieutenant Governor Grey to visit Orissa to study its temples, and The Antiquities of Orissa, and works on Nepal, were officially sponsored).13 The same individual could undertake the

9 W.W. Hunter’s Statistical Account of Bengal (–), Tribes and Castes Surveys (); H.H. Risley’s The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary, Volume I () and the  census emphasised race and physical anthropology. See Bernard Cohn, in Bernard Cohn and Milton Singer (eds.), Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. . 10 The first series of district gazetteers () and the decennial census ranked and classified by caste, tribe, ethno-religious community and occupation. See Barrier (); Bernard S. Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification”, in Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist Among Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); Dirks (), mentioned in Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 11 See R.B. Bhagat, “Census and the Construction of Communalism in India” Commentary, Economic and Political Weekly, November . 12 Ramananda Chattopadhyay’s comment in  in Kayastha Samachar, Allahabad, mentioned by the editor of Modern Review (January, ), printed in Santa Devi, Ramananda O Ardha Satabdir Bangla (Calcutta, undated), p. . 13 K.K. Dasgupta, Itihas O Sanskriti (Calcutta: Birendranath Bhattacharya, ), pp. –.

contiguous ethnicities



composition of an officially sponsored work, as well as write on related topics on his own initiative. Colonial sociology sharply demarcated Bengal and her neighbours in terms of physical features, language and social characteristics. The contrast was evident in district gazetteers’ accounts, such as Assam District Gazetteers, Kamrup, Volume IV by B.C. Allen.14 In a similar vein, L.S.S. O’Malley remarked: Whether physical conditions, the character of the people and their language are considered, the Presidency [Bengal] is . . . remarkably homogeneous . . . Bihar and Orissa . . . consist of three subdivisions, Bihar, Chhotanagpur and Orissa having different languages . . . their physical configuration and the character of their peoples are entirely distinct . . . the people have social characteristics and a caste system different from that of Bengal.15

The ingrained notion of such difference was also reflected in cartographic practices. The political and administrative boundaries distinguishing Bengal from her neighbours were founded on such notions of difference. Colonial sociology and cartography, forming part of a wider hegemonic imperial power-knowledge nexus, were imbricated with colonial modes of ‘knowing’ and subjugating the ‘other’ (people and land of India)16 by highlighting internal contrast and divisions. Just as India was regarded as not one nation but many (the country was seen as a melange of ethnic communities), the land was scientifically represented by deploying ideas about protective and natural boundaries. Simultaneously, ideas about spatial/cartographic segregation and otherness gathered momentum. Portrayed as a “paradigmatic shift”, such notions prioritised exclusion and division. The ‘line’ was considered as dividing two areas.17 The exclusionary and divisive character that the idea of frontier acquired in British imagination and practice found application in two main ways— () the multi-stage isolation of the North East from the rest of India; and 14 B.C. Allen, Assam District Gazetteers: Kamrup, Volume IV (Allahabad, Government Press, ). 15 L.S.S. O’Malley, Census of India, , Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Volume V (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ), pp. –. 16 See Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –; and Ian J. Barrow, Making History, Drawing Territory. British Mapping in India, c. – (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 17 Ian J. Barrow, “Moving Frontiers: Changing Colonial Notions of the Indian Frontiers,” South Asia Graduate Research Journal, sponsored by Centre for Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Vol. I, No.  (Fall, ), p. .



chapter five

() inner divisions in the North East, specifically the division between the hills and the plains. The imperial logic of domination through division was reflected in political moves, and administrative recasting of the Bengal Presidency, evident from the closing years of the nineteenth century as a prelude to the partition of . The Government of India and the Secretary of State expressed misgivings as early as , and in , Assam was separated and placed under a Chief Commissioner.18 The boundaries of Bengal, Assam, the Central Provinces and Madras, which included some Oriya speaking areas, were considered “antiquated, illogical and productive of inefficiency.”19 The intersection between cartography, sociology and colonial power-knowledge led to reactive moves among the Indians,20 for instance among the Bengali literati, who refigured the colonial map, subtly metamorphosing notions of division, exclusion, and core/periphery dichotomies. The dynamics of such transmutations may be traced to the recasting of identities in Bengal and beyond within the inclusive framework of samaj. The literati’s discourse (knowledge as text) and its intersection with social practice (involving transmutations of colonial tenets) cannot be taken as something intrinsically aligned to, and complementing colonial forms of knowing. It cannot be simplistically fitted into Eugene Irschick’s mould, grafting indigenous knowledge to western forms of knowing, operating through a dialogue in a common epistemic field.21 Political and material factors and processes impacted the interactional levels of the Bengali discourse. The construction of a comparative paradigm for evaluating, integrating and differentiating the contiguous ethnicities was facilitated by travel22 to neighbouring regions and 18 A.C. Banerjee, The New History of Modern India: – (New Delhi: K.P. Bagchi, ), p. . 19 Curzon’s view, quoted in ibid., p. . 20 Indigenous reactions and responses to colonial mapping have remained relatively unexplored, there being fewer works on this theme than those concerned with the principles and practices of colonial cartography. A significant study dealing with indigenous responses is Sumathi Ramaswamy’s The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), which shows how Tamil nationalists refigured the colonial map for their own purposes. 21 Eugene Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, – (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), mentioned in Sujit Sivasundaram, “Tales of the Land: British Geography and Kandyan Resistance in Sri Lanka, c. –,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ), pp. –. 22 Travel narratives included Prasannamoyee Devi’s Aryavarta (); Dharanikanta Lahiri Chaudhuri’s Bharat Bhraman (Calcutta, ) and the anonymously written Asam Bhraman (Calcutta, ).

contiguous ethnicities



residence there through employment connections (Nagendranath Basu was employed in the Archaeological Survey of Mayurbhanj in Orissa), associations with groups of Bengalis and religious sects, networks of pilgrimage, the influx of some neighbouring groups to Calcutta (such as the Oriya labourers)—all of which informed a wider process of redefining identity and a romantic search for origins. Local associations such as the Uttar Bangiya Sahitya Parishat and the Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti () formed an interactive forum for Bengali intellectuals and the local literati, and a platform for relating texts/belief to experiential reality. A quest for cultural identity shaped through an excavation of history reflected a growing concern about the contiguous ethnicities as ‘others’ as well as contextual sub-selves who were co-opted situationally into a wider cultural universe. The entwining of cultural identity with ideas about nationhood gathered momentum from , when the Hindu Mela was first convened. The quest for cultural links between Bengal and the contiguous ethnicities accelerated in the wake of the Swadeshi upsurge, which was significant because it prioritised a cultural identity alongside associational politics and redrew the borders (inclusively) of a politically splintered Bengal. The ‘otherness’ of Bengal’s neighbours premised on colonial considerations underwent subtle transmutations in the literati’s discourse. The contexts and reference points of differentiation were not identical to those of the colonial discourses. While it is undeniable that colonial sources were frequently referred to in indigenous works, the ways in which they were used, differed. Nagendranath Basu, writing about Orissa, referred to French writers such as St. Martin, and to Robert Caldwell’s Dravidian Grammar.23 Appeals to the epics, puranas, and other ancient texts as bases for defining boundaries were found in district gazetteers’ reports as well as in the literati’s tracts. Like B.C. Allen who cited the Yogini Tantra,24 and E.A. Gait who referred to the Kalikapurana to support his claims regarding the origin of the ancient name ‘Pragjyotish’,25 Baradaprasad Basu, in his historical description of Orissa,

23 See Nagendranath Basu, “Kalingarajya”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Sraban, ), pp. –. 24 The Yogini Tantra () was a kula-inspired text of Kamrup, which glorified the greatness of Jagannath. Its authorship is unknown. See B.C. Allen, Assam District Gazetteers, Kamrup, Volume IV, p. . 25 E.A. Gait, Census of India, Volume I (Shillong: Assam Adverstiser Press, ); and A History of Assam (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, ).



chapter five

cited the Mahavamsa and the Mahabharata as important sources.26 An article called ‘Manipur’ in Janmabhoomi () delineated the boundaries of Manipur and located it within Bharat (India) on the basis of puranic and epic accounts.27 The prioritisation of cultural unity explained why the literati used indigenous sources to bolster their ideas about a wider cultural constellation whereas colonial writers stressed differences more. The starting point of Bengali ethnography, unlike colonial sociology lay in the most important task of self-definition.28 Colonial accounts about indigenous ‘others’, conditioned by on-the-spot experiences, and visits undertaken under official directive and initiative,29 had political overtones. For instance, Alexander Mackenzie’s ideas drew on his own experiences and official role: from –, he was in charge of the political correspondence of the Bengal government.30 In the literati’s works, lineages of cultural unity were prioritised over political records. The following sections explore how such prioritisation, emanating from the intersection of the conceptual categories of jati and samaj fed into a framework interrelating Bengal and her neighbours within a wider grid of overlapping identities and ideas about nationhood.

Neighbouring Jatis (Races and Tribes): Ethnic Otherness, Comparison and Unity Neighbouring ethnic groups were viewed through the lens of jati, which, as said, was a unique conceptual category simultaneously meaning division/hierarchy, as well as an overarching rubric joining various sub-types. As a multifaceted term implying birth, race, caste, tribe and nation, it was also used in the sense of ethnic category and broad demographic 26

Baradaprasad Basu, Tirthadarshan: Urishyar Purabritta, Part  (Calcutta, – ), p. . 27 “Manipur”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Chaitra, ), p. . 28 This has been mentioned by Kumkum Chatterjee. See Kumkum Chatterjee, “Discovering India: Travel, History and Identity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentiethcentury India”, in Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 29 Mackenzie wrote at the direction of Lieutenant Governor Grey of Bengal. See Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of Bengal (Calcutta: Home Office Department Press, ). 30 Ibid. Mackenzie referred to political records of the Bengal Secretariat and the Foreign Department, which had a bearing on the political history of North East India.

contiguous ethnicities



units woven around ideas of ‘we’ and ‘they’. Well-known Bengali intellectuals residing in eastern Bengal in proximity to neighbouring areas of Assam, Manipur and Cachar demarcated Bengali and neighbouring jatis. For instance, S.N. Bhadra pointed out: The people of Bihar are Biharis and their language is Hindi. In Orissa, Oriya is in vogue, and we Bengalis live in Bengal, our language is Bengali. Assam is populated by the Khasi, Naga, and other jatis.31

Upendrachandra Guha regarded Cacharis as a separate jati belonging to a different racial stock, and having different customs, manners and social practices.32 The literati likewise segregated the inhabitants of Tripura as a separate jati.33 The trajectory of differentiation, however, intertwined with that of situational inclusions and the forging of larger collectivities. Conjoined to samaj, the inclusive framework of jati negotiated and mediated difference within a flexible rubric of unity. In the application of the term jati to neighbouring populations, pre-existing (pre and early colonial) semantic significations and later reconfigurations under colonial impact intersected in a complex remaking of identities. While at one level, jati interacted with more enumerative frames resulting from British political practice (objectifying, crystallising and even essentialising categories), at another, it contested them, and opened up a terrain where multiple forms and scales of identity intersected, thus complicating any simplistic transition from “fuzzy” to “enumerated” identity.34 This section problematises two main uses of jati (as race and tribe) applied to contiguous ethnic groups to open a window to how ethnic differences and particularisms were mediated via the inclusive framework of samaj to approximate wider unities. The colonial Aryan/non-Aryan division (central in sociological exercises of the raj) moulded understandings of jati-as-race as applied to neighbouring ethnic groups. Lalmohan Vidyanidhi clearly distinguished ‘Aryan’ and ‘non-Aryan’ jatis.35 What is significant is that cultural

31

S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat (Dacca, ), p. . Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta (Dacca, ), p. . 33 Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, “Rabindranath O Tripura”, Desh, Subarnajayanti Prabandha Sankalan, – (Calcutta: Ananda, ), p. . 34 Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of the Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 35 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Bharatiya Arya Jatir Adim Abastha (Calcutta, ), p. . 32



chapter five

characteristics, sociological underpinnings and civilisational parameters were central in the literati’s use of jati as race applied in comparisons of Bengalis and the neighbouring ethnicities. The central question: “Are they Aryan?” ruling the literati’s perceptions about the neighbouring people did not really imply the question of Aryan racial stock. In that sense Bengalis were not Aryans either, but as pointed out in the previous chapter, an amalgam of many races or a bahujati.36 In prioritisations of cultural differentials woven around the adoption of Aryan culture, race, cultural characteristics and territory intersected. Demarcations (based on Aryan/non-Aryan) constituted a starting point. Sharply contrasting Aryavarta (land/home/habitat of the Aryans) to Dakhyinatya/Deccan (abode of the non-Aryans, especially the Dravidians), Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay asserted that India was divided into Hindustan (corresponding to Aryavarta), and Dakhyinatya. The former included Bengal, Bihar, Allahabad, Ayodhya, and Rohilkhand, and differed from Dakhyinatya in terms of language, customs and manners.37 This was even clearer in Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay’s Bharatbarsher Itihas, which marked out Orissa as a part of Dakhyinatya, and its people as nonAryan.38 In , Sibchandra Som observed: “The very name ‘Orissa’ conjures the picture of a land inhabited by unicivilised jatis having degrading customs.”39 Mid and late nineteenth century Bengali tracts on history were replete with notions of a superior Aryan culture, cradled in Aryavarta, of which Bengal was considered an integral part. Sharply counterpoised to this cultural supremacy was Dakhyinatya, the home of non-Hindu, uncivilised jatis. Tarinicharan historicised the mythic and epic appeal of the Ramayana when he asserted that the Aryanisation of Dakhyinatya began with Ramchandra’s unfurling of the Hindu flag in the South.40 Even sub-regional histories of Bengal considered some neighbouring ethnicities such as the Oriyas to be cultural inferiors.41 Convictions about the cultural backwardness of Assam drew partly on its territorial eclipse as a history-less and zoned-off frontier in colonial discourse

36 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ), pp. –. 37 Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. , . 38 Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ), . 39 Sibchandra Som, Urishyar Itihas, (Calcutta, ), p. . 40 Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas, p. . 41 Mahimaniranjan Chakrabarty, Birbhum Rajbangsha (Calcutta, ), p. .

contiguous ethnicities



and practice.42 Assam was supposed to have been named after the jatiya title (upadhi) of the ‘uncivilised’ non-Aryan Ahom jati.43 Within broader landscapes of Aryan/non-Aryan, the discourse on neighbouring jatis also highlighted internal ethnic differentiations, particularly specific tribes, whose otherness was constructed through ideas about non-Aryan (racial) origin and civilisational backwardness. These two parameters had been, as we have seen, applied in the case of tribes within Bengal. The deployment of these factors in the context of neighbouring ethnic groups shows that their otherness was mediated through a similar analytic model. While scholar-historians such as Ramgati Nyayratna categorised the hill tribes of Bengal as “parbattya jati”,44 references to the Santhal,45 Kol, Bhil and Munda jatis of Bengal and the neighbouring areas reflect how ideas about primordial ties, clan belongings, dialects and belief in a patron deity were fitted into the framework of jati which was applied across sub-regional and regional borders to ethnic ‘others’ in contiguous regions. Well-known Bengali writers such as Durgacharan Rakshit, Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri and Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay46 considered the Santhals, Mundas, Nagas, Sabars, Kols, Pulindas and Khasias as belonging to non-Aryan stock.47 Jati as tribe deployed in the context of ethnic categories of neighbouring regions applied the theme of racial-cum-territorial segregation to separate tribal pockets (from more Aryanised areas) within the landscapes of Aryavarta and the Deccan: such as the Santhal Parganas, seen as the meeting-place of Bengal, Bihar and Chhotanagpur, and the borderland between the civilised and the uncivilised.48 The deployment of jati as tribe implied a discourse on the ethnic otherness of neighbouring peoples operated at two conceptual levels. First, the educated, mainly high 42 Yasmin Saikia, “Religion, Nostalgia and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (), p. . 43 Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ), . 44 Ramgati Nyayratna, Banglar Itihas (Hugli, ), pp. –. 45 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini: Santhal Porgonar Itibritta (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 46 Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 47 Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik (Calcutta, ), p. . Though opinion was divided as to whether the Santhals belonged specifically to the Dravidian race, their non-Aryan origin was admitted. Some Bengali writers believed them to be descendants of the Kol family (non-Aryan), while others thought that they were related to the ancient inhabitants of Australia. See Sukumar Sen, Bharat Kosh, Vol. V (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 48 Probhash Chandra Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. .



chapter five

caste/ ‘Aryan’ literati were differentiated from aboriginal adivasis. Second, Bengal was separated from the tribally-dense pockets in neighbouring regions. The non-Aryan tribal ‘others’ were distanced further by highlighting their civilisational backwardness in a way similar to applications of the idea of sabhyata (civilisation) to ‘lower orders’, specifically tribes within Bengal. Applying the idea of goal-oriented, civilisational progress along a linear path, Durgachandra Sanyal made the point that the Jaintia rajya (realm) inhabited by the Khasis, and the Nagas, had never become civilised or powerful. He added that the Nagas were still uncivilised.49 This clearly set them apart from the Bengalis. The envisioning of tribes as a counter-facet of civilisation highlighted differences of language, religion and customs. The non-Aryan tribes living in neighbouring areas were regarded as dasas / dasyus. As mentioned in Chapter IV, they were inhuman, had an unintelligible speech, and comprised a history-less jati (as they had no script), having a different dharma.50 Linguistic difference revolving around the Aryan (Sanskrit) / non-Aryan division, implied inferiority, premised on the idea that Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Punjabi and Hindi were derived from the language in which the Aryans wrote the Vedas (and thus belonged to the family of Indo-European and IndoIranian languages), whereas non-Aryan languages (of the neighbouring tribes) did not belong to this group.51 Distinctions of the primordial givens of kinship (racial origin), language and territory enmeshed with social contrasts (differences of social organisation). The Santhal world had no jatibhed (internal social divisions akin to the Bengali Hindu samaj, especially in terms of caste), and their society had different bonds of unity, deriving from primordialities of kinship ties and egalitarian values.52 The members of the segregated world were internally relativised, compared and hierarchised through the construction of a civilisational scale underpinned by the values and standards of cultural Aryanism. Probhash Chandra Ray remarked: “Among all the uncivilised, ancient, nonAryan jatis, the Pahariyas (hill tribes) belong to the lowest rung.”53 The 49

Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas, p. . Emphasis added. Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, pp. , –. 51 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in Bankim Rachanabali, Vol II, p. ; Promode Bhowmick, Bharat Kosh, Vol. V (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), pp. –; Sukumar Sen, Bharat Kosh, Vol. V, p. . 52 Ray, Parbattya Kahini, pp. , –, –. 53 Ibid., p. . 50

contiguous ethnicities



‘uncivilised’ Riyangs and the Kiratas, infamous for lying, were also assigned a low place in this internal hierarchy.54 Thus conduct intertwined with differences of race and language in internal relativisations and comparisons. Among Oriya sub-jatis, while the Utkalas were considered uncivilised and rude, the people of Kongada (Puri, Orissa) were quite different from them.55 The application of jati as race and tribe to ideas about non-Aryan contiguous ‘others’ en bloc (as Orissa) and more specific, sharper ‘tribal’ others within larger demographic blocs involved a recasting of the colonial Aryan/non-Aryan division in terms of twin facets of cultural superiority and inferiority, drawing on ideas about Bengali cultural and civilisational supremacy based on the supposed Aryan-Hindu-Bengali equation.56 The evaluative stance made a case for the prior Aryanisation of Bengal. Citing the Mahabharata, Nagendranath Basu claimed: During the time of the Mahabharata Brahmans arrived in Bengal. Only after entering Bengal did they cross over to Orissa. There is no proof that Aryans of Aryavarta entered Bengal in any other way . . . there is evidence for concluding that Brahmans first arrived in the capital of the Bengali king, Basudeb, before entering Kalinga [part of, or ancient Orissa].57

Like Orissa, Assam was also supposed to have been Aryanised later. It is mentioned in the Ramayana that a Chandrabangshiya king called Amurttaraja established Pragjyotishpur [in ancient Assam]. According to the Satapatha Brahmana of the Yajur Veda, Aryan civilisation spread eastwards, so it is impossible that Amurttaraja, an Aryan king, crossed over to Assam without establishing a kingdom first in Bengal.58

Bengal, Aryanised before neighbouring areas, was supposed to epitomise the essence of cultural Aryan-ness far more than the contiguous ethnic groups. In such comparisons the colonial Aryan/non-Aryan division though internalised, was subtly metamorphosed by underscoring its 54 Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat, Vol. , No.  (), pp. , –. 55 Bhisma Purana and Hieuen Tsang’s accounts, referred to in B.C. Majumdar, Orissa in the Making (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ), pp. , , , . 56 The intelligentsia during the nineteenth century fitted Bengalis into the lineage of a heroic Aryan history. Along with traditionally valiant ‘races’ such as the Marathas, Rajputs and the Sikhs, Bengalis considered themselves as co-sharers of this heroic legacy. Moral courage and righteous conduct, and specific codes of social behaviour were as significant as physical prowess in this construction of a heroic Aryan identity. 57 Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 58 Ibid., p. .



chapter five

sociological underpinnings and cultural qualities rather than the physiological criteria, which some of the Victorian ethnologists emphasised.59 The flexibility of cultural Aryan-ness afforded scope for including ‘inferior’ or ‘different’ neighbouring others who were ‘Aryanised,’ thus providing a counterpoint to colonial discourses of differentiation and exclusion. The reorientation of race in terms of cultural and linguistic criteria, rather than in rigid ethnological terms may be regarded as an internalisation and a reformulation of the convictions of the early Orientalists. The Indian literati, as insiders, reconsidered self-other dichotomies not only vis-à-vis the British, but also in regard to contiguous groups, and other Indians. In such reformulations, the configuration of jati as race had a wider, trans-regional purpose. As said, cultural Aryan-ness, a key principle of samajik unity, made it possible to situationally co-opt ‘others’ into a wider cultural constellation in eastern India, which intersected with notions about Bharatiya/Indian samaj. Adoption of Aryan culture by certain neighbouring people, and references to their habitats in Aryan literature (epics and puranas) were often sufficient to bring them closer to the Bengali samaj,60 and in a more extended sense, to an Aryan, Hindu India. Though Manipur is not our birthplace, it has an intimate connection with our homeland, Bharat. The Mahabharata and the puranas refer to it as an ancient Hindu land with specific rules of jatibhed [social and caste divisions] and traditions of customs and practices. So we must include it in the country of our birth. Therefore we publish this article in our periodical Janmabhoomi [Land of Birth].61

Similarly, Sylhet and Cachar gained precedence because the Mahabharata referred to them as ancient seats of learning and culture.62 The neighbouring ‘others’ (as en bloc jatis and territorial units) were brought near Bengal and fitted into a larger Indian social universe via the thread of cultural Aryan-ness and epic reference. The theme was applied in a slightly different way to more specific, sharper tribal ‘others’. The ‘Hinduisation’ of Santhals through the process of naming individuals and 59

E.T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of India (Calcutta: Government Press, ). Samaj is used here in the sense of social collectivity, and as a conceptual rubric that could include castes, jatis and regions, and symbolise nationhood and Indian-ness. For details see Swarupa Gupta, “Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, –”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ), pp. –. 61 “Manipur”, in Janmabhoomi, Vol. I, No. , (Calcutta, ), p. . 62 S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, p. . 60

contiguous ethnicities



groups,63 and the emphasis laid by writers such as Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri on similarities between Santhal and Hindu religious tenets and practice64 reveal that some neighbouring groups (tribes) were assimilated contextually and situationally at a lower level on the basis of their adherence to Hindu customs and modes of worship.65 But this “Hindu method of tribal absorption”66 was not based on any uniform valorisation of non-Aryan/tribal culture or any realistic social integration. The ways of ‘Sanskritisation’67 or Hinduisation of neighbouring tribes lacked the scale and depth of Hinduisation of specific ‘low’ castes (as explored in the previous chapter). ‘Hinduised’ tribes remained outside the social orbit and were far less parts of the social collectivity than the Hinduised castes. Despite this limitation, Hinduisation of tribes by applying the idea of cultural Aryan-ness did afford some scope for inclusion. The very fact that ‘Aryanised’ Bengal could imagine a social utopia within such contexts suggests that ‘Aryan’/ ‘Brahmanical’ was a matter of culture. More significantly, the co-existence of non-Aryan elements in Bengal made it possible to mediate the issue of ethnic otherness by contextualising it with reference to wider conceptualisations of unity, diluting the polarity and finality of difference. This occurred in a complex way through an interesting internalisation and modification of colonial tenets. Transmuting the colonial argument that miscegenation between indigenous tribals and Aryan Brahmans had produced intermediate castes, the literati claimed that the intermixture (varnasamkar) of castes produced certain tribes (misrajati). The idea of mixed castes was fitted into the logic of tribal inferiority: the Mundas of Chhotanagpur were racially nonAryan, and in addition they were considered ‘low’ because they had subcategories (misrajati) such as the Khangar, Khobia and the Mohili.68 The 63

Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . The Santhal god Buru Thakur was deemed to be another form of the Hindu God, Narayan. There were similarities between the avatars of Hinduism and those of the Santhal religion. Due to long association with Hindus, Santhal festivals were very similar to Hindu ones. They observed Durga puja (worship of the goddess Durga) and Doljatra. See Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat, Vol. , No.  (Calcutta, ), pp. –, –, . 65 Ray, Parbattya Kahini, p. . 66 Nirmal K. Bose, “The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption”, Science and Culture, Vol. VII (), pp. –, quoted in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste Culture and Hegemony: Social Domination in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ), p. . 67 M.N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). 68 Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, p. . 64



chapter five

construction of the separateness of neighbouring tribes was an ambivalent and contested terrain, where the issue of tribal otherness was juxtaposed to the multi-racial character of the Bengalis themselves.69 The primacy and centrality of the Aryan/Hindu/Bengali equation coexisted with ideas about non-Aryan elements, intermixture, and the late Aryanisation of Bengal. While at one level, the neighbouring tribes were considered the uncivilised (barbaric) other of the civilised Bengali self, at another, they were considered parts (though very different in nature), in a loose and distant sense, of the multi-group Bengali jati (as mentioned earlier) and in an extended sense, to a wider trans-regional cultural universe which mediated, redefined and subtly transmuted ethnic otherness. Kshirodachandra Raychaudhuri, despite considering neighbouring tribes as ‘different’, ‘inferior’ and civilisationally backward, called his article: “Banglar Borbor Jati”, or the uncivilised jatis (tribes) of Bengal. Such inclusion and conflation went beyond self-other dichotomies implied in western models of ethnicity.70 The dichotomisation involved in ethnicity has been emphasised by Thomas Eriksen and Frederik Barth. Barth’s model prioritises ethnic boundaries as a replacement for cultural differences. To Barth, boundaries may be relative and permeable, but the disentanglement of ethnicity from culture leads to the prioritisation of the ethnic boundary, rather than the cultural stuff that it encloses. These boundaries are social ones, though they may have territorial counterparts, and determine membership and exclusion. On the contrary, Bengal’s discourse on neighbouring ethnic groups created permeable, culturally inclusive borders between a regional Bengali selfhood, and neighbouring ethnicities.

Neighbouring Castes and Samajs Just as jati as race/tribe expanded its limits to forge situational inclusions, the use of jati as caste vis-à-vis the contiguous ethnic groups not only differentiated and heirarchised, but also compared and forged parallels between castes/subcastes of Bengal and those of the neigh69

Kamal Majumdar, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta: The Author, ), –, . Thomas H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, ), p. . Also see Frederik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference (Boston: Little Brown, ), pp. – . The interpenetration of domains of the self and the other surfacing in the idea of a dyadic relationship qualifies such models. Ethnicity and ethnic group occupy one side of a 70

contiguous ethnicities



bouring regions. The construction of a comparative grid was based on nuanced specificities of the caste system in Bengal. Bengal’s sociological landscape reflected a braiding of contrasting elements: late Aryanisation, non-Aryan elements71 and intermixture, underscoring of Brahmanical values,72 and dual (Brahman and Shudra), instead of the traditional fourfold caste classification (Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras). The understanding of jati as caste as a category intertraversed by ethno-cultural, occupational,73 and normative (pertaining to standards of morality, conduct and character) criteria went into the making of a comparative conceptual grid. What is significant is that this framework was applied and used not only to differentiate and compare the sociological worlds of Bengal and her neighbours, but also to underline similarities and connections. This dual use reflects how jati as caste transited from narrow senses of caste distinctions to wider senses of sociological overlap

duality, tacit or otherwise, of familiarity and strangeness. It is a notion that exists in a context of oppositions and relativities. Elisabeth Tonkin, Maryon Mcdonald and Malcolm Chapman, History and Ethnicity (London, ), pp. –, printed in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 71 Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas, Adi Parba, Vol. I (Calcutta, : Paschim Banga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, reprinted ), pp. –, –. 72 Brahmanical emphasis in indigenous responses (such as the Bengali literati’s) may be traced to the directives of census commissioners prioritising upper caste indigenous viewpoints. This is reflected in E.A. Gait’s view, mentioned in Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . One of the sources of W.W. Hunter’s Statistical Account of the State of Kuch Behar was the series of lectures on Kuch Behar delivered in  by Babu Ramchandra Ghosh at the Kuch Behar Hitaisini Sabha in Calcutta. See Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. X: The Districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri and the State of Kuch Behar (London: Trubner and Co., ), p. . 73 Occupation as a distinctive feature of caste has been highlighted by scholars such as E.R. Leach. See E.R. Leach (ed.), Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North West Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), mentioned in S. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony, p. . This chapter points to the specific ways in which occupation and occupational mobility operated within the contextual parameters of the deployment of jati as caste within Bengal, as well as in regard to neighbouring ethnic groups. It explores how the interaction between cultural and functional aspects of caste shaped patterns of social ranking, and opened a space for intersections between caste and class. As Bengal was gradually Aryanised, division of labour and the proliferation of occupational groups, known as jatis, catering to the society transformed the varna (Hindu ritual status rank) to the jati system. See Hitesranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta: Papyrus, ), pp. –, . Occupational connotations encrusted the etymological, ethno-cultural significance of jati-as-caste, intersecting with birth. For details relating to this, see Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, (Calcutta, ); Digindranarayan Bhattacharya, Jati Bhed (Calcutta, ), pp. –; Durgacharan Rakshit (ed.), Tambul Banik, (Calcutta, ); and Debendranath Mukhopadhyay, “Hindu Samajer Prachin O Adhunik Abastha”, Nabya Bharat, Vol. , No.  (Calcutta, ), pp. –.



chapter five

developing within the interstices of fragmented identities. As far as differentiation was concerned, the connotations of jati as caste surfaced in contextual contrasts such as those between Bengali and Oriya Brahmans. Distinctions of origin, religious worship, dwelling-place, titles, gotra, and most importantly, occupation set apart castes and sub-castes in Bengal from their counterparts in contiguous societies. In a bid to distinguish between Brahmans in Bengal and those in Orissa, Baradaprasad Basu remarked: The Loukik Brahmans of Orissa are primarily agriculturists. They are also traders, coolies and labourers. Unlike the western Brahmans, they are extremely hardworking. In stark contrast to the Bengali Brahmans, they do not despise manual labour or resort to begging as a means of livelihood.74

The prioritisation of occupation as a marker of difference surfaced in internal (among Oriya Brahmans) classifications too. This explains why Baradaprasad Basu used the term ‘sampraday’ (this term implied occupational group, and signified groups formed according to economic, cultural and religious criteria) in his division of Oriya Brahmans into Vaidik and Loukik. The trajectory of sociological contrast highlighted a deeper divergence: the presence of Vaishyas and Kshatriyas (traditionally absent in Bengal’s caste structure)75 in the social collectivities of contiguous areas. Baradaprasad Basu argued that the Baniks (traditionally merchants and traders) of Orissa were descended from the Vaishyas. The identification of Kshatriyas in Manipur was also fitted into the framework of social differentiation. Unlike Bengalis, Manipuris were divided into eight jatis, foremost among which were the Kshatriyas. Interestingly, the presence and absence of Kshatriyas in Manipur and Bengal respectively were both explained through legend and epic reference. Citing the Mahabharata, an article in Janmabhoomi traced the origin of the Kshatriya jati in Manipur to the marriage of Arjun and Chitrangada.76 Bengal, by contrast, had no Kshatriyas.77 74 Baradaprasad Basu, Urishyar Itihas: Tirthadarshan (Calcutta, –), Vol. V, p. . 75 Citing the Smriti texts, and the Brahmavaivarta and Brihadhharma puranas, Niharranjan Ray wrote that in Bengal, there did not exist at any time, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas as definite, recognised caste groups. Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba, fifth edition (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, ), p. . 76 “Manipur”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, No. , (Chaitra, ), p. ; and Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 77 The absence of Kshatriyas in Bengal was explained by myth and legend, as has

contiguous ethnicities



These distinctions were fitted into a comparative social grid, and fed into a set of attitudes deriving from the literati’s consciousness of their own precedence as a middle class, shaped by western education, the norms of cultural Aryanism, old kula (family/clan) values, and relatively ‘new’ patterns of social mobility due to changing indices of social status, which were not replicated in the social scenarios of neighbouring areas. Most of the Bengali writers were drawn from the western-educated, professional, mainly high castes, having connections with the colonial authority as well as the landed aristocracy, and they were convinced that there was no simultaneous rise of a similar group in Assam, Orissa and other neighbouring areas. While in the medieval period, social mobility and reordering evident in the transformation of the precedence of specific castes often came from above (royal/political initiative),78 during the colonial period, the thrust toward mobility and social elevation came through individual initiative.79 As explained earlier, wealth and education became important markers for measuring an individual’s social rank in addition to inherited kula status.80 Further, conduct/character was regarded as a key criterion of social recognition. In this regard, the indigenous discourse shifted from the fixity of colonial enumeration and sociological crystallisation. The colonial census, aiming to create a permanent record of varna, jati and kula hierarchies was seen as occluding opportunities for upward social mobility. This led to a spate of caste movements and a “renewed interest in recovering old genealogies,” making them an integral aspect of caste politics in Bengal.81 Shifts within the literati’s samaj in Bengal due to varying indices of social status also

been mentioned in Chapter IV. See Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas, pp. , . 78 Ronald Inden has drawn attention to the central role played by the king in accommodating new groups into a reordered hierarchy. A comparison of the Brihaddharma Purana and the Ballal Charit reveals how social transformation was effected during the Sena period through royal/political initiative. See Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. 79 Hitesranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, Chapters I and III. 80 Shib Chunder Bose, The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, ), p. ; Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, Vol. II (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited –); and S.N. Mukherjee, “The Bhadraloks of Bengal”, in Dipankar Gupta (ed.), Social Stratification (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 81 Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture, p. , mentioned in Kumkum Chatterjee, “Communities, Kings and Chronicles: The Kulagranthas of Bengal”, Studies in History, N.S. Vol. , No. , (Sage Publications: July–December, ), pp. –.



chapter five

explained why viewpoints relating to the neighbouring ethnicities did not constitute a static monolith, but a complex mosaic of attitudes and ideas. The parameters conditioning social ascent in Bengal were applied to the neighbouring caste groups. The modern forms and channels of social mobility and ascent were supposed to have had a late and reduced impact, explaining the relatively late emergence of the middle classes (madhyabitta) in Assam and Orissa. The Bengali madhyabitta thought that as their rise was not paralleled by the emergence of a similar group in neighbouring samajs in Orissa and Assam, the latter were (in some respects) different and ‘inferior’. A tract entitled Asam Bhraman () mentioned derisively that educated Assamese bhadralok82 are few and far between. Such superior attitudes implicitly debated whether categories like bhadralok/madhyabitta could at all be applied in the context of Oriyas and Assamese. Even some Bengalis who went to Assam for work, and some educated Assamese individuals, were not considered bhadralok: We have been grieved by the behaviour of some highly educated Assamese babus. They are educated but not cultured. If an Assamese babu somehow acquires a B.A. degree, he is proud of the fact and thinks that he has achieved a lot. One exception to this is Babu Chandranath Goswami of Shibsagar, who is actually a Bengali.83

The author of Asam Bhraman condescendingly admitted that things were changing: In today’s railway and steamer age, some educated Bengalis working in Assam are bhadralok . . . Jorhat is the centre of bhadralok culture, the home of aristocratic Assamese gentlemen. We were very happy to meet them, especially Babu Brajanath Bejbarua . . . and Babu Madhab Chandra Bardolui in Tejpur, who is an Assistant Commissioner.84

From such accounts it would seem that education, professional qualifications and connections with the colonial raj in official capacities were 82 The term ‘bhadralok’ as referred to in different contexts in earlier chapters implied a respectable man having certain hallmarks such as education, occupying a specific position in the economic and social hierarchy, and observing a common code of conduct. For intersections between ‘bhadralok’ and related categories such as ‘madhyabitta’, see John Mc Guire, The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta (Canberra: Australian National University Press, ), pp. , ; and S.N. Mukherjee, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 83 Anonymous, Asam Bhraman (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 84 Ibid., pp. , , .

contiguous ethnicities



crucial factors, determining inclusion within the ranks of the bhadralok samaj. The class basis of the writers emanating from their social situations formed a major dimension/limitation of the literati’s assessment and framework of inclusive parallels. As the writers of most of the tracts on neighbouring histories belonged to western educated, mainly highcaste, professional groups, it was natural that they would denigrate certain segments of neighbouring groups, for instance the Oriya labourers, gardeners, manual workers, and palanquin bearers who worked in Calcutta and were loosely absorbed into the mass of multi-jati ‘lower orders’. Baradaprasad Basu, while drawing the social portrait of Orissa could not refrain from commenting: We knew about Oriya bearers and coolies . . . we scoffed at their speech, and regarded them as common people . . . though the Oriyas are mostly poor, they are very cunning, and cannot be won over by kind words and a friendly attitude.85

The social (class) element in such assessments seems important, as it helped define bhadralok attitude to ‘lower’ groups belonging to the neighbouring ethnicities. At the same time, attitudes containing a different vein of superiority were evident in Bengali assessments of even the educated individuals/groups of Assam and Orissa. Though placed on a higher level than the uneducated, lower classes, the educated Assamese were not, as seen above, at par with the educated, high-caste, Bengali bhadralok. The construction of a samajik universe, contextually co-opting neighbouring castes and sub-castes implied a model of comparison which applied Bengali evaluative standards moulded through nuanced internalisations of, and shifts from colonial discourse, and indigenous counterdiscourses (such as those formulated by Assamese and Oriya intellectuals). Despite these interactive elements, the model prioritised Bengali social norms and notions of jatitva (quality and characteristics of being a jati, the latter being used here in the sense of nation) in assessments of contiguous social groups. A speech given by a Bengali author in Jorhat on “What is the basis of jatiya degeneration?”—underlined the view that issues of jatitva and jatiya decline were to be analysed from perspectives of Bengali samajik rules and norms.86 The stance reflected two main tenets—() the notion ‘different’ neighbouring samajs marked off from the Bengali samaj; and () co-existence of a Hindu samaj, akin to, and overlapping with the Bengali samaj, alongside more regional, localised 85 86

Baradaprasad Basu, Tirthadarshan: Urishyar Purabritta, pp. , –. Ibid., pp. –.



chapter five

Oriya/Assamese/Manipuri samajs. Though there was an overlap of traditions, customs and social interchanges between the two types of samajik formation, ‘Hinduised’ samajs were considered superior. The antecedents of such difference/superiority were traced back to the s. During the reign of the Cachari king Krishnachandra, the leader of the ‘Hindu samaj’ was Bara Majumdar of Bikrampur.87 In many ways this Hindu samaj was deemed superior to the local Cachari samaj.88 The significant point here is that contextual inclusions of such ‘Hinduised’ samajs marked a turn from the “discourse of differentiation” to one of incorporation, albeit in specific contexts. The comparative language (of jati as caste) and the underlying inclusive connotation of jati intersecting with samaj as an overarching category created a space for such inclusions. The thrust toward contextual inclusions may be seen as deriving from early nineteenth century ideas about social classifications and harmonies.89 The reconfiguring of jatias-caste as a site for mapping sociological overlap may be traced to a turn toward a history of culture and attachment noticeable since the s. Samajik texts written around this time influenced later writers who related the specifics of kula, sub-caste and caste lineages, and group practices and social norms to wider unities. The interplay of jati as caste with the inclusive idea of samaj explains contextual sociological overlap, inclusions and situational co-opting of specific castes/sub-castes of neighbouring societies. Elements of sociological overlap surfaced in parallels drawn between caste groups in Bengal and those in Assam and Orissa. The Korons of Orissa (occupationally writers) were regarded as counterparts of the Bengali Kayasthas.90 The language of comparison also highlighted similarities between social hierarchies. Drawing a parallel between untouchables in Bengal and Orissa, Baradaprasad Basu observed: “Like the Kaoras, Hadis and Chandals of Bengal, and the Paracharis of the Deccan, they (untouchables of Orissa) belong to the fifth varna.”91 A second way in which contextual connections were 87

Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta (Dacca, ), p. . Ibid. 89 The recasting of jati reflected a complex interplay between earlier ideas and frameworks with colonial tenets and objectification, which regarded caste as a major sociological key to ‘know’ India. See Bernard Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia”, in Bernard Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 90 Baradaprasad Basu, Tirthadarshan: Urishyar Purabritta, p. . 91 Though in actuality the caste system in Bengal was twofold (Brahmans and Shudras), reference to the four traditional varna divisions in a figurative sense (as a reference 88

contiguous ethnicities



worked out was via a dual process of highlighting similarities in origins of caste groups in Bengal and the contiguous areas, and ‘Hinduisation’ of ‘low’ castes/non-Hindu neighbouring groups, underscoring Brahmanical values. The idea reflected an annexation of past unities to the present to argue a continuity between eras and in ways of social assimilation. As seen above, the theme of ‘Hinduisation’ formed a key element in relating and integrating specific neighbouring samajs in the late colonial period. The discourse swung back to past instances of such linkages and origins of social overlap, critically viewed through a historical-sociological lens. Epic and puranic references, legend, myth and history linked sociological lineages of the past to the present, and helped forge social connections between Bengal and her neighbours. In a vein strikingly similar to the Adisur legend, Baradaprasad Basu traced the origin of Brahmans in Orissa. The ancient story of the settlement of Brahmans in Orissa by Jajati Kesari was seen as a starting point for arguing a sociological continuity across historical eras, as well as a connectivity with the myth-explained genesis of specific Brahman sub-groups in Bengal. Just as Jajati Kesari had brought Brahmans to Orissa during the ancient period, and Adisur had brought five Brahmans from Kanauj to Bengal during the Sena period, so Ananga Bhimdeb of Orissa brought  Brahman families from Jajpur to Puri. The argument was extended to other contiguous samajs. Rulers of north Cachar brought many Brahman pundits (known as Adityas) from Assam, and settled them in Maibong, and on the banks of the river Jikal. Some of them acted as officiating priests for the Cachari Burmans.92 Legends relating to the arrival of Brahmans in Bengal (Adisur legend), Orissa (Jajati Kesari), Cachar and Tripura reflected the primacy of a Brahmanical world-view in the literati’s imagination. The interfusion of past mythexplained sociological connections and the reworking of the inclusive idea of cultural Aryan-ness involving the inculcation of a ‘proper’ and righteous conduct explains why the rationale for assimilations lay in the discovery of a similarity and connection between a Brahmanical Hindu samaj in Bengal and its counterparts in Assam, Orissa and elsewhere. The sociological prism oscillating between the past and the present, considered those groups among the neighbouring ethnicities who were ‘Hinduised’ (such as the Parbatiya Gosains of Assam), to be superior to others.

point) persisted. The ‘fifth varna’ was used by Baradaprasad Basu in this sense. It meant that the untouchables were placed on a lower rung than the fourth (Shudras). Ibid., p. . 92 Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta, pp. –.



chapter five

The emphasis on ‘Hinduisation’ through a Brahmanical rhetoric and the normative significance of dharma reflected a complex confluence of ideological currents and coalescence of viewpoints among different sections of the literati, including authors having Brahmo affiliation, or having close links with Brahmo-based periodicals. Baradaprasad Basu elaborated his ideas in the well-known Brahmo periodical Bharati, published from the Tagore residence in Jorasanko in Calcutta. The framework of inclusion privileging Brahmanical values was not a simple, hegemonic “cultural construction of power.”93 Brahmanical values were flexibly grounded within an inclusive frame, which recognised multiple and multilayered identities. This occurred through an interactive process at two levels. First, Brahmanical values were historically conditioned in Bengal through interrelation with a long legacy of plural social and cultural lineages, including late Aryanisation, interactions with an indigenous tribal culture, formation of a “regional culture”94 accommodating local traditions, and Vaishnava influence loosening caste divisions—all of which did much to interrogate the ideology of hierarchy. Second, such historically-conditioned values interacted with late-colonial social actualities. The comparative language of inclusive parallels and sociological overlap cutting across the boundaries of fragmented identities and forging connections at wider, overarching levels undermines the element of division inherent in colonial depictions of caste as something inherently antipathetic to the formation of the idea of nationality.95 The thrust toward unity was evident in the ways in which the literati’s configuration of jati-as-caste moved away from colonial convictions about Bengal and the neighbouring regions being ethnologically distinct, especially in regard to having a completely different caste system as argued by O’Malley. For instance, the emphasis on cultural Aryanisation/ ‘Hinduisation’ to forge contextual inclusions implied a different vision and version of Assamese identity (especially vis-à-vis Bengal) than the colonial depiction of a de-Hinduised, lower-caste Assam and the demarcation of the Assamese as separate from mainstream Hindu populations. 93 Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ), p. . 94 Kunal Chakrabarty, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , . 95 J.A. Baines, quoted in Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Permanent Black, ), p. . This point has been critically addressed in the earlier chapter on ‘lower orders’.

contiguous ethnicities



The non-acceptance of the Assamese into Aryan discourse/lineage was not complete or without internal tensions. To argue a simplistic connection between this non-acceptance and the reactive construction of a non-Indian separatist Ahom identity tilted toward South East Asian identities96 is to miss the finer nuances of how representations and ideas about Assam shifted within indigenous discourses under the impact of specific historical circumstances and agendas.

Historical/Dynastic Contexts: Intersections of Samaj and Rashtra As samaj and rashtra (polity) formed related domains in the literati’s discourse, the forging of social parallels (as analysed above) remained enmeshed with quests for historic/dynastic connections, shared sovereignties and Hinduisation of ‘alien’ neighbouring kings. Such histories were particularly significant in the creation and perpetuation of liminal borders between Bengal and her neighbours. That history is inextricably intertwined with the ideas about place is eloquently borne out in Keith Basso’s observation: Place making is a way of constructing the past, a venerable means of doing human history. It is also a way of constructing social traditions, and in the process, personal and social identities.97

Historically, fluid and shifting boundaries conditioned identities as Bengal moved through history. Indeed, there was not one Bengal but many. The literati at the turn of the nineteenth century engaged with recreating a united and continuous Bengal from the many Bengals that history had known, because of their agenda of jatipratishtha (creating a jati/ collective self). Their discourse glossed over the fragmentations within Bengal (through history), and prioritised dynastic connections between Bengal and her neighbours. Fluid boundaries were reoriented. They were no longer explanatory forces of inner divisions, but tools to create a wider cultural unity encompassing Bengal and specific neighbouring areas. 96 Yasmin Saikia, “Religion, Nostalgia and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. , Part I (May, ), p. . 97 See Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place (Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press, ). Basso’s views about place making and history have been referred to by Sumathi Ramaswamy. See Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), p. .



chapter five

Since the second half of the eighteenth century (from the s in particular) the region known as Assam was divided into political units. But ideas about shared space and liminal borders diluted the rigidity of such boundaries. Specific areas, having traditions of a shared history came to be included in a cultural map of Bengal. For instance, Goalpara was “a historically transitional space between the colonial provinces of Assam and Bengal.” It was liminal in regional terms between ‘proto-Bengal’ and ‘proto-Assam’. It served—as has been recently argued—as a classic case of confrontation between local and colonial notions of space, power and authority that was initiated by the construction of the region into a politically and economically unified territory.98 Colonialism has been seen as crucial in effecting the transition of Goalpara from a divergent and peripheral economic and political space to a unit of modern state with permanent boundaries and an undivided sovereignty. The dynamic of this transition lay in the change from shifting to settled cultivation and from local to interregional levels. My argument is—while this transition did occur, it was not complete in the sense that ideas about shared spaces and fluid boundaries continued in certain significant contexts. The reach and impact of colonial power-knowledge were significant in moulding indigenous perceptions, but they had limitations too. The literati included specific areas of Assam within a wider cultural map of Bengal, and Goalpara is significant in this context because it is an illustration of how history served as a conceptual pivot in the Bengali literati’s framing of this inclusive universe. Goalpara and Sylhet were included in Bengal as a Mughal legacy.99 Goalpara formed part of the district of Rangpore before . Shared sovereignties (for example, in the eastern Dooars, Goalpara zamindars and the Bhutan monarch laid claims to shared sovereignty), connection with trading networks of Bengal,100 and interactions between communities and rulers explain why this area had ambiguous boundaries. These legacies of shared spaces and borders flowed into, and conditioned the Bengali literati’s ideas of forging a cultural unity including parts of Assam such as Goalpara and Kamrup. The 98 See Sanghamitra Misra, “Changing Frontiers and Spaces: The Colonial State in Nineteenth-century Goalpara”, Studies in History, Vol. XXI, No.  (July–December, ), p. . 99 Of the eighteen permanently settled zamindari estates in the district in the late eighteenth century, twelve had been parts of the territories of Mughal border chieftains, paying a nominal tribute to the state. For details see J.W. Laine, :, mentioned in ibid., p. . 100 Ibid., p. .

contiguous ethnicities



historical experience of shared borders and transitional spaces crucially shaped the imagining of cultural nationhood in nineteenth century Bengal. The historical outlines of shared spaces were also etched by dynastic histories/connections. Those areas in neighbouring regions which were supposed to have been ruled by kings of Bengali origins were included in the cultural map forged by the literati. One such area was the northern part of Orissa adjoining Bengal. The Ganga kings of Orissa were supposed to have migrated to Orissa from Bengal. Tracing the origin of the Gangas, Lalmohan Vidyanidhi101 and Mahimchandra Majumdar102 concurred that the Mahishyas became very powerful and got divided into four groups—Asvapati, Gajapati, Narapati and Chhatrapati. The account was developed further by Sebananda Bharati: Originally from the banks of the Saraju river, the Mahishyas went to Midnapore (in Bengal) in  (Saka era) and established five chieftaincies—Tamluk, Balisita, Turka, Sujamutha, Katabpur. According to Sebananda, Tamluk was the first settlement of the Gangas.103 In , the Ganga kings went to Orissa from Tamluk.104 The incorporation of certain parts of Orissa in a cultural realm embracing the whole of eastern India was a fairly common theme in the s, and reveals how dynastic/political history was grafted onto the narrative of cultural unity. Orissa, it was claimed, not only had a cultural interaction with Bengal for centuries, but was also ruled by the Panchagouresvar (king of the five Gours or Bengals, collectively called Pancha Gour). Moreover, apart from the Gangas, the ancient Kesari kings of Orissa, such as Janamejoy—had been under Magadhan supremacy,105 and Bengal, Orissa and Magadh were part of a common politico-cultural realm spanning other parts of eastern India as well, such as Kamrup where the Sena king (of Bengal), Niladhvaj Sena held sway at a much later period.106 The annexation of such past politico-cultural identities to the present prepared the foundation for imagining an overarching cultural unity during the late colonial period. What is significant is that the same author could point out dynastic difference as well as forge overarching unities by prioritising dynastic and historical connections. S.N. Bhadra was convinced that non-Aryan 101 102 103 104 105 106

Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Sambandhanirnoy, Part I, (Calcutta, ), pp. –. Mahimchandra Gupta, Goure Brahman (Calcutta, ), p. . Sebananda Bharati, Tamluker Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, reprinted ), p. . Kailashchandra Sinha, “Urishyar Itihas”, article in Bharati (Chaitra, ), p. . See S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, pp. –.



chapter five

kings such as Bhagadatta,107 Mahirang Danab, Hotkasur and Sambarasur held sway in Pragjyotish and Kamrup (ancient Assam). As Cachar was inhabited by non-Aryan Mlechhas, Kiratas, Kubachas and Tipras, Upendrachandra Guha concluded that their kings must also have been non-Aryan.108 Both authors, however, highlighted dynastic connections and negotiated difference by situating ‘non-Aryan’ within inclusive contexts of Hinduisation operating in religio-cultural and political frames. For instance the Saiva (Hindu) affiliation of the Kesaris of Orissa formed a reference point for shared glory. The Hinduisation of the Ahoms of Assam was especially glorified. In , Chutamla, an Ahom king ascended the throne. Deeply influenced by Niranjan Gosai, a Hindu saint, he became a convert to Hinduism and adopted the Hindu name of Jayadhvaj Sinha.109 The Bengali literati viewed the Hinduisation of the Buddhist Ahoms and their adoption of Hindu names as an extension of Bengali-Hindu cultural influence metamorphosing kings of alien origin, and changing popular lifestyles. Hinduisation continued to an increased degree during the reign of Rudrasinha, a disciple of a Vaishnava saint of Santipur.110 He built the famous Rudresvar temple at Guwahati. What is interesting is that the laxity of Ahom Hinduism, referred to in colonial sources, was glossed over by the literati in their attempt to claim a Hindu heritage for Assam, and orient it to their agenda of a wider identity embracing Bengal and her neighbours. They elided accounts of nonHindu practices and customs that lingered among the Ahoms: Though converted to Hinduism the Ahoms found the restrictions of their new religion irksome; and their gosains, . . . allowed their new disciples a considerable degree of latitude. Rudra Singh, though he had been publicly admitted to the church by the Auniati gosain, feasted his followers on buffaloes and pigs on the occasion of his father’s funeral; while not only buffaloes but even cows found a place in the menu of his coronation banquet . . . Before taking any decisive step [conversion to Hinduism]— it was the practice to refer, not only to the Brahmans and Ganaks, but also to the old Ahom priests, the Deodhais and Bailongs.111

The literati also underlined the Hinduisation of the kings of Cachar:

107 108 109 110 111

Ibid., p. . Upendranath Guha, Cacharer Itibritta, p. . S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, pp. –. Ibid., p. . B.C. Allen, Assam District Gazetteers, Kamrup, Vol. IV, p. .

contiguous ethnicities



Approximately in , Lakshmichandra married Kanchani, . . . and built on the plain of Cachar, Khaspur Pat [royal palace]. It was from this time onwards that Hindu dharma began to influence members of the Cachari royal family.112

This narrative of Hinduisation in Cachar’s dynastic contexts delved into older lineages: There is a general belief that the impact of Hindu dharma in Cachar was felt especially after King Krishnachandra accepted the Hindu faith. But this had actually happened much earlier, when Cachari kings, accompanied by many jatis, went on pilgrimages . . . A conch shell dating back to , with an engraving of Vishnu proves that King Bidarpa was a devotee of this deity . . . King Krishnachandra who worshipped the goddess Kali begot two sons after observing some Hindu rites.113

These accounts reveal that distinctions between histories of Bengal, and those of her neighbours co-existed alongside more assimilative moves to absorb and reclaim the latter’s historical heritage. Ideas about history in Bengal were connected with notions of history in neighbouring areas, by exploring sources such as vamsavalis (genealogical lists), Ceylonese chronicles114 and Assamese buranjis (historical chronicles and accounts). These furnished the empirical basis for bridging gaps in ideas of history in Bengal, and in neighbouring areas, and assessing the historical relevance of contemporaneous events, dynastic linkages, religious movements and social interconnections in Bengal, Assam and Orissa. Bengali origins of ruling families of neighbouring areas were highlighted in an endeavour to interrelate neighbouring histories to that of Bengal, and situate them within the idealised unity of Pancha Gour.115 Also stressed in dynastic contexts was the fact that kings of Orissa and Assam adopted certain titles, which had Vedic sanction. Gour Narayan, a Chhutiya king of Assam adopted the title of Ratnadhvaj Pal. The Ahom kings of Assam also adopted Hindu names and titles such as Rudra Sinha.116 These titles were often granted to neighbouring kings by Bengali monarchs. An account in the periodical Rahasya Sandarbha narrated: A son of King Khisangafar of Tripura, who had been chosen as the future king, went to Bengal. The king of Bengal gave him , soldiers and

112 113 114 115 116

Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta, p. . Ibid., p. . Kailashchandra Sinha, “Urishyar Itihas”, Bharati (Jyoishtha, ), p. . S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, p. . Ibid., pp. , –.



chapter five conferred the title of ‘Manik’ on him. Since then the kings of Tripura have adopted this title and subsequent kings were called Rajyadharmanik and Kalyanmanik.117

Linguistic Comparisons Flashbacks into samajs and polities of yore helped situate present (late colonial) samajs within contexts of nuanced linkages between ‘traditions’ and modern-day actualities. The framework was applied while analysing two main ideological markers/criteria underpinning the comparative grid of inclusion/differentiation: language and religion. Both these criteria were embedded in the idea of cultural Aryan-ness emanating from the conceptual nucleus of samaj. Language, as theorists of ethnicity have pointed out, has a psychological and social significance. It promotes sentiments of oneness/likeness among the members of an ethnic group. As Max Weber has pointed out, a language group is a bearer of a specific cultural possession of the people, which makes mutual understanding (verstehen) possible or easier.118 Bengal’s deployment of linguistic comparisons and connections in a discourse on samajik unity involved an extension of this ideological ethnic-group-marker to reconsider differences/similarities across group boundaries (between Bengalis, and the neighbouring groups). The emergence of Bengali as a regional standard from the mid nineteenth century, or as an index of group (Bengali) identity119 was a defining element of their relation not only with the colonisers, but also with Indian ‘others’. In the latter case, however, language was situated within a broader rubric which negotiated difference as well as connections and unities. In the discourse on contiguous ethnicities, linguistic contrast operated at two levels: () differences between Bengali and ‘main’ neighbouring languages such as Assamese and Oriya; and () differences between Bengali and tribal languages (of tribal areas in the neighbouring regions). Juxtaposed to this trajectory of differen117

Rahashya Sandarbha, Part , Vol. , p. . Max Weber, “Ethnic Groups”, in G. Roth and C. Wittich (eds.), Economy and Society, Vol. I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), pp. –, printed in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 119 See Ranajit Guha, quoted in Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ); and Partha Chatterjee, “Whose Imagined Community?”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ), p. . 118

contiguous ethnicities



tiation, there was conceptualisation of unities and linguistic linkages. Those neighbouring languages which had ‘connections with Sanskrit’ (as per the terms of cultural Aryan-ness), the people speaking them, and the regions they inhabited were seen as constituting a broader languagespace. This strand of similarity was juxtaposed to that of difference, which significantly (for the Bengalis) did not form an axis of overt conflict, leading to a sharp, contrasting crystallisation of group identity as a precursor of subnationalism. The particular ways in which the dual strands of linguistic difference and similarities intertwined in the Bengali discourse seems to affirm Clifford Geertz’s conviction that though language has sometimes been held to be the altogether essential axis of nationality conflicts, linguism is not an essential outcome of linguistic diversity.120 Bengal’s linguistic comparisons in a grid considering differences and similarities contrasted with separatist subnationlisms built around linguistic identity, as in Assam. Forming a counterdiscourse to the predominance of Bengali in parts of Assam, and to the British imposition of Bengali as the official language of Assam in , it constituted a reactive and divisive move121 to reinstate Assam’s own culture and glory, and saw language as symbolising that identity.122 Bengal’s discourse on linguistic otherness and connections prioritised and privileged connections between Bengali and Sanskrit, and then analysed connections/disparities between Sanskrit on the one hand, and Oriya, Assamese, and other neighbouring languages on the other. The stance may be traced to colonial influences of relating Bengali to Sanskrit,123 and in particular, to the idea of genetic and genealogical relations between languages. This led to the fashioning of a relational mode or grid to situate Bengali and Sanskrit vis-à-vis neighbouring languages. But western/colonial linguistics comprised a starting-point, not a conclusion. Colonial tenets were drawn upon, internalised and transformed. The relational grid cast the Bengali-Sanskrit connection in a mould of 120 Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution” in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, ), printed in Hutchinson and Smith (eds.), Ethnicity, p. . 121 The Assamese demanded a separation of Bengali-speaking Sylhet from Assam. See Baruah, India Against Itself, p. . This formed a counterpoint to the Bengali writer Mohinimohan Dasgupta’s inclusion of Sylhet in a wider cultural realm even after political/administrative separation. See Mohinimohan Dasgupta, Srihatter Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. , –. 122 Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself, pp. –. 123 Nathaniel Halhed’s views mentioned in Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –.



chapter five

Bengali linguistic superiority. Among all Indian languages derived from Sanskrit, Bengali was supposed to have closest links with the latter. Kshetranath Bandyopadhyay highlighted the spread of Aryan civilisation and of the Sanskrit language in Bengal from  bc –  ad.124 It was claimed that in the evolution of Bengali from Sanskrit (Sanskrit— Prakrit—Pali—Magadhi—Maithili—Bengali), there had been no great changes in the Bengali language which had made it diverge greatly from the Sanskritic essence. This conviction made the literati regard Sanskrit as the root and Bengali as the trunk or main branch of a linguistic tree from which neighbouring languages branched off. Most Bengali writers believed that Bengali was the mother of Oriya, in sharp contrast to G.A. Grierson’s view that Bengali was the sister, not the mother of Oriya and Assamese.125 Like Oriya, Assamese is a sister, not a daughter of Bengali. It comes from Bihar, through northern Bengal, not from Bengal proper. It was once argued whether Assamese was a dialect of Bengali or not. Assamese grammar is similar to Bengali . . . but Assamese is entitled to claim an independent existence as the speech of an independent nationality, and to have a standard of its own, different from that which a native of Calcutta would wish to impose upon it.126

Grierson’s views bring out the political dimension of his linguistic judgements. He claimed that Assamese was entitled to set its own standards because it reflected a separate nationality. The trajectory of contrast in the literati’s discourse led to delineations of linguistic geographies. Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay marked out separate areas: Orissa, Dravid, Tailanga, Carnat and Maharashtra according to language. He further underlined, “To the south of Bengal, the entire Oriya desh is the region where the Oriya language holds sway.”127 The literati brought disjunctions between Bengali and neighbouring languages into sharper relief by underlining similarities between a neighbouring language, and that of associated jatis residing in the same or adjacent areas. The idea was to emphasise that ethnic populations in the same province had broad philological similarities despite some slight internal differences. This made it easier to distinguish them as a group from Bengali. For example, in Cachar, in the districts of Jalpaiguri, Cachar 124 125

Kshetranath Bandyopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –. G.A. Grierson, The Languages of India (Calcutta: Linguistic Survey of India, ),

p. . 126 127

Ibid., p. . Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas, p. .

contiguous ethnicities



and Kamrup, where the languages were respectively Mech, Dimacha and Garo, ‘ang’, or ‘anga’ was the local word meaning ‘I’.128 The same tract highlighted the distinction between Manipuri and Bengali. “The hill tribes of Manipur have a completely different language, the Naga sampraday has Naga bhasha as their language and the Kukis, Kuki bhasha.”129 Distinctions between ‘tribal’ languages and Bengali ran parallel to and complemented broader differences between ‘main’ languages—Bengali on the one hand, and Oriya and Assamese on the other. An article in the periodical Bharati claimed: Some words used in both Assam and Orissa, and understood by the native people are unintelligible to Bengalis, and have no connection with the Bengali language. For instance, the Assamese word ‘dhoroi’, meaning wife, is ‘dhoroi’ in Oriya as well, but in Bengali it is ‘patni’. In both Assamese and Oriya, ‘dada’ is the word used to mean uncle, but in Bengali, it is ‘kaka’.130

Histories of linguistic development also captured nuanced oscillations of difference and contextual inclusions/similarities. An article on Manipur in the periodical Janmabhoomi stressed the simultaneous importance of Bengali and Sanskrit in Manipur. The latter was evident in reverence for ancient texts. Previously in Manipur, the Sanskrit language was highly coveted, and the devanagri script was used. But with the increasing influence of the gurus of Nabadvip [Vaishnavas], Bengali has acquired a new pride of place. However, this has not resulted in the complete disappearance of devanagri. The Srimadbhagavat and other . . . religious texts are extremely appreciated.131

Thus the twin predominance and spread of Bengali and Sanskrit in neighbouring areas were highlighted, not merely in contemporary contexts, but also in regard to histories of linguistic development. In , in Cachar, during king Suradarpa’s reign, Bhubanesvar Bachaspati translated Srinaradiya Kathamrita into Bengali. Being an ‘eastern’ poet, Bachaspati was well versed in Sanskrit. During this period, many famous dharmagranthas (religious texts) were translated into Bengali.132 Writing in , Upendrachandra Guha drew attention to this, and added further details: 128 129 130 131 132

Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta, p. . Ibid. Bharati, (Magh, ), p. . “Manipur”, Janmabhoomi, Part , Number  (Chaitra, ), p. . Upendrachandra Guha, Cacharer Itibritta, pp. –.



chapter five Among the translated dharmagranthas, one or two manuscripts are still found in Cachar. It is worth mentioning that the Bengali translation of Brahmapuran reflected refinement, devotion to Brahmans and the ideal of serving others.133

The antiquity and richness of the Bengali language and its use in neighbouring areas were substantiated by concrete examples—“It is now nine hundred years since Rajmala, a chronicle of the kings of Tripura, has been written in Bengali.”134 These histories were then conjoined to modern circumstances of differential development seen as a causal background to linguistic ‘inferiority’. A common belief was that Oriya and other neighbouring languages had not progressed as much as Bengali because the case of the latter had been expedited by () the printing press and () role of religious sects in writing and popularising poetry and religious ballads. The contributions of Chandidas, Vidyapati and other Vaishnavas, and later that of Chaitanya, and the role of the Serampore missionaries, Raja Rammohun Ray, the Tagores and the Tattvabodhini Sabha were crucial in promoting and enriching the Bengali language.135 Offsetting such otherness, situational and contextual inclusions as seen in histories of linguistic development on the basis of prioritisations of Sanskrit and Bengali worked out a space of similarities, albeit within limited contexts. In certain cases, a connection, rather than a hard disjunction was forged between Bengali and the neighbouring languages, though this did not erase difference. Belief in the inherent superiority of Bengali was simultaneously maintained. Rangalal Banerjee admitted that there was not much difference between Bengali and Oriya since both were derived from Sanskrit, but Oriya was very different from the pronunciation of North Indians, and people scoffed at it. Moreover, some Muslim words had found their way into the Oriya language and no one

133

Ibid. Ibid. 135 The enrichment of the Bengali language as a major constituent of jatitva has been referred to in the Introduction. For details see Rajendralal Mitra (ed.), Rahashya Sandarbha, Volume , Part , p. . In the mid nineteenth century, a desire to improve and enrich the Oriya language arose, and echoed the superior claims about Bengali. Efforts were made since the s to publish Oriya journals from Bengal. Jnanarun, an Oriya journal was published in . In , the Vernacular Literature Society published Arunodoy. Other journals and periodicals devoted to the history, literature and social condition of Assam included Asham Darpan, Asham Mihir and Asham Bilashini. See Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bangla Shamoyik Patra (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), pp. –. 134

contiguous ethnicities



could be happy with Musalmani Bengali.136 Such viewpoints, juxtaposed to actualities of shared linguistic traditions, form a context for understanding the nuances of the deployment of language in a discourse relating Bengal to her neighbours. Historically, in common language areas such as Kamrup, Goalpara and the old Koch Behar region, AssameseBengali dialects (Rajbangshi and Kamrupi) were spoken.137 Thus within Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay’s differentiated and contrasting linguistic geographies, there were liminal zones where boundaries faded off into each other. The discourse on linguistic comparisons could open up a space for reconsidering connections and similarities despite the obvious limitation of assigning (in most contexts) an inferior place to neighbouring languages even while assimilating them under a common, wider linguistic rubric. The significance lies in the ways in which the same history (such as that of shared linguistic traditions) could be drawn upon and modified very differently by different groups. These differences, stresses and silences were conditioned and determined by specific/distinctive historical circumstances and agendas. Bengal’s search for a collective and wider self (interrelating others) beyond the region resulted in emphasising elements of linguistic unity despite, and alongside segregative strands and fragmentations. In contrast, the Assamese need to assert a distinctive identity based on the Assamese language made them gloss over or interpret very differently such lineages of linguistic linkages. The subnationalist discourse in Assam denied any ‘natural’ relationship between the dialects (mentioned above) and Bengali, tracing such linguistic overlap to a process of ‘ethnic change’ as an aftermath of the political development of the Koch kingdom after its partition.138

Religious Connections While linguistic comparisons formed a complex and fractured terrain, religious links were seen as stronger sinews binding disparate units/sites/ regions. The significance stemmed from the fact that belief in a supreme Godhead formed an essential strand of cultural Aryan-ness 136 Utkal Bhashoddiponi Sabhay Srijuta Babu Rangalal Bandyopadhyayer Boktrita, in an article on Cuttack, printed in Rahashya Sandarbha, Part , Vol. , pp. –. 137 Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay has pointed out that such dialects were different from literary speech. See Baruah, India Against Itself, p. . Also See Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay, Bangla Bhashatattver Bhumika, th edition (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ). 138 Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself, p. .



chapter five

facilitating samajik inclusions. The idea of allegiance to a supreme Godhead had a symbolic and multidimensional significance. It was renegotiated in flexible frameworks which related and situated multiple, ‘new’, and syncretic religious strands with, and alongside older, ‘orthodox’ Brahmanism. The ways in which religion was deployed as part of a wider process of re-imagining unities within a harmonious social order constituted the unique focus of Bengal’s imagination of ‘geographies of religion’ which have been seen as operating within ideological frameworks investigating historical geographies of religious identities, belongings and communities.139 While the inclusive connotation embedded in the idea and practice of Hindu religion has been a key element in the envisioning of a subcontinental civilsational unity,140 the specific trajectories of the deployment of religious interconnections in a regional (Bengali) discourse to approximate wider unities entwined in a nexus between history, religion and ethnic identity, have remained relatively unexplored. This section explores how the literati deployed ancient bonds to forge modern religious linkages, memorialising and conjoining locales through the symbolism of sites, shrines, and synergies of pilgrimage and religious movements. The discourse on religious interconnections between Bengal and her neighbours subtly transmuted and moved beyond colonial understandings of religion as a sociological key to fix and freeze communities, groups and sects as evident from the beginning of the all-India census operations (). Indians were counted, ranked and classified by caste, tribe and ethnoreligious community.141 By underscoring the application of religion as an inclusive force, and contextualising it within interactive frames of

139 See, for instance, Catherine Brace, Adrian Bailey and David Harvey, “Religion, Place and Space: A Framework for Investigating Historical Geographies of Religious Identities and Communities”, in Progress in Human Geography, Vol. , No.  (), pp. –. 140 Wilhelm Halbfass has emphasised that the Hindu system has the flexibility to assimilate ‘others’ albeit at a subordinate level. This forms the basis of a “traditional Indian xenology”, which has been seen as functioning in ancient Indian society, where different communities are integrated into the social system of the Aryans to maintain the cosmic order. See Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Idea of the Hindu Race in the Writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the s and s: A Concept Between Two Cultures”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 141 Barrier: ; Cohn “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification” in Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist Among Historians and Other Essays; Dirks: , mentioned in Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

contiguous ethnicities



associated social and cultural identities, I suggest that identities remained contextually fluid despite objectification and sociological crystallisation. The priortisation of religion as an ideological platform for reworking fusions was closely related to the fact that Bengal had a distinct socio-religious tradition, which blended diverse currents. This regional religious tradition was different from the high culture of Vedic Hinduism. Unlike Orissa where a central cult (Jagannath)142 constructed a pivotal regional religious tradition, Bengal “lacked a dominant symbol supported by the regional state.”143 In this variegated religious culture in Bengal, a semblance of unity developed under the aegis of Brahmanism in the early medieval period. But the element of fusion remained. The notion of samaj grounded in dharma (religion as faith, as well as practice, implying righteous life and conduct) expanded horizons, making them flexible enough to include those who adhered to dharma. Interacting with the symbolism of ‘belief in a supreme Godhead’, this adherence could take multiple forms. In the deployment of samaj to forge unity among fragments, populist religious strands were accommodated and internalised into a flexible Hindu-Brahmanical framework. The language of inclusion was, however, not a simple hegemonic imposition of a religious metanarrative to facilitate such inclusions. The recognition of plural religious elements facilitated more multilayered groundings of identity. In such constructions, regional religious traditions intertwined with wider identities that were projected beyond the region, negotiating and mediating trans-regional particularisms within a flexible rubric of unity. History, harnessed to the agenda of recreating religious affinities, reworked ancient bonds to forge modern unities. The rhythms and trajectories of the commingling of faiths in the past were sought to be captured with a view to annexing such unities to the present, and reorienting and situating them within the contexts and dynamics of interactions between ‘new’ religious creeds (such as Brahmoism from the s) and the older Hindu Brahmanism in Bengal and contiguous areas. The intersection of the past and present in the commingling of faiths was related to two main exploratory arenas in the literati’s discourse:

142 Anncharlott Eschmann, Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa (New Delhi: Manohar, ), p. xiii, mentioned in Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 143 Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process, p. .



chapter five

() religio-cultural assimilation in dynastic contexts, emphasising the ‘Hinduisation’ of ‘alien’ kings of neighbouring regions (as explored above) and () the idea of a common religio-cultural unity epitomised in the concept of Pancha Gour. Both these arenas reflected an interpenetration of the domains of culture/religion and polity, thereby demonstrating that in the late colonial discourse on cultural unities between Bengal and her neighbours, religion was problematised and approached as a concept entwined in, rather than disentangled from political processes. During the s, the literati delved into an archive of ancient history to highlight how different faiths, religious streams and sub-streams had commingled. The historical landscape was revivified by highlighting symbols of such interblending: caves, temples and shrines, seen as crucially significant in recreating unities in the present (late colonial period). An article called “Urishyar Itihas” in the well-known periodical, Bharati in , underlined this significance: Three miles west of Bhubanesvar are the ancient caves of Khandagiri and Udaygiri. They are symbols and repositories of ancient local history. As they have been built by Buddhist, Jain and Hindu devotees, they are emblems of the commingling of religious currents.144

The convictions underlying this quotation are clear. The trajectory of unity between the different strands of Hinduism was far more significant to the literati than distinguishing Brahmanical Hinduism from ‘deviant’ creeds such as Buddhism and Jainism. Kailashchandra Sinha glorified a religious synergy of Buddhism, Jainism and mainstream Hinduism in Orissa during the reign of a Buddhist king of the Daladbangshiya dynasty.145 The amalgamation of Hinduism with its variant creeds, set against a historical/dynastic backdrop, acquired seminal significance in the construction of a wider religious identity. Past instances of commingling of faiths were regarded as antecedents of nineteenth century interactions between relatively ‘new’ religious creeds such as Brahmoism and older religious traditions, especially the predominant Hindu Brahmanism of the ‘orthodox’ variety. The rational note of Brahmoism interacting with traditional Hindu Brahmanism endowed the latter with an assimilative nature, resonating to the note of unity immanent in ideas about religious comminglings in the past. The contextualisation of the theme of an overarching Hindu religious unity in a discourse relating Bengal to 144 145

Kailashchandra Sinha, “Urishyar Itihas”, Bharati (Jyoishtha ), pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.

contiguous ethnicities



her neighbours meant that such harmonies were explored and debated with a view to linking regions via a reconsideration of religious parallelisms. Bengal, as a site witnessing the historic blending of contrasting currents such as late-Aryanisation, Hindu Brahmanism, Buddhist, and even tribal religious lineages,146 constituted an alter-arena, overlapping with similar sites of religious intermixture (Udaygiri and Khandagiri) as in Orissa. The connection between ancient bonds and modern unities inhered in a framework which prioritised the element of process, which of course, was not simple, un-fragmented or continuous. For the literati, the engrossing point was how, despite tumultuous transformations and fragmentations, some ideas and traditions had continued, symbolising, and to an extent eternalising religious, social and cultural connections. One such conceptual site/tradition was the ancient idea of Pancha Gour. It signified the collectivity of five Gours (Bengals) in history, and religious and cultural connections between them. The late colonial prioritisation of commingling of faiths in the past, and modern-day interactions between different strands of Hinduism were reworked and contextualised within the idealised unity of Pancha Gour, envisioned as the fountainhead of a synergetic culture encompassing the whole of eastern India. This idea had political significance also. The five Gours were Sarasvat, Kanyakubja, Gauda, Utkala and Mithila.147 The above section on dynastic linkages between Bengal and her neighbours has highlighted the fact that many kings of Bengal and Magadha were rulers (Panchagouresvar) of Pancha Gour. On the basis of this, writers such as S.N. Bhadra concluded that during the ascendancy of Pataliputra and Gour, Utkal/Orissa and Magadha were included within a common realm.148 What was especially underlined, however, was the cultural significance of Pancha Gour. Oriya 146 The late Aryanisation of Bengal has been emphasised by scholars such as Niharranjan Ray. See Ray, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba, Vol. I (Calcutta, : Paschimbanga Nirakshrata Durikaran Samiti, reprinted ), pp. –, –. Traditionally regarded as a zone outside, and beyond the pale of core-areas of Aryan culture (such as central north India or Madhyadesa), Bengal’s indigenous animistic, tribal cults and religious practices formed a counterfoil to as well as an integrated strand in the late-Aryan cultural lineage. To such currents were added strong Buddhist influences, which gathered momentum under the Pala kings. It was only during the Sena period that Brahmanical Hinduism became a major current and dominant force in the religious tradition and social reordering of Bengal. 147 Promode Lal Paul, The Early History of Eastern India (New Delhi: Sharada Prakashan, ), p. . 148 S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, p. .



chapter five

culture was incorporated as an integral element in ideas about a BengaliOriya identity. Such ideas had a continuing impact on later social historians of Bengal. Dineshchandra Sen referred to a common religious and social exchange between Bengalis and Oriyas for generations, as written in kulajigranthas or books on ancestry.149 A common religious space, glimpsed and conceptualised through a relationship between ancient and modern unities highlighted specific sites as symbols of unity. It drew on a paradigm of place-making, which knit together dynastic history and the symbolism of temple-building, seen as mirroring religious parallelism between regions. A late-colonial tract called Tirthadarshan aligned an ancient religious geography (through glorification of particular sites and temples) to a modern remapping of Bengal and contiguous regions such as Orissa: Ananga Bhimdeb, the fifth king of the Ganga dynasty [in Orissa] was a very able king. The northern limit of his realm was Hugli [in modern Bengal], and the southern limit was marked by the river Godavari. He built many temples, ten bridges, forty lakes and  bathing ghats, and brought  Vaidik Brahmans from Jajpur to Puri . . . he built the famous Jagannath temple in  . . . his descendant Narasimhadeb built the famous Surya temple at Konarak on the shores of the Bay of Bengal . . . [the tradition continued] during the reign of Purushottamdeb who extended his [religiopolitical] control to Kanchipur. In Krishna district, he established/founded a village. Till now [down to the present] this village exists and is known as Purushottampattan. It is twenty miles distant from Vijaywada. In Ganjam district also he established a town called Purushottampur. These places are similar to those in Utkal [Orissa proper] where some villages act as symbols of his immortal name.150

The above narrative linked Puri (in Orissa proper) to Hugli (in Bengal), Kanchipur, Ganjam and the Krishna district (in the south) within a religious geography that spanned the past and the present. Similarities between methods of construction, and presiding deities of temples in Bengal, Assam and Orissa, and the celebration of identical/similar festivals within their precincts were seen as significant elements metamorphosing dynastic alien-ness, blending local legends, myths and multiple traditions (not always Brahmanical) to conjoin sites across borders. The related-ness between famous temples built by traditionally (and originally) Hindu kings such as the Kesaris of Orissa and those built by non-Hindu (but Hinduised) Ahoms of Assam showed how 149 150

Dineshchandra Sen, Brihat Banga (Calcutta, ), Introduction, p. . Baradaprasad Basu, Trithadarshan, p. . Emphasis added.

contiguous ethnicities



the literati negotiated the foreign origin of ‘Hinduised’ kings and traditionally zoned-off non-Aryan/non-Hindu tracts (in Assam) through the symbolism of temple worship. Just as during the heyday of the Kesaris, the famous Shib temple of Bhubanesvar was built . . . Rudrasinha, the Hinduised Ahom king, built the famous Rudresvar temple at Guwahati.

Temples were expressions of a composite culture celebrating a common religious glory151 in places as diverse and distant as Puri (in Orissa) and Guwahati (in Assam). The literati highlighted similarities between holy shrines and temples in different neighbouring areas: Puri in Orissa and Kamakhya in Assam were both called ‘Nilachal’ and the methods of construction of the Kamakhya, Shibsagar and Puri temples were identical.152 The celebration of Hindu festivals in temples of neighbouring areas brought them culturally closer to Bengal.153 This perspective of place-making through emphases on specific sites, dynastic-religious genealogies, and symbolisms of temples implies a place-space connectivity and continuum. Thus it moves beyond the prioritisation of place-making as a sharp, contrasting foil offsetting ‘negative’, ‘unmarked’, ‘neutral’ space.154 Place-making, as seen in the literati’s discourse endowed space with an emotive and ideological content, transforming it from a “vaporised, transcendent vision” to an arena of real, lived experience, which was the “very foundation and container of religious experience.” It was therefore a “fundamental . . . a priori dimension of social action,”155 and its continuity and limits depended more on the “cognitive domain of mental processes,” rather than on “physical structure.”156 Such imaginings prioritised what Henri Lefebvre has 151

Ibid., pp. –. Article in Bharati (Magh, ), p. . 153 Mahimchandra Gupta, “Kamakhya”, Pradeep, Part , No.  (Poush, ), p. . 154 Many recent scholars of the humanities and social sciences interested in ‘place’ define it in opposition to ‘space.’ Whereas space is abstract, homogeneous, unmarked, and neutral, place is concrete, particular, and differentiated. Anne Feldhaus, looking beyond such traditional hierarchical distinctions, has focused on ‘place’ as embodying a multitude of complex cultural and religious meanings contained in a given area. See Anne Feldhaus, Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage and Geographical Imagination in Maharashtra (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ). In my understanding of the Bengali literati’s discourse on place-making by forging religious linkages, I relate space and place in a way that endows both with a positive connotative content. 155 K.N. Chaudhuri, quoted in Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Delhi: Permanent Black, ), p. . 156 Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. . 152



chapter five

designated as the notion of space as a social product, based on social production of meanings,157 and its contextualisation within a wider agenda of imagining the nation. This lived-in religious space was animated by networks of pilgrimage. The symbolism and actuality of pilgrimages linked a precolonial sacred geography to late colonial experiential realities. Through a conscious interplay with ideas about inclusive social and cultural unities in the nineteenth century, pilgrimage became the metaphor and symbol of a broader intellectual and cultural quest.158 Travel networks, railways, and employment connections of Bengalis in the contiguous areas expedited religious peregrinations, connecting specific communities to larger worlds, as well as the local to the wider community. The general aim of pilgrimage: worship of Gods and ancestors interacted with regional specificities. Overlaps inherent in religious movements such as Vaishnavism and its populist basis159 explained the reification of Orissa as a pilgrim-arena with its centre at Puri (traditionally a Vaishnava centre). The populist ideological thrust of Vaishnavism interacting with notions about the opening out of the samaj was reflected in ideas about pilgrimsites such as Puri acting as a forum for the meeting of many jatis. As Jogendranath Ray wrote, Before doljatra [festival of colours held in March] many Bengalis, Hindustanis, Marwaris, Punjabis, Dravidis, and Marathis went to sea for religious bath and rites of purification.160

The synergetic significance of pilgrimage was highlighted within dual, interrelated contexts of the past and the present. Connecting history, legend and modern-day actual locations of pilgrim-sites, Goshtha Behari Dhar glorified temples and shrines in Orissa renowned for pilgrimages:

157 Henri Lefebvre, trans. N. Donaldson-Smith, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ). 158 Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. . While Bose has pointed out how pilgrimage became part of a wider intellectual and cultural quest in the context of an interregional arena of the Indian Ocean, tracing the journeys of Indians to various parts of South East Asia, this chapter focuses on the significance of pilgrimages within India. 159 Ramakanta Chakrabarty has pointed to the mass base of Vaishnavism as a sociological system, highlighting the conversion of tribals in Mymensingh and the low castes of northern Mymensingh, Barisal and Rangpore. See Ramakanta Chakrabarty, Vaishnavism in Bengal: – (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, ), pp. –. 160 Jogendranath Ray, Utkaler Panchatirtha (Calcutta, ), p. .

contiguous ethnicities



In Orissa, in Lake Bindu is the Jagati temple with the idol of Chadrasekhar Deb Jiu. Near it is the Srimandir of Bhubanesvar Jiu, built by Bisvakarma during the reign of the Kesari king Lolatendu. According to legend, the Kesari king asked for a boon and was blessed by Bhubanesvar.161

In a similar vein, Rajendralal Mitra asserted that neighbouring rulers such as King Kalyanmanik of Tripura went on pilgrimages to Orissa.162 The glorification of pilgrimages in Orissa by renowned aristocratic and professionally qualified intellectuals (such as Rajendralal Mitra) having connections with the colonial government163 as well as by less wellknown individuals (Goshtha Behari Dhar) represents an intersection of viewpoints among different sections of the literati. In the late colonial period, the dual roles of pilgrim and writer, and interconnections among the literati (for example between a writer and an acquainted individual who was a pilgrim) facilitated an interplay between belief/text on the one hand, and practice on the other. The private papers of the eminent Brahmo intellectual, Shibnath Shastri offer insights into the experiential reality of pilgrimage by narrating the experiences of his well-known acquaintance, Sri Bhagirathi Rao, who stayed in Cuttack and Puri as a pilgrim.164 The literati’s contextualisation of pilgrimage in past and present scenarios points to the fact that there existed in India (before the colonial advent) frameworks facilitating participation in larger structures of identity/unity. Bengal’s reification of the region and areas beyond it through the thread of pilgrimage enlivened links between the precolonial past/pasts and the colonial present. Pilgrimage, based on linkages between regions, provided notions of religious community long before the British entered the scene, reinforcing the larger moral community of the civilisation.165 As Peter van der Veer has pointed out, the flow of movement across the boundary of a local community points to the 161

Goshtha Behari Dhar, Tirthadarshan Kahini or Bharatbarshiya Tirtha Samuher Mahatmya Prokash (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 162 Rajendralal Mitra (ed.), Rahashya Sandarbha, Part , Vol. , p. . 163 Rajendralal Mitra, deeply influenced by an inherited tradition of Sanskritic learning, was closely associated with the Asiatic Society. 164 Letter from Shibnath Shastri to the Bhagirathi Rao’s grandson, written in , in private papers of Shibnath Shastri, seen at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. 165 Gananath Obeyesekere, “The Buddhist Pantheon in Ceylon and its Extensions,” in Manning Nash (ed.), Anthropological Studies in Theravada Budhhism (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), pp. –, mentioned in Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. .



chapter five

significance of pilgrimage as a public sphere, not a la western lines (as the channels of expression differed from those in Europe), but conditioned through historical specificities of the precolonial and colonial situations. The positioning of pilgrimage at the crossroad of history/ tradition and modernity, as a conceptual and experiential domain transcending local community boundaries goes against the tendency to see the public sphere in sharp contradistinction to a gemeinschaftlich local community underpinned by the polarity between modernity and tradition.166 The forging of an eastern Indian arena encompassing Bengal and her neighbours through pilgrimage was actually part of a wider process of the unfolding of the idea of India, glimpsed and reified through interconnections via clusters of pilgrimage centres. Thus the literati situated the importance of pilgrim centres in Orissa within a more extended nexus of pilgrim sites spanning parts of north and central India. Just as Orissa was the site of many famous pilgrim centres, north and central India had historic pilgrimage centres such as Mathura, Vrindavan, and Varanasi. The eastern Indian pilgrims’ land extending from Kamakhya, and the Brahmaputra valley in Assam to Puri, Cuttack and Bhubanesvar in Orissa was part of a wider subcontinental domain of the divine. The moving boundaries of pilgrim-geography apprehending the idea of India drew on the notion of an expanding samaj,167 creating the basis for a larger national identification.168 166 Peter van der Veer has critiqued the tendency to see the spheres of the nation and that of the local community as mutually exclusive and opposite in nature. See van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, p. . While interpretations of colonial nationalisms influenced by Saidian perspectives de-linking culture from politics counterpoise community and fragmentation to the modern political nation state, and see nationalism as a political and modern phenomenon, Veer points out that nationalism cannot be neatly fitted into this modernisation scheme, and the limits of the ‘traditional’ and ‘parochial’ community were crossed by participations in larger identifications before the colonial advent. 167 Samaj, deployed in late colonial Bengal as a model for inclusion and harmonies, facilitated the interflowing of arenas of the self and the other (regional self and transregional others, and caste/sub-caste/class/communal others), rather than antagonisms. The redefinition of pilgrimage as a site of unity drawing on this idea of samaj, was rather different from Peter van der Veer’s model of pilgrimage and religious arena as a site of antagonism between the self and the other, where unity is achieved at the price of violence, through a dominance of the self over a tyrannised or ‘demonised’ other. See van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, p. . 168 David Mandelbaum has argued that pilgrimage acts to create national identification. Acting as a traditional basis for larger national identification, it helps in imagining a divine entity of India as a single religious setting, to which all inhabitants belong. Mandelbaum, Society in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), p. , mentioned in Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, p. .

contiguous ethnicities



Ideological overlap, human flow and place-making through the thread of common religious movements in Bengal and contiguous regions reinforced such larger identifications. The literati’s emphasis on consonance between the regional and trans-regional forms and manifestations of a common religious movement such as Vaishnavism formed an integral part of conceptualisations of a social-cum-cultural collectivity encompassing Bengal and neighbouring areas. Concentric perimeters of religious unity emanating from the nucleus of Nabadvip (birthplace of Chaitanya, the founder of Vaishnavism) in Bengal, interactions and flows of devotees across borders, and connections between the main Vaishnava centres played a pivotal role in interrelating place-making, history and experiential socio-religious norms and practices. Significantly, the origin, causal factors, spread and specific features of Vaishnavism in regional and trans-regional contexts were contextualised within twin frames of historical synchronicity and ideological connections/similarities: In the th century Assam was completely under the sway of Buddhism which continued until the advent of Sankardeb [founder of the Mahapurushiya dharma, an offshoot of Vaishnavism in Assam]. During the same era, Buddhism was prevalent in Orissa,—who can say that this had not resulted in a similarity of religious temper in the two areas? . . . Chaitanya and Sankardeb were contemporaries, and both believed in Krishna and Hari, neither accepted divisions among jatis. Like Chaitanya, Sankar was regarded as a reincarnation by his followers.169

A common ideological lineage activated and underscored through an excavation of history, exploring common formative factors moulding religious sensibilities thus sought to create a connected space. This was strengthened by delving into dynamics of the origins of particular placenames in these connected regions, and vivifying place through actual travels of the leaders of the Vaishnava movement. Linking Orissa to Assam through such interconnecting threads, the literati underlined Sankardeb’s residence in Puri for a long time before preaching Mahapurushiya dharma in Assam. It seems that many Oriya followers of Sankar went to Assam with him . . . In Sankar’s native district, Nagaon, there are two villages known by Oriya

169 Article in Bharati (Magh, ), p. . Interestingly, this article glossed over the fact that some aspects of the Vaishnava theology and ritual in Sankardeb’s philosophy differed from Gaudiya Vaishnava concepts. See Ramakanta Chakrabarty, Vaishnavism in Bengal, p. .



chapter five names, and his Oriya disciples stayed there. Many Oriya customs, manners, and modes of worship were inducted into the religious movement pioneered in Assam.170

Simultaneities between historicisations of ideological influences, and dynastic accounts recording conversions of kings (of contiguous regions) to Vaishnavism closely conjoined to place-making (through naming), drew on the related trajectory of royal pilgrimage, often suggesting unities beyond eastern India. The pilgrimage of King Gobinda Manikya of Tripura to Vrindavan and Mathura171 connected an eastern Indian interregional religious arena to a wider Vaishnava India. The ways of deployment of the influence of common religious movements such as Vaishnavism to fit different contiguous regions into a connected spatial framework, varied subtly in specific cases of integration (of particular sites and sub-regions). While place-naming and travels of religious leaders played crucial roles in connecting Assam, Orissa and Bengal (as seen above), the drawing in of Manipur and Sylhet underlined the trajectory of the interblending of Vaishnavism with other streams of Hinduism. The crucial point here is, however, that whatever the particular mode of integration, a connection was argued on the basis of the common religious matrix of Vaishnavism, which, significantly, was not seen (within the terms of the discourse) as something deviant from mainstream Brahmanical, or other forms of Hinduism. Mohinimohan Dasgupta traced how Vaishnavism had spread from Bengal to Sylhet, and from there to Manipur.172 Connecting the story of the spread of Vaishnavism in Sylhet to dynastic histories of Manipur, he wrote: “In , during the Manipuri king Pamheiba’s rule, Manipuris were converted by Adhikari of Sylhet to the Vaishnava dharma.”173 This Vaishnava stream, according to Mohinimohan, spread and blended into other religious streams such as Saiva and Sakta in Manipur. At the same time, living links with Nabadvip174 in Bengal fostered trans-regional and transborder connections. This chapter has sought to illuminate specific aspects and ideological themes conditioning the Bengali literati’s viewpoints about contiguous 170

Ramakanta Chakrabarty, Vaishnavism in Bengal, pp. –. Dineshchandra Sen, Brihat Banga, Vol. II (Calcutta, ), p. . 172 Mohinimohan Dasgupta, Srihatter Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 173 Ibid., p. . 174 Manipuri Vaishnavas had a high regard for Chaitanya and hundreds of them visited Nabadvip every year, attending the festival held to commemorate Chaitanya’s birth. See Ramakanta Chakrabarty, Vaishnavism in Bengal, p. . 171

contiguous ethnicities



ethnicities as part of a wider attempt to situate them within a discourse on nationhood. It has concentrated on the opinions of the westerneducated, mainly high-caste professional literati as a significant trajectory of rethinking identities in eastern India during the period under survey, without implying the denial of other discourses and shades of opinion. The literati’s viewpoints formed a complex mosaic of mentalities, but this chapter has tried to map areas of consensus despite variations. By arguing that the springs and dynamics of the literati’s ideas in regard to contiguous ethnicities were related to conceptualisations of unity within the framework of samaj, it has set out the main terms within which the discourse was framed. Despite the prioritisation of the idea of cultural Aryan-ness (embedded in samaj), the discourse was not a simple, hegemonic, homogeneous set of ideas, sweeping away local particularisms and specificities, and uniformly or consciously muting the voice of the contiguous ‘others’. The negotiation of differences within wider, flexible rubrics of unity, and situational remouldings of the discourse according to specific responses/counterdiscourses led to dynamic and multilayered processes of the making and remaking of identities. The discourse steered a middle course between monolith and fragment, situationally co-opting ‘others’ as sub-selves. The emphasis on Aryan theorising had much to do with how Bengali writers critically internalised the Orientalist dream of creating racial affinities between the ruler and the ruled by deploying a theory of race rooted in a theory of language. The speakers of languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan family were supposed to belong to the Aryan race.175 By the second half of the nineteenth century the dream of racial equality was dispelled by Victorian race theorists. The Bengali literati’s discourse, however, drew on and reformulated the views of the Orientalists and British Sanskritists of an earlier period. Their prioritisation of Sanskrit, spatial segregation of Aryavarta and Dakhyinatya (supposed to include Orissa), and emphasis on conduct and religion had close links with meanings emanating from ‘Aryan’. To Monier-Williams, ‘Arya’ implied—() noble or honourable () inhabitant of Aryavarta () one who is faithful to the religion of that country.176 Significantly, the fascination of the Aryan idea, which had much to do with the composition of the Indians themselves, was situated in the regional context of Bengal, and 175 Views of Maine and Max Mueller, referred to in Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), pp. , . 176 Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. .



chapter five

extended to evaluations of neighbouring samajs. Underlying these evaluations was the Aryan/Hindu equation, and the supposition that Hindus were the only ‘true’ Aryans. This explained the centrality of the Hinduism of neighbouring others as an essential pre-condition for their inclusion in a wider samaj. The ideological stance had the obvious limitation of elisions of nonHindu, especially Muslim elements from unities rethought within the framework of a valorised Hindu-Aryan-Bengali identity.177 Unities between Bengal and her neighbours, framed within a Hindu religious lineage operated at two main levels: () inclusion of non-Hindu areas or pockets such as Ahom Assam through religious and cultural metamorphosis (Hinduisation); and () links between Hindu areas (such as between Hindu Bengal and Hindu Orissa) by highlighting interconnection between various currents within Hinduism. There could have been a third level: extension of the language of inclusiveness to non-Hindu communal ‘others’ such as Muslim. This remained elided in the literati’s discourse, which often excluded and denigrated the Muslim element which had blended into the composite culture of neighbouring ethnic groups. Hindu religion was sought to be safeguarded from the Muslim ‘threat’.178 The oppositional relationship between Hindu and Muslim cultures was situated in specific historical contexts too.179 This fissured the fabric of unity. Moreover, the social impact of the class and caste dimensions of the literati as a group led to denigrations and exclusions of ‘lower’ 177

This was done by writers such as S.N. Bhadra. See S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat, pp. –. Whether ‘Aryan’ actually meant ‘Hindu’ is debatable. This point has been discussed, among others, by G. Flood. See G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . An ingrained notion that Bengalis were co-sharers of a legendary, heroic Aryan heritage expressed itself in their evaluation of neighbouring ethnicities. These years saw a simultaneous preoccupation with more distant, and traditionally more heroic ‘Aryan’ others such as the Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs. The grafting of a supposed Aryan element from neighbouring cultures to Bengali identity can be viewed as a part of this wider discourse on a reclamation of a legendary Aryan past. 178 Kailashchandra Sinha, writing in Bharati in  observed, “The king of Tripura arrived in Orissa from Chattagram. Seeing his Kuki soldiers, the people of Orissa thought that the king and his soldiers were yavanas [foreigners, sometimes taken to mean Muslims] . . . during the invasion of Raktabahu [king of Tripura], the idol of Jagannathdeb was placed under the ground, and the king of Orissa took shelter in forests.” See Kailashchandra Sinha, “Urishyar Itihas”, Bharati (Jyoishtha, ), p. . 179 The Hinduisation of King Sridharma of Tripura and his worship of Hindu gods and goddesses were seen as a backlash of the invasion of the Muslim king Hosain Shah of Bengal, and Sridharma’s victory over him. Rajendralal Mitra (ed.), Rahashya Sandarbha, Part , Vol. , p. .

contiguous ethnicities



others belonging to neighbouring populations. Rabindranath Tagore’s idealisation of Tripura samaj,180 betrayed a high-caste, elite orientation closely associated with his own familial and social background, and his personal connection with the Tripura royal family. It reflected the lack of a pervasive appraisal of affinities between discrete jatis and sampradays that comprised neighbouring samajs in Tripura. So within a hierarchised scheme of samajik comparison and gradation, some inclusions were worked out within limited contexts. Despite these limitations, the discourse on contiguous ethnicities formed a significant reference point for rethinking identities in eastern India with a view to situating them within larger settings of unity and imaginations of the nation. The logic of cultural Aryan-ness making a regional (Bengali) samaj expand its boundaries to include neighbouring others apprehended the interconnection between region and nation by negotiating and relating two levels of reworking unities—() interrelation of Bengal and her neighbours; and () relations with other Indians. It afforded a means of including and relating (culturally-Aryanised) other Indians within a Bharatbarshiya (Indian) samaj. This underpinned a wider process of reworking a cultural continuum of South Asia, redefining the relationship between the region and the nation or between local and pan Indian levels. The framework of samaj interrelating and contextually uniting contiguous groups reflected an intersection between the worlds of utopia and everyday social realities. The historicisation, reorientation and positioning of cultural links (such as religion) in larger structures of unity, at the crossroad of tradition and modernity, and at intersections of ‘public’ and ‘private’, and their contextualisation within more material, sociological and social factors showed how the levels of utopic unities and social actualities converged at a complex interactive level. The conjunction of these two levels conditioned the ways in which domains of the Bengali self and the neighbouring others flowed into a common arena where the two entities were sometimes indistinguishable. The meeting and fading off of distinctive boundaries were evident in Bengali ideas about a romanticised, yet real neighbouring other, idealised as a dreamland of hope, and also conceptualised as a travelled-in, lived-in realm. The writer of Asam Bhraman, a traveller experiencing the real, and having on-the-spot connections with social collectivities and people of Assam, felt himself to be

180

See Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, “Rabindranath O Tripura”, Desh, p. .



chapter five

a part of an idyllic realm on the borders of Bengal and Assam, where the waves of the Brahmaputra lured him to a magical Assam wreathed in hope, while the fascination of his motherland, Bengal, still lingered.181 This highlights the contextual permeability of borders between the Bengali self/region and neighbouring areas, demonstrating how a negotiation of unities within the framework of samaj forged a connected space.

181

Asam Bhraman, p. .

chapter six SUB-REGIONAL ‘ESSENCES’ AND THE REGIONAL SELF

The literati conceptualised a wider unity through a two-way process of imagining identity. Notions of identity flowed out from a samajik core to evaluate internal others such as the ‘lower orders’ within Bengal, and the relatively ‘external’ but immediately contiguous neighbouring ethnicities. At the same time they turned inwards to critically assess characteristics of the Bengali self in its sub-regional dimensions. Such mediations formed part of the complementary relationship between the self and the other.1 They were also a means of knowing the (regional) whole through the parts. The literati’s evaluative eye viewed sub-regional ‘essences’ as links in the construction of a regional self. The idea of samaj deployed to negotiate fragmentations of caste, class and ethnic category within and beyond Bengal approximated imaginings of nationhood at interrelated planes of ideological and sociological connections. In regard to the conceptualisation of Bengal as a region having a distinct identity, the category of samaj was linked to perspectives of micro histories, familial narratives and genealogical accounts which illuminated sub-regional particularisms and underlying linkages between them. These undergirded the process of reifying and remaking the region through a delineation of its cultural, territorial and political boundaries. These boundaries supplemented and complemented the notion of Bengal as a historical, emotive, lived-in samajik space, and animated the connection between society and culture on the one hand and political processes on the other. The mediation of specific social, sociological and cultural identities formed around nuclei of micro-region and locality was a significant sociological technique deployed to knit the different sub-regions in Bengal and approximate the idea of the regional self. The latter, it was believed, got its unique character only through the manifold sub-regional variations.

1 The ‘self ’ in this context implies the idea of an overarching, pan-Bengali regional self as an ideological extension of the concept of samaj. The ‘others’ of this self were subregional localisms and particularities which were contextual intra-regional sub-selves, as their incorporation into the wider Bengali regional samaj formed a crucial part of the discourse.



chapter six

Eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore and Bipin Chandra Pal had long sought seeds of this unity amidst apparent local diversities. It was hoped that micro-level studies focusing on histories of specific sub-regions of Bengal would illuminate veiled aspects of Bengali history, bridge gaps between seemingly discrete historical events, and knit historical processes in a meaningful regional integration. At the same time, they would provide the basis for transiting to a higher level of unity. “The unfolding of diverse historical processes” would imbue nationhood with new meanings through their “co-existence and complex interconnections at the all India level.”2 While secondary literature on regional histories of Bengal3 is not scarce, there has been little exploration of intra-regional differences and similarities, and their relation to reconfigurations of jati and samaj in the literati’s imagination. This study attempts to show how the agenda of a redefined jati intertwined with applications of samaj to both sub-regional and regional contexts to explain and connect local distinctiveness to the overarching notion of the Bengali samaj and approximate the notion of pan-regional unity. Secondary literature does not explain intricacies embedded in trajectories of connections between the whole and the parts. For example, they do not show how local legends (operating at subregional levels) about samajik formation were grafted to ‘main’ samajik legends such as that of Adisur to form a ‘grand’ narrative of a pan-Bengali samajik unity.4 They also miss the sense of historical and social contexts that are indispensable for explaining the subtle variations in the literati’s evaluations of sub-regional histories. These are to be related to individual and group backgrounds, familial experiences, and caste, sub-caste and sub-regional loyalties and affiliations. By highlighting such parameters, I locate the discourse on sub-regional identities within broader intellectual debates and sociological and cultural dichotomies. As shown in the previous chapters the central thematic of the Aryan/non-Aryan divide 2 The quoted words have been taken from Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, – (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), Introduction. 3 See, for instance, Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj (Calcutta: Mitrani, ) and Kamal Chaudhuri, Dakshin Chabbish Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta: Model Publishers, ). 4 Existing literature eludes finer nuances of how parallel legends were deployed to connect the local to the regional in a common stream of social history. The famous social historian of Bengal, Nagendranath Basu narrated the legend of Adityasur of Rarh, similar to the ‘main’ Adisur legend as part of an endeavour to interrelate sociological streams at sub-regional and pan-regional levels.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



based on ‘Aryan’ as a time-limited concept underpinned the discourse on nationhood in late colonial Bengal. This idea of Aryan-ness equated ‘Hindu’, ‘Aryan’ and ‘Bengali’ in specific ways. I aim to show in this chapter, how these understandings fed into a complex notion of Bengaliness applied by the literati to their evaluations of sub-regional essences.

Forms of Sub-regional Histories As the cultural and samajik variations of specific sub-regions in Bengal were supposed to endow Bengali-ness with its unique dimensions, there was a spate of sub-regional histories from the second half of the nineteenth century. Apart from sub-region specific local histories, panregional historical tracts also contained references to sub-regional specificities. The same individual often wrote local sub-regional histories as well as samajik histories referring to the whole of Bengal. For instance, Nagendranath Basu, a renowned social historian, wrote Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda () a sub-regional caste history of Uttarrarh, as well as Banger Jatiya Itihas (), a history of the Bengali jati as a whole. Notable among periodicals purporting to deal with sub-regional histories were Utsaha () edited by Brajasundar Sanyal, Khulna, Khulnabasi and Khulnasuhrid, dealing with the local history of Khulna, Chunchura Bartabaha, Nadia (started as early as ), Purbabangabasi, Purulia Darpan, and Bikrampur (started in ), edited by Gangacharan Sen.5 At approximately the same time were started periodicals dealing with the history of Bengal as a whole. These included Gourbhumi () edited by Ramprasanna Ghosh and Bangadarpan (). Bangabasi and Bangarabi () were edited by Baradachandra Ghosh.6 These periodicals and tracts such as Bangiya Samaj () and Banger Jatiya Itihas reveal the juxtaposition of sub-regional to pan-regional strands in the literati’s discourse on identity in Bengal. Sub-regional histories could also take the form of histories of castes inhabiting a specific region in Bengal, such as Nagendranath Basu’s Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda dealing with the Kayasthas residing in the northern part of Rarh in Bengal. Tracts on sub-regional histories also highlighted heroic legacies of specific districts or parganas. This was especially noticeable in Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty’s Birbhum Rajbangsha (). These works formed 5 6

See Aitihasik Chitra, Volume IV, Number , pp. –. Ibid.



chapter six

a rich reservoir which later social historians drew on. Benoy Ghosh’s Paschimbanger Sanskriti () and Sudhir Kumar Mitra’s Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj () reflected lineages of these past ‘heroic’ narratives. Articles in periodicals such as Janmabhoomi, Nadia Darpan, Nabya Bharat, Aitihasik Chitra focusing on histories of specific places such as Rarh, Dacca and Dinajpur glorified instances of local patriotism as antecedents of nationhood. Official and indigenous patronage and the role of local aristocrats contributed significantly to the production of sub-regional histories. Articulations of sub-regional histories were given concrete bases by voluntary historical societies founded in specific sub-regions of Bengal. The Rarh Anusandhan Samiti and the Barendra Samaj (founded in Rajshahi in ) worked through an interconnection of official and local patronage. The agenda of sub-regional histories gathered momentum through collaboration and networks between the abhijat and the professional madhyabitta. The Maharaj Bahadur of Dinajpur and Pandit Dineshchandra Bhattacharya helped Nagendranath Basu while he was writing the history of northern Rarh. With their help he reconstructed the history of specific sub-regional caste samajs such as Kandi, Jemo, Rashra, Par Rashra, Chhatina and Joyjan.7 The Rarh Anusandhan Samiti was patronised by Maharaj Dhiraj Bahadur of Burdwan, Maharaja Dhiraj Bijoychandra Mahtab Bahadur, and Romaprosad Mullick, zamindar of Agradeep. The eminent historian, Haraprasad Shastri was its chairman. With the help of these local historical societies, and the financial support of local rulers and aristocrats, Nagendranath visited Kantowa, Daihat, Agradeep, Ghorakhetra, Bege, Debgram, Bikrampur, Bilvesvar, Ketugram and Attahas. Social and professional interconnections among the Bengali literati also expedited such projects. For instance, the well-known editor Jyotiprosad Sinha accompanied Nagendranath Basu to Kulai, Ketugram and Attahas. Bisvesvar Bhattacharya, the Deputy-Magistrate of Katwa in Burdwan, also gave assistance.8 The Burdwan Abhyarthana Samiti was founded by Nagendranath Basu as a prelude to his composition of the local history of Burdwan, historically regarded as the heartland of Rarhdesh. This local samiti called on all the inhabitants of Burdwan to participate in a joint endeavour to excavate and illuminate the ancient glory of this district. Local aristocrats also started periodicals dealing with 7 8

See Chapter III. Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas (Calcutta, ), Introduction.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



sub-regional histories. As early as  the Maharaja of Burdwan started the Bardhaman Sanjibani at his own expense.9 The literati acknowledged the help of local aristocrats by dedicating their tracts to such patrons. Sebananda Bharati dedicated Tamluker Itihas to Surendranarayan Ray Bahadur, king of Tamluk.10 Efforts to reconstruct the local history of Murshidabad were also the joint work of local aristocrats and educated professionals connected with the colonial raj. In August , a local sabha (convention or assembly) for studies in the history of Murshidabad was established in Berhampore College by some aristocratic and wellestablished persons of Murshidabad, including the well-known writer Dinabandhu Sanyal and Shambhuchandra Mukhopadhyay. This encouraged Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay to write a local history of Murshidabad. The dewan of the nawab of Murshidabad gave him many rare manuscripts and books in Persian and English, relating to the seventeenth century history of Murshidabad. First articulated in the newspaper Satsanga, this tract on local history was hailed by eminent intellectuals, and related to contemporary works such as Biharilal Sarkar’s Polashi, Akshoykumar Moitreya’s Sirajuddaula, and Nikhilnath Ray’s Murshidabad Kahini ().11 Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay’s work was praised by Radhanath Ray Bahadur, a school inspector, the famous historian Haraprasad Shastri and Pandit Rajendra Shastri Ray Bahadur, in the Bengali Library Yearly Report (), and in the Imperial Gazetteer.12 In these various sub-regional histories common strands can be discerned, which went into the making of the notion of Bengali-ness. However, the tracts also reflected subtle differences stemming from multiple loyalties in the same individual. Individual understandings of local difference need to be related to personal affiliations with specific local samitis, familial connections with specific villages, and affinities with local religions. The same individual, born in a village near Calcutta, educated and reared in the urban environment, connected to the colonial raj through employment links, and situated within a specific caste and samajik hierarchy had to negotiate complex strands of loyalty and belonging.

9

Aitihasik Chitra, Volume IV, Number , p. . See Sebananda Bharati, Tamluker Itihas: Tamralipta Rajya Ba Dakshin Banglar Aitihasik Chitra (Calcutta, ). 11 Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, Banglar Itihas, Ashtadash Satabdi, Nababi Amal (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. –. 12 Ibid., p. . 10



chapter six The Idea of Bengal: Political and Cultural Boundaries

Underpinning the notion of Bengali-ness, evaluating specific localities and the province as a whole, was the idea of an eternal Bengal. All too aware of the fragmentations in the colonial period, as well as shifting political boundaries as Bengal moved through history and came under the sway of the Turkish sultans, and the Mughals, the literati dreamed of creating a single Bengal out of the many Bengals which had existed in history. The agenda of recreating a jati and linking it to the conceptualisation of a historical-geographic regional entity by underscoring an unbroken past explained the search for a continuous Bengal. The juxtaposition of political to cultural boundaries was a crucial part of this search. The actual geographical limits of Bengal did not always correspond to notions of cultural and samajik unity. As the lens turned to view bygone Bengals, an ancient, pre-cartographic picture revealed a Bengal with hazy limits: the natural boundaries were the rivers, though some regions of Bengal were included within better defined, larger geographical divisions. Bengal as a political or clearly defined administrative unit having distinct boundaries had not emerged before its consolidation as a subah during Mughal rule. The literati sought to counter the fact of a fragmented Bengal during the pre-Muslim period by underscoring and valorising Sena dynastic rule to highlight a political uniformity linking the various fragments of ancient Bengal. The territorialised Bengal of the Muslim/Mughal period was seen as having links with a connected greater Bengal of the Sena period. Territorial limits conditioned through Hindu (Sena) and Muslim (Turkish sultans and the Mughals) dynastic rule were ideationally conjoined to cultural frontiers such as those of Pancha Gour (five Bengals). The underscoring of such legacies in late nineteenth century notions of nationhood underpinned by a history of culture and attachment explains why the literati prioritised the cultural boundaries of Bengal which often did not correspond to those set by colonial cartographic practices. When the British mapped a new Bengal, geographical and political boundaries were clearly demarcated: in the north were Sikkim and Bhutan; in the east Assam, Manipur and Burma; towards the south was Arakan, the Bay of Bengal and Orissa; and on the west Chhotanagpur and Bihar. Bengal as a territorial unit stood out in sharp relief from other areas which were ‘not Bengal’. But the trajectory of territorialised identity could not explain the intricacies of nationhood woven around culture which necessarily saw Bengal as a cultural, livedin, emotive land and illuminated links between Bengal of antiquity to

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



modern Bengal. The search for a continuous Bengal was closely related to the idea of an inclusive Bengal, actualised in the nationalist imagination through culture and emotional attachment.13 This led to an imaginative delineation of Bengal as desh (this term is used here in the sense of region or province, but it actually had wider connotations and referred to India also),14 set against a premodern background, as well as related to colonial Bengal of the modern period. This explains why cultural boundaries were more significant from the literati’s point of view. The linking of the sub-regional to the regional must be problematised against this ideological backdrop, to see how sub-regional areas, specific parganas and places having distinctive ‘essences’ were sought to be linked to Bengal as a region. These analytic angles demonstrate why the history of specific places in Bengal, sub-regional histories emblematic of a region’s and a people’s past, and genealogies of place-nomenclature interlocked in creative reconfigurations of unity within Bengal. Place-making and naming of such places became crucial in tracking the history of a ‘continuous’ Bengal. The imagination of place-worlds is a crucial way of reconstructing human history as it connects specific places to the people inhabiting them. Further, the history of place and excavations of reasons explaining place names endows empty space with an emotive content, which then leads to memorialisations of the locales, and in a wider sense, of homelands. During the Pala and Sena eras, the two main geographical divisions of Bengal were Gauda and Banga. Gauda included Rarh and Barendra. The ancient name of northern Bengal was Pundravardhana.15 Places such as Tamralipta, Sumha and Pundravardhana were traditionally renowned. These trajectories reflected in subregional histories seem to verge toward a history of place built around tales of the land: including local instances of heroism, cultural glory and excavations of genealogies of nomenclature. The name ‘Bengal’ was derived from ‘Banga’, which was actually a Persian word. It was not until the Muslim period that the name Banga gained currency. There is a difference of opinion about the origin of this name. According to some historians it referred to an ancient king of Magadha, while others say that it 13 See Swarupa Gupta, “Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal”, Studies in History, New Series, Vol. , No.  (Sage Publications: ), p. . 14 See Chapter VII for details relating to the manifold meanings of desh, including the ways in which this term was used to refer to India or Bharatbarsha. 15 Promode Lal Paul, The Early History of Bengal (New Delhi: Sharada Prakashan, ), pp. i, ii.



chapter six

was related to the term ‘Banga’, meaning marshy land. But such controversies about the name, Banga, and political, geographical and administrative boundaries did not capture the different aspects, and the subtle and poignant undertones of the idea of Bengal. This idea of Bengal drew upon the conceptual nucleus of the re-imagined Bengali samaj, including sub-regional essences. Notions about the cultural unity of Pancha Gour were reoriented through late nineteenth century samajik linkages achieved via religious, linguistic and dynastic connections between specific sub-regions in Bengal. Besides imagining a continuous Bengal, the redefinition of cultural identity also underlined a process of ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ Bengali. Subregional assemblies and organisations sought to promote specific norms among people who had not observed or followed them before. Deploying a model of a ‘new’ indigenism, the literati in these local organisations identified language16 and dress as constituents of Bengali jatiya identity. Writing in Utsaha in Sraban, , Bhabanigobinda Chaudhuri observed: A unique feature of the Rajshahi conference is that the Bengali language was used in the methods of its working and in its proceedings. Among the main welding bonds uniting a jati are language and attire. Is it not desirable that the language and attire should be the same for all people who feel an inner mental communion, and who have the same desires and wishes? In this respect, compared to other local conferences, we have found a new expression of jatitva in Rajshahi. Is it not a sign of jatiya progress that England-returned, westernised Bengalis . . . are now in Bengali attire and addressing the issues of the conference in Bengali? . . . This also symbolises the burgeoning of jatiyata throughout India. Only those individuals who revere the jatiya dress and language, can be called true patriots.17

The Blending of ‘Aryan’ and ‘Non-Aryan’: Histories of Place-Naming How did this idea of Bengal inform and traverse discourses on subregional place-histories, a search for origins of their names and their specific historic-cultural and social characteristics? A predominant theme in 16 The importance of language as an important constituent of jatiya identity has been discussed in the Introduction to the book and in connection with Bengali treatment of neighbouring ethnicities in Chapter V. 17 Bhabanigobinda Chaudhuri, “Bangiya Pradesik Samiti, Rajshahi”, Utsaha (Sraban, ), pp. –.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



the notion of Bengali-ness applied in sub-regional contexts was cultural Aryan-ness.18 As seen in the previous chapters, the ‘Aryan’ theme was predominant in the literati’s understandings of the ‘lower orders’ within Bengal, and of neighbouring ethnicities. In late nineteenth century Bengal, superiority often took the form of cultural primacy implicated in the Aryan-Bengali connection, and premised on the supremacy of a glorious, heroic Aryan heritage. However, there was a subtle contrast in the way identity was evaluated at the sub-regional level. The discourse on local histories of specific regions in Bengal contained undercurrents of acculturation, a blending of Aryan and non-Aryan (Austric, and other non-Aryan cults, beliefs and practices) and of ‘elite’ and ‘folk’. Social historians of Bengal drawing on late nineteenth century sub-regional histories explained how Gupta Sanskritic and Vedic influences and Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu Brahmanism of the Pala and Sena eras respectively interacted with a vast medley of non-Aryan cults and beliefs, Sakta worship (worship of female deities), loukik (human) gods, and even heterodox religious sects such as the Kartabhajas. Pre-Aryan and non-Aryan religious legacies of Lokayat dharma, adivasi pujas, and the worship of gramadevatas (village gods) conditioned the content, and the springs and dynamics of sub-regional histories. Many non-Aryan religious forms and festivals were taken over by the Aryans and assimilated into a multifaceted Bengali religion.19 Such intermingling contained indigenous variations of classical Aryan themes, and re-orientations of ancient nonAryan cults, beliefs and practices. Micro studies of specific localities such as Burdwan, drew on the idea that Bengalis were an amalgam of many races or jatis. In some sub-regional histories, Aryan heroic glory and cultural supremacy were paralleled by cultural integration and assimilation in which the Aryan and the non-Aryan coalesced to form a distinctive ‘Bengali’ identity. The ways in which the contrasting cultural streams coalesced in the discourse reflect the preoccupation of the literati with a specific agenda and a problem: the continuations of non-Aryan cultural practices in specific locales formed a counterpoint to the main ‘Aryan’ trajectory in constructions of cultural nationhood. A creative resolution of such opposition could only be accomplished through a nuanced

18 For details of cultural Aryan-ness in relation to ‘lower orders’, neighbouring ethnicities and other Indians, see Chapters IV, V and VII respectively. 19 See Niharranjan Ray, Banglar Itihas, Adi Parba (Calcutta: Paschimbanga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, ), pp. –.



chapter six

analysis of why and how the ‘Aryan’ and ‘non-Aryan’ conjoined in discourses on local histories. One way of looking at this is to delve into the dynamics of place-naming which throws up interesting juxtapositions of these two streams. Commingling was not uncontested, and the ways the strands intertwined varied contextually. Accounts relating to the naming of Burdwan referred to populist sources such as Jain records, Muslim histories and local poems of medieval Bengal. Alongside such sources, an Aryan-puranic tradition was prioritised. Late nineteenth century social historians often underlined puranic references to specific areas of Bengal. The Markandeyapurana mentioned Burdwan along with places such as Tamralipta and Ekpad padesh. Barahamihira’s Brihat Samhita and other ancient sources affirmed that Sumha and Burdwan were a part of Rarhdesh in Bengal in the sixth century bc. According to Jain tradition Burdwan was named after the celebrated Jain saint Bardhamansvami who stayed in Burdwan for twelve years. Minhaj, a Muslim historian, and the popular poet Dhoyi (during the Sena era, in the mid thirteenth century) glorified Rarh, Barendra and Sumha. How were these multiple traditions negotiated by the literati? Nagendranath Basu in Bardhamaner Purakatha contradicted the Jain tradition by asserting that Burdwan was ‘civilised’ before Bardhamansvami’s advent. Epic reference was deployed to bolster ideas of a heroic land: Valiant Kshatriyas resided here, and their heroism has been extolled and idealised in the Mahabharata . . . Moreover, the Mahavamsa proves that people of ancient Rarh were adept in sea-voyages and went to distant lands.20

Local zamindars of Burdwan also referred to ancient texts. Mahtapchand (–) translated the Mahabharata and Harivamsa to Bengali.21 The Mahabharata was actually an oft-quoted source in sub-regional histories. Kalinath Chaudhuri in his history of Rajshahi wrote that the sacred place, Go-Griha, mentioned in the Mahabharata, was located in north Rajshahi.22 Surendranath Sen drew attention to the cultural heritage of Tamluk, an ancient town on the banks of the Rupnarayan river by highlighting connections between legends narrated in the Mahabharata. These glorified the antiquity of Tamluk by descriptions of epic

20 21 22

Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, pp. –. Ibid., p. . Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. .

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



combat between Arjun and the local king of Tamluk.23 Writing the history of Mymensingh, Kedarnath Majumdar cited Aryan-puranic sources and glorified Narayan Deb’s Padmapuran, which followed ancient and classical techniques of composing poetry. These sources were also referred to by Sourindrakishor Raychaudhuri in his treatise on the Barendra Brahman zamindars of Mymensingh and the royal family of Susanga.24 Monthly papers and periodicals started by local kings and landed aristocrats also referred to Aryan tradition and puranic sources. Raja Kamal Krishna of Mymensingh started the Arya Pradeep in , and the Arya Prabha in .25 Like Mymensingh, the place-history and naming of Rajshahi prioritised Aryan sources. But alternative non-Hindu strands enmeshed with Hindu-based accounts. Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay believed that Rajshahi was named after Raja Kangsha. The neighbouring zillas were called Mahmudshahi (the name reflects Muslim lineage) after their respective rulers.26 He also offered an alternative viewpoint about the origin of the name “Rajshahi”, though this underlined Hindu glory: The zamindari of Rajshahi was given to the royal family of Natore . . . It is highly possible that the name Rajshahi originates from the Raja of Birbhumi, because the kings of Birbhumi were previously Hindus . . . Udaynarayan of Rajshahi belonged to this ancient zamindari family . . . He was a Hindustani Kayastha, and Bhumi, Kanakpur and various other villages of Rajshahi pargana were included in his kingdom.27

In this account, Kaliprasanna referred to, but countered and transmuted Muslim-centric explanations of the name “Rajshahi”. He wrote that it was impossible to agree with the view that during Muslim rule in Bengal among all the rajyas, the “best” (Shahi) was Rajshahi, and consequently came to be called “Rajshahi”.28 Instead, he inducted Hindu elements into what he considered other possible explanations of the name. Premising his argument on the Hindu origins of the Birbhumi kings, he explained

23 Surendranath Sen, Sri Sri Jagannath Mahatmya O Srikhetra Tattva Sudha (Calcutta, ), p. . 24 See Kedarnath Majumdar, Mymensingher Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . For further details see Sourindrakishor Raychaudhuri, Mymensingher Barendra Brahman Jamidar, Susanga Rajbangsha, Volume II (Calcutta, ). 25 Kedarnath Majumdar, Mymensingher Itihas, p. . 26 Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, “Rajshahi”, in the periodical Utsaha (Bhadra, ), p. . 27 Ibid., pp. –. 28 Ibid., p. .



chapter six

that, though according to an age-old legend two Muslims had raided Birbhumi and occupied it, they later became Hinduised, and called themselves Rajas and their queens Ranis, according to Hindu practice.29

‘Aryan’/ ‘Brahmanical’ in Dynastic Accounts and in Formations of Sub-regional Samajs The intent of the literati’s discourse on sub-regional histories was to apprehend a jatiya unity through accounts of local samajs. As samaj in a wider sense was viewed as concentric perimeters of relatedness radiating from the familial nucleus, an emphasis on genealogies and lists of ancestors in sub-regional samajik history was natural. The use of kulapanjikas by eminent historians such as Nagendranath Basu and Lalmohan Vidyanidhi demonstrates the centrality of such sources in reconstructions of familial and samajik itihas at the all-Bengal level. At the sub-regional level too, historians such as Kedarnath Majumdar used genealogies. As most of the writers of sub-regional histories belonged to the higher castes, especially Brahman and Kayastha, the use of genealogy in constructions of sub-regional identity inevitably valorised and stressed Brahmanical origins. Accounts of famous ruling families underlined Brahmanical/Hindu origins and connections. Kedarnath Majumdar traced the historic origins of the Mymensingh royal family to thirteenth-century connections with Kanauj Brahmans. Somesvar Pathak of Kanauj came to Bengal in  and went to Kamrup and Chandranath. He fought with the Khasia king (non-Aryan) and became very powerful.30 Kedarnath related samajik pride to Brahmanical origins and connections with famous Kulins. He mentioned the samajik importance of Janakinath Mallick of Mymensingh, supposedly a descendant of the Kanauj line of Brahmans, and connected with famous Kulins. Janakinath tried to exalt his samajik status by getting his younger brother’s daughter married to Ramchandra Lahiri belonging to the family of a Kulin samajik chief, Kamal Lahiri.31 Similarly, Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay prioritised the samajik pre-eminence of Barendra Brahmans while highlighting the role of Kangsha, the ruler of Bhaturiya in north Rajshahi. Quoting Akshoykumar Moitreya, Kaliprasanna mentioned that Kang29 30 31

Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



sha belonged to the Barendra Brahman family of Purushottam Bedanti in Nannyasigram. Brahman roots were closely associated with pride in Sanskritic learning and connections with other high-caste rulers of adjacent regions. This local history of Rajshahi drew attention to the fact that Purushottam Bedanti (the king of Rajshahi, Kangsha’s ancestor) was the brother of the famous Sanskrit pundit, Kullukbhatta. This was considered as a matter of pride for people of Rajshahi. Kangsha’s descendant Lakshminarayan had a close samajik connection with King Ramjiban of Natore.32 Kalinath Chaudhuri also believed in Hindu origins of the rulers of Rajshahi. He expressed: During the reign of Akbar, Todar Mal divided Bengal into sarkars, of which Tahirpur and Santul were parts of Rajshahi. Rajshahi is a part of Barendra bhumi, the home of many Barendra Brahmans. According to the Koulinya practice of Barendra Brahmans, Tahirpur was Astachal, and Susanga, Udayachal . . . It is quite clear that from the reign of King Birat to that of the Sena rulers, Rajshahi was under Hindu rule.33

Sub-regional dynastic glory was often emphatically ‘Hindu’ glory. Kedarnath Majumdar asserted: From the beginning of the tenth century until the first two decades of the eleventh century, the Palas ruled Bengal. During this time, in Kapasia, Raypura and Dhamborai in southern Mymensingh, three local kings called Shishupal, Harishchandra Pal, and Jashopal established their sway. Ancient historical relics bear testimony to the glory of such local rulers. The relics of Bhagadatta’s house, the ancient Bartirtha Lake and temple, and the house of Madan Gopal symbolised the ancient glory of Mymensingh.34

Interestingly, late nineteenth century authors quoted colonial literature in underlining the Hindu affiliations of ancient and medieval sub-regional rulers. Following J.C. Peterson (author of the Burdwan District Gazette) Nagendranath Basu referred to Ramcharit. According to the latter, when Rampal ruled Gour a powerful king called Bikram reigned in Debgram, Pratibaddha, and Tarangabahul. Legend had it that he used to bathe in the Ganges in Agradeep every day.35 As seen above, in connection with Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay’s accounts about the naming of Rajshahi, histories of royal and zamindari

32

Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, “Rajshahi”, Utsaha (Bhadra, ), p. . Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas, p. . 34 Kedarnath Majumdar, Mymensingher Itihas, pp. –. 35 J.C. Peterson, Burdwan District Gazette (), p. , quoted by Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, p. . 33



chapter six

families of specific regions of Bengal glorified ‘Hindu’ and oppositionally arraigned ‘Muslim’ against it. Kaliprasanna immortalised the Hindu king, Udaynarayan, who ruled Rajshahi in the seventeenth century. His capital was Debinagar and his relics were found in Damdama, Birkoti, and Narayangarh. Udaynarayan initially won battles against the Nawab. Later, when he realised that defeat was inevitable, he committed suicide.36 After his death, Nawab Murshid Kuli Khan gave Rajshahi pargana to two zamindars called Ramjibon and Kalu Kon. The illustrious Natore rulers who later became the zamindars of Rajshahi also acquired a special place in local histories of Rajshahi.37 Other eminent writers, while describing the ‘independence’ of specific regions in Bengal from rulers of Bengal, and from Muslim nawabs, underlined the role of Hindu zamindars. Mymensingh was supposed to be ‘independent’ during the reign of Bijoysena, successor of the legendary Sena king, Adisur. Sub-regional historical tracts and even school textbooks such as Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay’s Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas questioned whether places like Mymensingh were included in the domain of the Sena kings, especially within Ballal Sena’s realm. Kedarnath Majumdar emphasised: Towards the end of the thirteenth century ad, Baishya Garo ruled in Susanga in north-east Mymensingh. He was defeated by Somesvar Pathak, the founder of the famous Susanga royal family.38

An article in Aitihasik Chitra gave pride of place to the ‘high’ samajik status of local kings due to Brahman birth. Tracing the origins of the celebrated Noldanga royal family of Jessore, the article mentioned that Haladhar Bhattacharya, a Rarhiya Brahman having high samajik status was related to Bishnudas. He became a yogi in Khatrasuni forest, and gave shelter to the then nawab and his attendants who were returning from Dhaka. The grateful nawab gave five villages to the yogi, and these formed the foundation of the landed property of the Noldanga royal family. In this account too, the Muslims were seen as an oppositional and conflicting element. Bishnudas’s son Srimanta was extraordinarily courageous and defeated the Afghans of Mahmudshahi pargana. Connections with the Nawab of Bengal and acquisition of titles from him did not mean 36 Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay drew his conclusion about Udaynarayan’s suicide from sources such as Stewart’s History of Bengal and Kartikeyachandra Ray’s Kshitish Bangsabali Charit, edited and translated by L. Perksch (Berlin, ). See Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, “Rajshahi”, Utsaha (Bhadra, ), p. . 37 Ibid., pp. –. 38 Ibid.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



a de-contextualised acceptance of Muslims and their culture. In Nagendranath Basu’s account of the Burdwan royal family the ‘independence’ and glory of Hindu kings co-existed with references to the acceptance of titles from the then Mughal emperor: The Burdwan royal family founded by Sangam Sinha. The ruins of his palace can be found in Boikunthapur. He was succeeded by Bonkubihari Ray, Abu Ray and Babu Ray. The latter had undisputed authority over the Burdwan pargana and three other mohals. Krishnaram Ray of this family got the first sanad from Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor, in . Jagatram Ray, who received the second sanad in , was succeeded by Kirtichandra, a famous warrior who defeated the rulers of Chandrakona, Bordi, Baligori and Bishnupur.39

The glory of Hindu kings was celebrated not merely in sub-regional historical contexts but also related to the religious affiliations of contemporary royal and zamindar families of Calcutta. The rulers of Nabadvip had been devotees of the deity preserved in the Gopinath temple. Much later the Debs of Shobhabazar Rajbari in Calcutta offered their homage to the same deity.40 This approach, linking the past and the present in arguments about Hindu affiliations of sub-regional kings, highlighted cultural continuities over specific eras. Arguing along these lines, Nagendranath Basu glorified the religious importance of the village of Ketugram in Burdwan which had been named after a famous Hindu king, Chandraketu.41 What is interesting is that despite a glorification of ‘Hindu’ in dynastic contexts (as seen above in Nagendranath Basu’s account) the Hindu element intersected with non-Hindu in specific ways in dynastic accounts of Rajshahi. Kaliprasanna referred to the views of the author of the Siyar ul Mutaquerin, who offered an interesting counterpoint to the common theme of ‘Hinduisation’ or ‘Aryanisation’ of the ‘alien’ by saying that the rulers of Birbhumi were Hindu, but later accepted Muslim faith. Murshid Kuli Khan enjoined that zamindars unable to pay revenue had to accept the Muslim faith.42 This links a secular-political-dynastic trajectory to religion and faith, but the terms within which this linkage operated reflects a co-existence and connection, rather than a de-contextualised opposition between Hindu and Muslim. More than a question of warring ideologies/faiths, such connections point to a common space of political

39 40 41 42

Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, p. . Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. . Ibid.



chapter six

and social power in which Hindus and Muslims were co-sharers. This was a significant strand, but it was not uniformly grafted onto a common Indo-Islamic historiographical space which could form an alter-arena to continuing motifs of ‘Muslim tyranny’ and ‘Hindu glory’ worked out within an oppositional dynamic of power relations. The Brahmanical and Hindu element in the founding of dynasties also influenced the formation of local samajs as described by authors such as Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, Kedarnath Majumdar and Kalinath Chaudhuri were developed by later historians too. Benoy Ghosh referred to the Brahmanical culture of Sankrayil village in Midnapore. He described the samaj of Utkalsreni Baidik Brahmans who had arrived from Puri in Orissa. They had distinctive titles such as “Shorongi”, “Praharaj” and “Mudli”.43 Brahmans and Baidyas controlled village samajs of medieval Bengal, including those in Hugli—Guptipara, Somra, Sripur, Bolagor, Jirat, Tribeni, Bansberia, Saptagram, Chinsura, Chandannagore, Srirampore and Uttarpara. Nagendranath Basu glorified the Katwa Samaj in Burdwan as it was a preserve of Rarhiya Brahmans. It was splintered by Muslim invasions. Many pious Brahmans left this samaj and settled in eastern Bengal.44 Brahmanical pre-eminence was graded and differentiated in accounts of different samajs. These differences sometimes coincided with subregional boundaries. Kalinath Chaudhuri wrote that in Rajshahi, Brahmans were divided into Barendra, Rarhi, Baidik, Barna and Kanauj groups having different degrees of social status. The rich zamindars of Tahirpur, Puthia, Natore, Balihar and Chaugram were mainly Barendra Brahmans.45 Kalinath also differentiated between Baidik Brahmans and Barna Brahmans: The Baidik Brahmans of Rajshahi are not the descendants of the five Brahmans brought to Bengal by Adisur, nor are they original inhabitants of Bengal . . . They belong to the family of the five Brahmans, well versed in the Vedas, brought to Bengal by King Shyamalbarna . . . The Baidik Brahmans are poor and are mainly engaged in conducting ritual for the Shudras . . . They are to be differentiated from the Kanauj Brahmans who came to Rajshahi from western India during the Muslim era with the purpose of trading.46 43 Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II (Calcutta: Pustak Prakashak, ), p. . 44 Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, p. . 45 Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas, pp. –. 46 Ibid., pp. –.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



These differentiations in the Brahmanical samaj were all the more relevant in an era which redefined Brahmanhood, and analysed the ‘decline’ of the Bengali samaj from the angle of Brahmanical laxity. This analysis underlined the necessity of import of Brahmans from Kanauj in the tenth century ad because Bengali Brahmans no longer performed their duties. Though this analytic backdrop explains the emphasis on distinctions among Brahmans, it does not provide a clue to the glorification of the Saptasati Brahmans (resident in Bengal before the advent of the Kanauj Brahmans) or unravel the subtleties of mentality which underlay such glorification. Lalmohan Vidyanidhi differentiated the samajs of the Barendra (Kanauj Brahmans and their descendants) and the Saptasatis, glorifying the latter and pointing to their high samajik status. His views seem to portray a search for essentially ‘Bengali’ origins of Brahmans and question assumptions about samajik decline due to the supposedly lax practices of the Saptasatis. In his graphic description of the Rarhiya Brahman samaj, Vidyanidhi clearly differentiated it from the Saptasati samaj. The Rarh samaj of Barendra and of the Rarhiya Brahmans, in historic Rarhdesh, was different from the samaj of the Saptasati Brahmans. The latter had been residing in Bengal before the advent of the five Brahmans of Kanauj. The Saptasatis included Pithuri, Balthubi, Nanaksar, Jagai, Bhagai, Sagai, Jobgrami, Katanigain, and Aroth Brahmans. Specific localities served as the samajik strongholds of the Saptasati Brahman chieftains. A Saptasati Brahman called Bhattacharya was the samajpati of Chakradvip pargana in Nadia. Similarly the Kamalpur Samaj was under a Saptasati Brahman called Farfarchhatrika-grami. The Bhattacharyas of Kaundinya gotra belonged to the highest rungs of samajik hierarchy in Santipur, Phule and Belghere, while the Goswamis of Goutom gotra led the samajs of Singerkon, Bhointe, Palsheet, Nobogram and Moynagarh (in Burdwan). In Larugram, the Raygoshtis held sway. Holdoha pargana of Jessore was under the samajik leadership of the Bhattacharyas of Bashishtha, Goutom and Alman gotras. Brahmans of the same village and the same samaj were closely connected by blood as well as by atmiyata.47 The literati also drew attention to the samajik pre-eminence of other high-caste samajs such as that of the Kayasthas. Most zamindari families were considered ‘aristocratic’ because of ‘high’ samajik connections due to Kayastha origin. Katwa was famous for being the birthplace of 47 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Sambandhanirnoy, Volume I (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. –, –.



chapter six

Basudeb Ghosh. His ancestor Gopal Ghosh had settled in Katwa and founded their bamsa (family). His son Ballabh Ghosh was a man of great samajik importance and was highly revered in the Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj by his Baishati Koron (specific samajik regulation).48 Scions of this zamindar family migrated to other districts and became famous. Maharaj Girijanath Ray Bahadur and Ray Radhagobinda Ray Saheb Bahadur belonged to the illustrious Ghosh family of Katwa.49 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi drew attention to illustrious Kayastha samajs which occasionally did not agree with the samajik decrees of the Sena rulers. The Kayasthas of Uttarrarh and Barendra raised their own status through samajik interconnections and koulinya. They established samajs to elevate their familial status. Somesvar Ghosh of the Ghosh family and the Soukalin gotra established the Jojan and Rarhdesh samajs. Anadibor Sinha of Batsyagotra established the Kandi and Jemo samajs in Murshidabad.50 The Jojan Samaj led by Kopindra Ghosh belonged to the first rank in the scheme of samajik gradation, as did the Kandi and Jemo samajs.51 Similarly, Ananta Datta of Kastul village in Kishorganj, Mymensingh, disagreed with the samajik decrees of Ballal Sen. To protect their samajik status and caste identities, many Brahmans, Baidyas, and Kayasthas went with their wives and families to Chittagong, Srihatta, Tripura, and eastern Mymensingh.52 These accounts analysed samajik status from the angle of high caste as well as conduct, revealing an intermeshing of Brahmanical emphasis and cultural Aryan-ness. The contemporary (late nineteenth century) shifts in indices of samajik status, prioritising wealth, education and conduct provide a reference point in analyses of past familial and samajik identities in the light of such ‘new’ criteria. The displacement of kula as the sole marker of status explains the premium placed on the samajik ‘independence’ of the Datta and Ghosh families cited above, who defied the Kulin decrees of Ballal Sen. The emphasis on conduct was also projected in accounts of past identities. Kedarnath Majumdar glorified one Raja Rajsingha of Mymensingh who gave land to many Brahmans, and saved his subjects from distress. These were deemed as noble (Aryan) qualities, as were the politeness and humility of another king Jagatkrishna.53 48 49 50 51 52 53

Kulapanji referred to in Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, p. . Ibid. Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –. Kedarnath Majumdar, Mymensingher Itihas, pp. –. Ibid., pp. , .

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



Raja Pramathabhushan of Noldanga in Jessore was, according to Asvinikumar Sen, very well-educated and deeply interested in educating various sections of people . . . He also regulated the samaj, and like Vidyasagar, tried to introduce widow remarriage in his zamindari.54

Drawing on late colonial sub-regional histories, Benoy Ghosh wrote that the Srikhanda samaj of the Baidyas was renowned because of the sadachar (good conduct, especially devotion to God) of its members.55

Low-Caste Rulers and Induction of ‘External’ Elements In my analysis of how the ‘Hindu’ and ‘Aryan’ elements predominated in dynastic and samajik accounts of specific places in different sub-regions of Bengal, I showed how contextually, ‘Hindu’ and ‘non-Hindu’ intersected. This section would dwell on this theme in greater depth, and uncover the ways in which populist and ‘folk’ traditions (non-Aryan tribal), ‘alien’ and ‘low caste’ elements fed into the discourse, blending into classical epic and puranic streams. Nor was this a subterranean or marginal theme lost in a-historical and sequestered temporal spaces. Low caste origins of some of the sub-regional rulers which were described in late nineteenth century tracts found their way into works of later historians. The royal families of Kornagar and Narajol were Sadgops. The Bhuiyas of Tamluk were Mahishyas.56 Dayaram, a man of Tili origin, gained pre-eminence in the Natore ruling family, and established the Dighapatiya royal family.57 Echoing colonial tenets, the Bengali literati regarded the Koch ruling dynasty (Rajbangshis) of northern Bengal as a semi-tribal aboriginal community of Kamrup (ancient Assam). In , E.T. Dalton considered the Kochs to be non-Aryan and belonging to Dravidian stock. Buchanan and Hamilton also held this view. Though they were recognised as Satshudras by Maithili Brahmans, Bengali Brahmans refused to accept this.58 However, the case of the KochRajbangshis reflects adherence of local rulers to popular folk cults and 54 Asvinikumar Sen, “Noldangar Rajbangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, Volume IV, Number , pp. –. 55 Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II, p. . 56 Ibid., p. . 57 Nikhilnath Ray, Murshidabad Kahini (Berhampore, ), pp. –. 58 See Buchanan-Hamilton’s account in Jalpaiguri District Handbooks, p. cxxxv and Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, ), reprinted in Indian Studies, Past and



chapter six

beliefs, and their partial Islamisation serving as instances of eclecticism. Drawing on the legacy of earlier samajik historians, Ranajit Dasgupta has remarked that some Hindu royal families were Islamised. The Koch kingdom in Jalpaiguri was founded by Vishu/Visvasimha, born in a Mech (Mlechchha/foreign) family in the closing decade of the fifteenth century. He was anointed king according to Hindu rites. The Kochs became semi-Hinduised and adopted the name of Rajbangshis (of royal lineage), and claimed to be Kshatriyas. This adoption of Hindu culture was paralleled by the lingering presence of old Mech customs and practices. A few of these practices were taken over from the Muslims and the Islamic religion.59 Late nineteenth century meanings of caste and samajik status (contigent upon wealth, education and conduct in addition to birth)60 were read back into time, and low-caste origins of sub-regional rulers fitted into this frame of thought. Heroism, valour and conduct played major roles in determining a ruler’s status and his claim to glory. In fact, the induction of ‘low’ caste, non-Aryan, and ‘folk’ elements cannot be regarded as an entirely divergent or oppositional stream of otherness in an otherwise ‘Aryan’ discourse. These elements were, to an extent, offshoots of the Aryan theme because Aryan/Hindu during this time was a culturally inclusive concept which could integrate diverse groups, without erasing their particularities via a hegemonic sweep. This also explains the literati’s inclusion, in sub-regional heroic histories, of dynasties founded by men of Rajput and Chhatri backgrounds who had originally no connection with Bengal. Benoy Ghosh, referring to late nineteenth century viewpoints, narrated a fascinating tale connecting royal lore, ‘low’ caste kings and ‘foreign’ or Rajput inductions. Dvarbasini was ruled by a Sadgop king, Dvarpal. Gopbhum in Burdwan and many villages of Jhargram were also ruled by Sadgops. These Sadgop rulers were connected with the Mallaraj kings of Vishnupur. The latter were

Present (Calcutta, ), pp. –, mentioned in Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –, pp. –. 59 The Hinduisation of the Kochs has been studies in detail by C.C. Sanyal. See C.C. Sanyal, The Rajbangshis of Bengal: A Study of a Hindu Social Group (Calcutta, ), pp. –. This has been mentioned by Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –, pp. –. 60 The changing indices of samajik status have been mentioned in Chapter III and in Chapter IV (in connection with the ‘lower orders’). This left room for lower castes to work their way up by acquiring wealth and/or education and adhering to a ‘proper’ code of conduct.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



traditionally sardars (local chiefs). Their realm was taken over by the Rajputs during the Muslim era. An interesting instance of emphasis on Hindu religious practices was the claim of Jhargram kings that their ancestors went from Fatehpur Sikri to Puri for pilgrimage in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking advantage of the internal political dissensions in Jhargram, they occupied it. Their written dynastic account claims that Sarbesvar Malladeb established a kingdom in  after defeating the local sardar kings. The Rajput rulers of Jhargram, like the Sadgop kings, allied with the Mallarajas of Vishnupur, and got titles (upadhis) such as “Raja” and “Ugaloshondodeb”.61 The Rajput settlement spread between  and .62 Sub-regional histories also provided instances of the absorption of kings from other regions of India into the fold of local samajs in Bengal. King Lakshman Manikya of Mithila was absorbed into the samajik fold of the Kayastha samaj in Jessore.63 He established alliances with Raja Ramchandra of Chandradvip, Kedar Ray and Mukunda Ray of Bhushna, and Pratapaditya of Jessore who were samajpatis of the Kayastha Samaj. Since Lakshman Manikya was a Kshatriya and a ruler (and supposedly possessed the ‘Aryan’ quality of valour) they decided to accept him. Some Kayasthas of Bikrampur who refused to accept him were ostracised from the Kayastha samaj by these samajpatis. Other Kshatriya kings such as the Kshatriyas of Suryabangsha were also absorbed into the Kayastha Samaj.64 The Aryan theme deployed in sub-regional histories was, as mentioned above, flexible enough to occasionally and situationally include non-Bengali (Rajput, Kshatriya) and Muslim elements. Nagendranath Basu, in his local history of Burdwan, mentioned that the ancient relic of Ballaler bhite (ruins of Ballal Sena’s house) in Debgram symbolised historical glory not only to resident Hindus, but also to Muslims. Many aristocratic and respectable Muslim families of Debgram and Bikrampur thought that the Saontar Dighi (lake), adjacent to Ballaler bhite, symbolised Sena glory.65 Nikhilnath Ray drew attention to the fact that in 61

Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II, pp. –. Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –, p. . 63 This was mentioned by Sri Mokshadacharan Samadhyayi in Bara Bhuiyan (Calcutta, ). For details, see Upendranath Bhattacharya, Banger Bir Santan (reprinted Calcutta, ), p. . 64 Ibid., p. . 65 See Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, p. . 62



chapter six

Murshidabad three royal and aristocratic families simultaneously rose to samajik pre-eminence—that of the Nawab, that of Jagat Seth, and that of the Bangadhikars—who were equally respected.66 Muslim influence was evident in the naming of specific parganas, and acquisition of titles. Despite the strong Hindu overtone in his account of Rajshahi, Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay conjectured that Rajshahi could have been named after a Raja who was also like a Shah. In other words, the name signified a Hindu king who had ascended the Muslim throne. Rajshahi was an interesting blend of the Hindu “Raj” and the Parsi “Shahi”.67 Asvinikumar Sen mentioned that the Brahman king of Noldanga, Srimanta, after his victory over Afghans, got two titles. One was Muslim, “Ranabir Khan”, and the other was Hindu, “Debray”.68 Asvinikumar concluded that the acquisition of such titles, and the fact that Muslims often worked under Hindu rajas and zamindars, demonstrated that in the political nexus the relationship between Hindus and Muslims was not always oppositional and communally divisive.69 However, this situational acceptance of Muslim elements in a predominantly Aryan-Hindu discourse on sub-regional essences was not strong or pervasive enough to be counterpoised to the overwhelmingly Hindu element. For all his conjectures about possible Muslim influences in the naming of Rajshahi, Kaliprasanna did not shift from his belief in the Hindu origin of the name, as described above. Moreover, the Hindu rulers’ acquisition of Muslim titles from the Nawab needs to be seen as part of a political and tactical liaison between the Muslim ruler and his Hindu zamindars, rather than as a deep bonding of cultures or samajs. But such situational connections constituted significant strands in the warp and weft of a discourse primarily grounded and articulated in a Hindu rhetoric.

Non-Aryan Elements in Sub-Regional Samajs The analytic angles delineated above points toward an idea of Bengaliness present in sub-regional dynastic contexts which blended non-Aryan elements into a primarily Aryan discourse. This melding of Aryan and

66

Nikhilnath Ray, Murshidabad Kahini, p. . Kaliprasanna Bandyopadhyay, “Rajshahi”, Utsaha, p. . 68 Asvinikumar Sen, “Noldangar Rajbangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, Volume , Number , pp. –. 69 Ibid., pp. –. 67

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



non-Aryan surfaced in analyses and descriptions of specific local samajs too. Samajs in Midnapore were supposed to reflect such features. Marking a shift from epic and puranic emphasis, Benoy Ghosh quoted a Santhal text called Mare Hapram to bolster the view that the architects of the ancient history and samaj of Midnapore were non-Aryan Australoids or Nishadas. Their descendants were the Santhals and the Sabars. The original homeland of the Santhals was Saonth desh or Silda pargana.70 Midnapore was a meeting-ground of adivasis, Mundas and Santhals. ‘Uncivilised’ jatis resided in Sankrayil, between the Subarnarekha and Kangsabati rivers, and also in Birbhum, Bankura and Purulia. Many villages inhabited mainly by adivasis were located alongside Hindu and Muslim villages. This non-Aryan stream was supposed to have blended with Aryan currents in social, dynastic and cultural contexts. Relics in north Midnapore and Jhargram reflecting the Hinduisation of the uncivilised Bhillajati of Jhargram, show that the stream of Austric culture mingled with ‘Bengali Aryan’ culture.71 Bengali-ness, reflected in various sub-regional samajs thus came to mean (contextually) specific levels of amalgam between Bengali-Aryan and Bengali-non-Aryan. Complex currents defining the notion of Bengali-ness confluenced to form a rich mosaic of sub-regional local cultures reflecting a mix of traditionally low-caste, Muslim, adivasi and ‘foreign’ groups, who were, however, Hinduised. Ranajit Dasgupta has mentioned how, over historical eras, the people of Jalpaiguri became a multicultural conglomerate comprising overwhelmingly of Hinduised and Islamised autochthons, and immigrant tribals like Oraons, Mundas and Santhals. They constituted the basic producers while Bengali Hindus and Muslims emigrating from east Bengal dominated services and professions. It was a plural society where high-caste Brahmans, Baidyas, Kayasthas and Rajputs (Chhatris), co-existed with intermediate and low-caste artisans (Chamar, Dom, Jugi), service groups (Dhoba), trading groups (Gandhabanik, Shaha), Hinduised autochthons (Koch, Khen, Mech), immigrant tribals (Mundas), and Himalayan groups (Nepalis and Bhutiyas).72 Similarly, sub-regional samajs in Midnapore contained ‘external’ or nonBengali elements. The most powerful samajik sampraday (group or sect)

70 Baidyanath Hansda, Bengali Translation of Mare Hapram, quoted in Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II, p. . 71 Ibid., p. . 72 Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –, pp. , .



chapter six

in Sankrayil, Midnapore, was that of the Mahatos, and their language was an intermixture of Bengali, Bihari and Maithili.73 Multicultural strains in sub-regional samajs mentioned by twentieth century historians such as Ranajit Dasgupta seem to have links with late nineteenth century incorporative notions, demonstrating that the induction of ‘external’ elements into a composite notion of Bengali-ness was a continuing process. This inclusive notion of Bengali-ness, inducting non-Aryan and folk elements into the idea of a samajik identity, was applied, however, more in subregional contexts than in other aspects of the discourse on Bengali identity defining attitudes toward neighbouring others and ‘lower orders’ within Bengal. The non-Aryan jatis were accommodated within a contextual and situational notion of Bengali-ness in sub-regional histories. They were not accorded the same place in the samajik scheme as high-caste, professional literati, but loosely absorbed into a wider samajik scheme. The crucial question therefore seems to be—how far, and to what extent, were these jatis of non-Aryan origin ‘Bengali jatis’ in the literati’s samajik scheme? It may be reasonable to conclude that they were loosely absorbed into an amorphous Bengali jati though at a slightly lower level. Acceptance/exclusion of these jatis was determined situationally. For instance, once the Kochs crystallised into Hindu Rajbangshis, they were accorded a place in the Bengali jatiya and samajik scheme. Non-Hindu attitudes of some ‘Hindu’ groups such as the Bhuyans, Bakhuris, Bagals, Majhis and Keois of Sankrayil74 were back eddies in mainstream Hinduisation. So inclusive attitudes to sub-regional non-Aryan and ‘foreign’ jatis varied over time and boundaries were often amorphous and shifting.

Religion: A Site of Synergy The mediation of the social (samajik) and the dynastic (secular) in terms of juxtapositions and linkages between Aryan and non-Aryan operated at a third (ideological) level: that of religion or more specifically ‘religious culture’. Undoubtedly, the emphasis on Aryan-Brahmanism was a recurrent theme in accounts of sub-regional religions. The importance attached to pilgrimages and ritual bath in Brahmanical religion was grafted onto local Bengali legends about Hindu kings, and their observance of such ritual. Ritual bath in the Ganges in Agradeep in 73 74

Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II, p. . Ibid.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



Burdwan was supposed to have the same result as bathing in the Ganges in Varanasi. Nagendranath Basu cited an ancient source, Digbijoyprokash, to strengthen his argument that Agradeep was famous for drawing pilgrims from all parts of India, especially renowned kings such as Vikramaditya.75 The literati glorified the spread of Brahmanical Hinduism and its offshoots such as the Vaishnava religion in various subregions of Bengal. Nagendranath glorified the Bilvesvar temple in Kulai, Burdwan, as a Vaishnava stronghold. Kulai was the birthplace of Basudeb Ghosh Thakur, a famous disciple of Chaitanya.76 However, there were local variations in respect of the degree of spread and influence of AryanHindu Brahmanical faith. While Tarakesvar Math established by Brahmans from the north-west (Kanauj), was the epitome of Brahmanical religion,77 different religious currents mingled in Sankrayil (the samaj in Midnapore referred to above) some of which ran contrary to mainstream Brahmanical Hinduism. Here the worship of Jayachandi was a celebrated event. The officiating priest was called deuri. Jayachandi was the chief village deity of the Lodha, Sabar and Bagdi people, who were traditionally ‘low’ / ‘non-Aryan’ groups in Bengal’s samajik hierarchy.78 The definition of ‘Aryan’ as a culturally inclusive concept was adopted into and grafted to evolutions of sub-regional religions. The literati highlighted the Hinduisation of adivasi faiths and their co-existence with traditional Aryan religious practices, and with offshoot creeds. In Mallabhum, Saivism, Vaishnavism and Sakta religions co-existed alongside adivasi faiths. The latter often flowed into Saiva and Sakta forms of worship and religious ceremony. Writing at a later stage, Benoy Ghosh focused on what he considered the crux of late nineteenth century observations on sub-regional religions. This was the prevalence of offshoot religions (branching off from mainstream Brahmanical Hinduism) and occasional references to non-Aryan local cults prevalent since ancient times. For instance, king Chandrabarma of Bankura who had been defeated by the Gupta emperor, Samudragupta, was a Vaishnava. Gupta influence in Bengal accentuated the worship of Vishnu, Siva and Surya, but earlier forms of worship blended with Vaishnava and Saiva religions. The family deity of the kings of Jhargram was Savitri, a Sakta goddess.79 Currents of more

75 76 77 78 79

Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itihas, pp. –. Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume II, pp. –.



chapter six

populist creeds (deviant forms of mainstream Brahmanical Hinduism) also melded into earlier non-Aryan religious forms, and later local reorientations of Brahmanical Hinduism. What has been termed as the ‘Brahmanisation’ of local, non-Aryan, indigenous religious cults and practices through the culturally hegemonic project of codification of the Bengal puranas actually contained complex currents of interactions, and multilayered and nuanced processes. The blending of the Aryan and non-Aryan cannot be fitted into an analytic mould which sees Brahmanism as the sole ideological framework and foundation for adopting, adapting and contextually metamorphosing local, indigenous, sub-regional cults and religious practices unilaterally from the apex of a hierarchical/pyramidical social structure. The ‘lower’ (non-Aryan) was not only worked upon, and transformed, but was also a transforming agent. It was a creative two-way interactive process which fed into the making of a regional religious identity. In his account of how Brahmanism in early medieval Bengal mediated and appropriated non-Aryan, indigenous cults and traditions through the codification of the puranas, Kunal Chakrabarti transplants the Gramscian idea of cultural hegemony on the local soil of Bengal, saying that there is a similarity in the way in hegemony operates anywhere.80 The argument highlights a dialogical process through which Brahmanism created a public realm where diverse local elements could converge on a common core through the mediation of a supra-local agency.81 The puranic synthesis resulted in the creation of a “regional Brahmanical culture”. I have an unease with this terminology if it is used in the context of the late colonial discourse on sub-regional religious interblending between Aryan and non-Aryan currents. It does not encompass the nuances and multiple currents which went into the making of a complex and variegated religious ethos in Bengal where multiple currents creatively interacted and modified and transformed each other. Rather than taking Brahmanism as the sole, centralising ideological force underpinning the construction of a regional culture, a more nuanced analytic model delving multiple possibilities of ‘Hindu’ and ‘culturally Aryan’ would help explore the complex dynamics of the making of a regional religious culture. A clear cut division between Brahmanism and Hinduism was not possible in Bengal. Hinduism was flexible, and varied 80 Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 81 Ibid., pp. –.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



across temporal and spatial boundaries. Brahmanism was more systematised, consisting of intellectual and coherent statements about a cosmic order which linked different elements in a pattern.82 The element of hierarchy embedded in the latter, and the sense of fixity seem to go against the permeability of borders and flexibilities of the ways in which Hindu (Aryan) and non-Aryan local cults and practices blended in the literati’s discourse. Instead of hierarchical levels and fixities, such blending seems to point to interflowing domains in flux, where hierarchies were situationally adjusted and subtly variable. This line of argument does not deny that the Hindu rhetoric was predominant in the literati’s discourse: but it seeks to qualify that rhetoric by highlighting internal tensions and flexibilities. The amorphous, shifting and incorporative connotations of ‘Hindu’ during the colonial period highlighting interblending of Aryan and non-Aryan in regard to sub-regional religious beliefs and practices may share an ideological lineage with the early medieval ‘Brahmanisation’ of the folk and ‘indigenous’, but it also moved beyond that paradigm. The ways in which this happened are to be related to changing contexts, the colonial impact and most significantly the literati’s agenda of cultural nationhood. Brahmanical ‘hegemonic’ ideology may have been a significant moulding parameter in creating a regional culture in late medieval Bengal, but the connection of the sub-regional religions to broader frames and structures of unity in the late colonial period operated within a subtly different ideological and analytic nexus which deployed samaj and jati as conceptual categories intertraversing the issue of linkages of ‘Aryan’ and ‘nonAryan’. The emphasis on samaj implied that the confluence of Aryan and nonAryan in sub-regional religious contexts was reflected in the realm of the real: an instance of ideology operating in the field of experiential social practice.83 One way in which this happened was through pilgrimages.

82 For details about difficulties of equating Brahmanism and Hinduism, see Ainslee Embree, “Brahmanical Ideology and Regional Identities”, in Ainslee Embree (ed.), Imagining India: Essays on Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) mentioned in Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process, p. . 83 As Terry Eagleton has pointed out, ideologies must be real enough to provide a basis on which people can fashion a coherent identity based on a version of social reality. The question of trueness or falseness of ideology needs to be addressed through the prism of social experience and the objective situation in any society. See Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, ), pp. –, quoted in Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process, pp. –.



chapter six

Certain places of pilgrimage such as Tribeni in Hugli was the meetingground of Buddhist, Jain as well as Brahman devotees.84 It was celebrated for the famous Vishnu temple, but it drew Buddhist and Jain pilgrims too. This reflected the amorphous and assimilative character of Hinduism in specific regions within Bengal. The dynamism inherent in the interblending of religious trajectories endowed local forms of worship and ceremony with distinctive essences. Notions of sub-regional religions fed into an assimilative Bengali-ness, which incorporated, as encrustations, non-Aryan and folk religious elements in an Aryan discourse. Thus, within a Brahmanical narrative, occasional references to animistic religions, rural deities and tree worship by Santhals and Mundas found place. Brahmanisation of the ‘indigenous’ and absorptions and appropriations of the popular into classicised tradition were never complete. Primordialities prevailed in parts of Midnapore, and among the patidars (peasant propreitors) of Purulia, Bankura, and Birbhum.85 Traces of nonAryan religion lingered in the assimilative religion of the Rajbangshis of Jalpaiguri. Their chief god, Gorom Thakur, was a combination of several deities, forming an omnibus village deity. Almost all of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the Rajbangshis were non-Vedic, nonsmriti, and non-Brahman in origin. Bhandani and not Durga was worshipped amidst great festivity. Tista and not Ganga was important in their social and religious life. Offerings were made even to Muslim saints like Satya Pir. Some pujas (ceremonial worship) were performed by Kamrupi and Maithili Brahmans, but more often the officiating priests were nonBrahman Rajbangshis called Adhikaris.86 So, Rajbangshis, while being drawn into the Hindu fold in terms of caste and social uplift (transformation of the Kochs to Hinduised Rajbangshis), continued to retain many non-Brahmanical rituals and practices. Despite this, however, they were conceded Hindu-Bengali status. C.C. Sanyal’s work on the Rajbangshis affirmed that it was “a study of a Hindu social group”. This instance reveals interesting dimensions and meanings of the term ‘Hindu-Bengali’ as understood by the literati in the late nineteenth century. In Bikrampur too, religious forms and practices were eclectic, being a conglomerate of local cults, faiths, and worship of many idols and deities.87

84

Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Vol. III, p. . Ibid., p. . 86 Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –, pp. –. 87 Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta, ), Introduction. 85

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



Especially indicative of Aryan/non-Aryan assimilations was the popularity of loukik or human gods. Notable among them was Dakshin Ray. He was worshipped in ‘high’ elite society by Brahmans. But in most cases the officiating priests were non-Brahman, lower-caste individuals. This loukik stream contained vestiges of age-old, mostly non-Aryan, folk local cults. In many cases it merged with Aryan religious currents. Quoting Gopendra Krishna Basu, Kamal Chaudhuri mentioned that Dakshin Ray was worshipped with Narayani, who was considered his mother. Narayani was the female consort and wife of Narayan, a later indigenous reorientation of Vishnu.88 Like Dakshin Ray, Dharma Thakur was also worshipped by Brahmans as well as non-Brahmans in elite samaj, though he was more popular among Hindus of lower varnas. This eclectic religious mould had other dimensions also. Sometimes, even Muslims worshipped certain loukik gods venerated by Buddhists and Vaishnavas.89 These sub-regional, local instances reveal that Brahmanical culture was not very predominant in certain places in Bengal. Local, loukik customs and practices metamorphosed Vedic deities, ritual and worship. Debi Chandi, worshipped in many parts of Bengal, was not identical to puranic Chandi or Durga, but the emblem of local, loukik faith. These realities suggest multiple layers in what has been termed as “Brahamnisation” of the cult of the goddess (originally non-Brahmanical and indigenous), embellished and energised through sakti, a process central to the creation of a regional culture by a codification of the puranas during the early medieval period.90 In the melee of local religions, incorporating the worship of Aryan-Vedic gods and goddesses, and non-Aryan local cults, two distinct religious and samajik cultures could be clearly discerned. First was the Bhatpara culture, which was prevalent in north Bengal, especially in Baidik Brahman samaj. Its roots had not reached the level of various local, ‘lower’ samajs. Second was the culture symbolised by Saktisadhana (Sakta worship or worship of female divinities and deities), dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, prevalent in lower Bengal, especially in the Sundarban area.91 Fusion of Aryan and non-Aryan elements was noticeable in the literati’s accounts of sub-regional religious festivals too. They emphasised the 88 Gopendra Krishna Basu, “Banglar Loukik Deb Debi”, Pashimbanger Loksanskriti, p. , mentioned by Kamal Chaudhuri, Dakshin Chabbish Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta: Model Publishers, ), p. . 89 Ibid., pp. –. 90 Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process, pp. –, –. 91 Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume III, p. .



chapter six

Aryan beginnings of the Indradhvaj festival. When the Aryans defeated the non-Aryans, this festival was their form of jubilation. The Aryan basis of Indradhvaj was fused to the non-Aryan tree worship in forest and hill tracts where the non-Aryans took shelter. The literati connected puranic references to these non-Aryan religious practices. This emphasis and the assertion that the Aryans transformed the non-Aryan tree festival into the Aryan Indradhvaj showed that the Aryan note was predominant in the literati’s views about local Bengali festivals. As an undercurrent, however, antecedents and parallels of Indradhvaj were sought in Santhal festivals such as Sohoroy (agricultural fulfilment or harvest festival). The latter was prevalent in a modified form among the common people of Bengal who called it Poushali or Poushparbon.92 This festival was prevalent in Manbhum, among the kings of Narajol, in Bankura and Midnapore as well as outside Bengal. Indradhvaj represented an Aryanisation of the non-Aryan in a mythological setting depicting the deb/asura combat and Aryan victory. Relics of ‘non-Aryan’ existed alongside religious festivals that were predominantly Aryan though these non-Aryan local cults and practices were not as pervasive and numerous as Aryan practices (which included the traditionally Aryan, as well as local non-Aryan and folk practices that were sufficiently Aryanised to be absorbed into ‘culturally Aryan’). The Rajbangshi Bisua or Bisuba spring-hunt festival was a relic of preagricultural, possibly non-Vedic social life.93 An interesting instance of the induction of non-Aryan folk currents into a predominantly Aryan stream was offered by local religious festivals in some parts of western Bengal. These revealed interesting juxtapositions and an overlap of the religious ritual of northern and western India with local Bengali subregional traditions. Western-Indian religious forms interacted with local variations and peculiarities to produce a complex and intricate interweaving of different religious strands. Drawing upon late nineteenth century samajik traditions, Benoy Ghosh explained how western-Indian (Aryan) religious practice mingled with local forms. Ramchandra, an incarnation of Vishnu, was generally not widely worshipped in Bengal. But in north-western India, such worship was very popular. The festival of Ramchandra worship in Ramrajatola, in Howrah, in western Bengal, started by Ajodhyaram Chaudhuri, was a north-Indian implant on local 92 93

p. .

Ibid., pp. –. Ranajit Dasgupta, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, –,

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



soil. Ajodhyaram was not a Bengali name; moreover, the title of “Chaudhuri” was an upadhi which could be acquired by all Indians, especially by zamindars. It seems that Ajodhyaram was not a Bengali, but must have come to Bengal from north India and started the worship of Ramchandra. This festival, however, amalgamated with existing local religious ritual and festivals. In fact, local tradition acquired precedence. During the worship of Ramchandra, the idols of Sarasvati and Durga, very popular in this region, were placed above the idols of Ramchandra and Lakshman.94 Supplementing this mould of integration via worship (temples and cults) and celebration of festivals, were local melas seen as emblematic of the amalgam of Aryan and non-Aryan. These melas integrated non-Aryan and folk elements and Islamic cults into a multistranded Hindu-Aryan-Bengali religious and social fabric. Drawing on late colonial strands of samajik histories of specific sub-regions in Bengal, Kamal Chaudhuri believed that the Rasjatrar Mela in Baruipur, the Goshthojatra and the Dhanvantari Kalir Barshik Utsab in Joynagar Mojilpur, the Shah Pirer Mela in Tarakpur, the Chandimela in Borisha, and the Charak in Sohora acted as foci of religious-cultural assimilations.95 Symbolic of local heritage, these melas acted as a meeting-ground of many castes, classes and social groups. As mentioned in Chapter III, the Uttarayan Mela held in Krishnapur, Hugli, and the Shiboratrite Jater Mela (an assembly held on the night of Shib worship, attended by people of many castes and classes) in Mahanad were also centres of cultural and social confluence.96

The Explanatory Paradigm: Relating ‘Essences’/Fragments to Pan-Regional Samajik Unity The literati explained the blending of Aryan and non-Aryan religious streams with reference to samajik upheaval in fourteenth century Bengal. Writers such as Satishchandra Raychaudhuri gave a graphic description of how Muslim invasions and the splintering of existing samajs loosened the rigidity of a Brahman centred samaj in fourteenth century Bengal.97

94

Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Volume III, pp. –. Kamal Chaudhuri, Dakshin Chabbish Parganar Itibritta, p. . 96 Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj, pp. –. 97 Satishchandra Raychaudhuri’s view mentioned in Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ), discussed in Chapter III. 95



chapter six

Echoing such accounts, later social historians such as Atulchandra Roy traced the roots of this samajik turmoil to the Muslim invasion of Bengal. This created a stir in Hindu society, leading to the emergence of many local cults, faiths and samajik groups. Earlier loukik and folk cults were given a new form to counter the wave of ‘alien’ culture. Each of these cults and religious tenets grew in a specific way, within definite/specific cultural and samajik frameworks conditioned by local social, familial, dynastic, and religious characteristics and backgrounds. In this way certain obscure religious cults developed in Bengal and each of these had a significant impact on the samajik and cultural life of Bengal.98 These factors account for significant differences and eclecticism in sub-regional cultural characteristics in Bengal. There were variations in customs and manners, local festivals and fairs, forms of dialect (variations of Bengali), lifestyles and religious belief. Some local customs did not fit the mould of Aryan-Vedic samajik life, set out in the Vedas and puranas, and adhered to by most of the highcaste Bengali Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas. For instance, among the Rajbangshis of Jalpaiguri, the impact of shastriya Hindu practices and ritual was limited, especially in respect of their marriage customs. Among Rajbangshis there existed a loose form of widow remarriage similar to that prevailing among ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. Moreover, customs and practices varied across social and regional cross-sections. The same social/caste group could have very different cultural characteristics and codes of conduct, if they stayed in different regions, or in urban or rural areas.99 Running through all these variations, was the Aryan/ nonAryan cultural interconnection, with the non-Aryan accommodated at an inferior level. But it is clear that there was an indigenous adaptation of Aryan and non-Aryan religious tenets, cults, forms of worship, and ceremony to suit the local religious and social temper, and the exigencies of local familial and dynastic histories. Samajik necessities often led to local reorientations and redefinitions of deities, ritual, and methods of worship found in Aryan and non-Aryan religious streams. These linkages loosened the rigidity of a samaj centred narrowly on Brahmans

98 See Shashibhushan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, mentioned by Atulchandra Ray, “Madhyajuger Banglar Samajik, Samskritik Itihas Rachanar Samasya”, in Gautam Chattopadhyay (ed.), Itihas Anusandhane (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, ), pp. – . 99 Atulchandra Ray, “Madhyajuger Banglar Samajik, Sanskritik Itihas Rachanar Samasya” in Gautam Chattopadhyay (ed.), Itihas Anusandhane, pp. –.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



and high castes, and imbued the concept with a more open-ended and incorporative nature. The imagination of a jati implied a grafting of the sub-regional and the regional, which were seen as complementary. While integrating micro studies to the broader stream of samajik history in Bengal, the literati mediated the notion of Bengali samajik unity through a complex discourse on sub-regional fragments. The significance of sub-regional diversities occupied a crucial place in their discourse on identity because they served as a means of differentiating, as well as integrating. Sub-regional essences were discrete elements with their own particular characteristics (intra-regional variations). They endowed specific sub-regions in Bengal with unique samajik, cultural and historical characteristics. At the same time, these fragments were supposed to be emblematic of a pan-regional samajik unity. The literati’s studies of sub-regional histories were not segregated micro-level studies de-contextualised from regional perspectives. Locality, village, dynastic streams, and societies were contextualised and situated within frames of reference which moved beyond the immediate sub-regional context. They formed part of a discourse on a continuous and interrelated Bengal, which sought to connect local historical streams in a meaningful historical process of pan-regional identity formation. Samaj as a methodological and conceptual category was applied in sub-regional as well as pan-regional contexts. The literati applied the rashtra/samaj (polity/social collectivity) dichotomy and interconnection model to both sub-regional and regional histories. I have shown in Chapter III how samaj became a preoccupation, especially from the mid nineteenth century, when the Bengali literati sought to counter colonial allegations that the Bengalis had no history by focusing on samajik rather than political history. Counterpoised to a political history ruptured by lack of empirical sources, the history of samaj had a timeless appeal. Samajik histories focusing on the whole of Bengal highlighted the rashtra/samaj dichotomy. This dichotomy was applied to sub-regional histories as well. The centrality of samaj even in sub-regional histories explains the emphasis on the impact of dharma on people’s lives, and on specific caste and samajik histories relating to a particular pargana in Bengal. At the same time, at both regional and the sub-regional levels, samaj and rashtra were connected. These interactive arenas diluted any hard disjunction between kingly and samajik duties. During the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar, village samitis in Mymensingh were responsible for settling social disputes. They also wielded political power.



chapter six

The pargana Chaudhuris (tax collectors and zamindars) settled conflicts among the subjects (praja) and talukdars, and punished thieves and robbers. Kedarnath Majumdar in Mymensingher Itihas underlined this interconnection of the rashtriya and samajik realms at the sub-regional level.100 The literati attempted to imaginatively realise a utopic pan-Bengali samajik unity by conceiving sub-regional differentiations as unique dimensions of a composite Bengali identity. Sub-regional histories relating to a specific caste located in a particular region of Bengal, and of sub-regional dynasties and cultures, were considered emblematic of a wider unity. Some sub-regional histories clearly mentioned at the outset that they were not merely histories of a single locality or pargana. Jogendranath Gupta asserted that Bikrampurer Itihas () was not just the history of Bikrampur, but also the history of Bengal. “From the era of the Sena kings a distinctive historical glory illuminated Bikrampur as well as the rest of Bengal.”101 Tamluker Itihas claimed to represent a search for the lost jatiya glory of Bengal, and provide inspiration for a future ‘better’ Bengali samaj. Its author, Sebananda Bharati claimed, If like the Barendra Research Samiti, a Tamralipta Anusandhan Samiti is formed, it will be the means of articulating the glories of Bengali history . . . The history of Tamralipta in south Bengal is an essential part of the history of Bengal.102

Some monthly papers and periodicals were published specifically with the purpose of interconnecting the parganas with the region, through historical and cultural links between a specific locality and the wider stream of Bengali samajik history. Nadia Darpan, a monthly paper, started in , published from Krishnanagar, and edited by Panchanan Bandyopadhyay, mentioned in unambiguous terms: Almost from every town and every renowned ancient village is published a weekly or monthly paper. This trend is not witnessed in Krishnanagar, the seat of ancient learning, culture and civilisation . . . Nadia Darpan is being published to fill this void. Nadia is an ancient historical site. Its history must be known to apprehend the history of Bengal. The history of Nadia is an inseparable part of the history of Bengal.103 100

Kedarnath Majumdar, Mymensingher Itihas, p. . See Jogendranath Gupta, Bikrampurer Itihas, Introduction. 102 Sebananda Bharati, Tamluker Itihas: Tamralipta Rajya Ba Dakshin Banglar Aitihasik Chitra, Introduction and p. . 103 Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volume II (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ), p. . 101

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



The literati also believed that sub-regional caste samajs acted as nuclei for forging a wider regional unity. As mentioned in Chapter III, Danujmardan Deb’s Baklanagar Samaj (fourteenth century) symbolised a panregional Bengali-Hindu samajik glory in entire Bengal. Its glory was untarnished by Muslim invasions. It welded discrete elements not only in Bakla but in other parts of Bengal as well. Idealising the Baklanagar Samaj in a tract on the Bengali samaj as a whole, Bangiya Samaj (), Satishchandra Raychaudhuri’s evaluation reflected the implicit connection between the sub-regional and the regional.104 The literati showed how samajik chiefs of a specific sub-regional samaj could have close connections with other sub-regional samajs located elsewhere. Often branch samajs located in other areas integrated their work with the main samaj. A wide-ranging network of samajik interconnections ideologically bound regions, villages and castes. Samajik chiefs, influential in a specific area, sometimes toured other regions and popularised their samaj’s practices, norms and methods of working. For instance, Ramchandra Bakla, king of Chandradvip, and the samajik chief of Chandradvip Samaj, was closely connected with Jessore.105 Some sub-regional samajs, which had initially been the strongholds of a specific caste, later proliferated into many branches, and came to include diverse castes as their members.106 Lalmohan Vidyanidhi wrote that the Saptagram Samaj included the Baidyas of Nadia,  Parganas and Hugli. Similarly the Baidyas of Manbhum were integrated into the Senbhumi Samaj.107 He referred to the Kayasthakulapradeep which showed how different Kayastha samajs were internally connected. The twenty-two main Dakshin Rarhi Kayastha samajs created by Purandar Basu Khan, the founder of ekjais, integrated other samajs of lesser importance, located at lower rungs of samajik hierarchy.108 The Barendra Kayasthas were similarly brought together under the ideological rubric of Daser Samaj, though they belonged to different sub-regions such as Bakagram, Boudhpur, and Bogura.109 This ideological connection depicted against a historic background was given a programmatic thrust. The literati highlighted the importance 104 See Satishchandra Raychaudhuri, Bangiya Samaj, pp. –, mentioned in detail in Chapter III. 105 See Nikhilnath Ray, Itikatha (Calcutta, undated), p. . 106 See Chapter III for details. 107 See Lalmohan Vidyanidhi, Sambandhanirnoy, pp. –. 108 Ibid., pp. –. 109 Ibid., p. .



chapter six

of pradeshik (local) samitis (associations formed to solve sub-regional problems) founded every year, to solve local problems by means unique to the area concerned. Pradeshik samitis situated local problems within the context of local tradition and its relation with the contemporary local predicament. What is crucial is the connection forged by the literati between discrete and seemingly unrelated local problems discussed by the samitis, and a wider issue: integrating these problems to the jatiya present and future of entire Bengal.110 Local issues were sought to be related to the wider context of achieving Bengali regional unity. The literati also highlighted the fact that in these samitis and conferences, most sections of the people of the district tried to render each other unflinching support and help. In Rajshahi, for instance, people of all ages, the educated and the uneducated, participated in a common programme of jatiya uplift. According to Bhabanigobinda Chaudhuri, this participation revealed their deep enthusiasm, their commitment to their specific locality, and to Bengal, and was an index of the inherent jatiya strength in their everyday lifestyle, beliefs and social norms.111 The participation of different sections of people cut across social layers and acted as a bond uniting diverse elements within the district, as well as simultaneously connecting them to a wider stream of samajik unity in Bengal. The interconnection between sub-regional fragments and lodging them in an ideological nexus between local and pan-regional contexts were implicated in the Bengali quest for a ‘new’ indigenous history woven around the paradigm of samaj. The quest for sub-regional histories from the second half of the nineteenth century was a part of the literati’s agenda for a ‘new’ history set out in Aitihasik Chitra112 and echoed in introductions of various tracts dealing with the history of specific sub-regions in Bengal. General histories of Bengal therefore had to be supplemented by micro-studies of specific sub-regional histories. Kalinath Chaudhuri expressed the concern for histories of the latter kind: At present there are many general histories of Bengal and of India, but not of specific regions in Bengal, which are famous for their antiquity and familial glory. What is lacking is detailed sequential history of the families

110 Bhabanigobinda Chaudhuri, “Bangiya Pradesik Samiti: Rajshahi”, Utsaha (Ashar, ), pp. –. 111 Ibid., pp. –. 112 One of the aims of the tri-monthly periodical Aitihasik Chitra () was the study of familial histories of royal families of Bengal. For details see Chapter II.

sub-regional ‘essences’ and the regional self



of kings. Rajshahi is an ancient and culturally renowned site. Its samaj also is famous because it is the stronghold of Barendra Brahamns.113

As this chapter has shown, sub-regional histories were related to the central purpose of imagining a jati. They were crucial, not only for knowing the manifold diversities of intra-regional culture and history, but also for connecting these micro-studies to the idea of samajik unity encompassing Bengal. Perhaps the best example of this internal connection between the sub-regional and regional streams of history is to be found in the Aitihasik Chitra, a periodical concerned with the history of Bengal as a whole. This periodical underlined the importance of sub-regional histories and included various articles about histories of specific regions of Bengal such as Noldanga and Bogura.114 It emblematised a fairly common trend: many well-known intellectuals edited periodicals specifically concerned with sub-regional histories in addition to writing general histories of Bengal. Through such dual roles, and via specific intertextualities, the sub-regional and the regional were linked in a discourse which applied the same methodology and conceptual category (samaj) to both contexts, in a bid to explaining continuities and unities. Central themes (such as Aryan cultural identity and its supposed connection with Bengali-ness) embedded in the ‘main’ narrative of pan-Bengali samajik unity and sociological and cultural dichotomies were present in sub-regional histories too. These explain the inner dynamics of a complex discourse on identity which could then envisage wider bases of unity for conceptualising nationhood, such as interconnections between the Bengali samaj and pan-Indian unity.

113

See Kalinath Chaudhuri, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas, p. . See Asvinikumar Sen, “Noldangar Rajbangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, Volume IV, Number ; and Haragopal Das Kundu, “Bogura Jelar Aitihasik Upakaran”, Aitihasik Chitra, Part  (Phalgun, ). 114

chapter seven FROM REGION TO NATION: THE IDEA OF INDIA

The transition from sub-region to region occurred through intersections between sub-regional samajs on the one hand, and the notion of a panregional Bengali samaj on the other. Introspections about unity did not, however, end here. The idea of knowing the whole through the parts was projected at a higher plane. The literati applied the notion of samajik unity, not only in the context of Bengal, but also in the wider perspective of conceptualising a pan-Indian unity. The idea of a panBengali, and indeed, a pan-Indian samajik unity was contested because it developed within the interstices of segmented/fragmented identities. But it was possible to conceptualise an overarching unity, which coexisted alongside, and in contention with bonds of caste, micro-region, class and ethnic category. How did the literati mediate such fractured identities in wider conceptualisations of the idea of India glimpsed and reified through the prism of samaj? How was samaj a metaphor and means of envisaging India as a cultural-historical entity as well as a geographical and territorialised unit? This chapter locates late nineteenth century applications of the idea of samaj to the notion of a pan-Indian unity within a historical context. It connects late colonial India and Bengal within an explanatory grid of antecedents of samajik unities forged by medieval samajs and their interactions with colonial influences. The unfolding of such unities was contextualised vis-à-vis the region (Bengal) and then linked to an evolving notion of the Indian nation. An imaginative conceptualisation of samaj as embodying an enduring unity cutting across the boundaries of the region can be seen as providing the basis for a transition to notions of Indian nationhood. Samaj, region, and nation became logically interlinked in the mind of the Bengali literati. The overarching unity was reflected in juxtapositions of the idea of the Bengali samaj to that of an Indian (Bharatbarshiya) samaj through emphases on the incorporative nature of samaj rooted in dharma and atmiyata, and cultural Aryan-ness, which created a space for inclusions. This explains why, in many late colonial Bengali tracts on history and samaj, the idea of a Bengali samaj and that of a Bharatbarshiya or Indian samaj were not clearly differentiated. This, of course, was not a universal



chapter seven

feature common to all writings about samaj and jatiya unity during the period under review. But eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore as well as less well-known authors such as Nandamohan Chattopadhyay did connect and identify Bengali and Indian samajs in a way which blurred distinctive boundaries between the two.1 The concept of an Indian samaj was reworked alongside deep queries about the origins of the Bengali jati, about internal links, and about the characteristics of the Bengali samaj. There was overlap and interpenetration between regional and pan-Indian samajs, reflecting the interplay and intersection of samaj and desh (in the sense of nation). Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s “Hindu samaj” and Rabindranath Tagore’s “swadeshi samaj” ideologically connected desh as region to desh as nation. The elements of familial feeling and social linkages embedded in samaj provided the foundation for conceptualising India or Bharatbarsha as swadesh. The two samajs—Bengali and Bharatbarshiya—were linked through the familial and swadeshi aspects of samaj. This provided the foundation for the interconnection of Bengal and India, and the equation of swadesh with Bharatbarsha. This equation imagined and conceptualised an India variously termed as “swadesh”, “matribhoomi” (motherland), “janmabhoomi” (land of birth), and Bharatbarsha. The etching of the conceptual outlines of India/Hindustan/Bharatbarsha occurred within these parameters. Though the idea of a historicgeographic entity called India crystallised only towards the end of the nineteenth century, the late s witnessed its glimmerings.2 The idea of India moved through many connotative frames—mythic, historicgeographic, territorial and political (the last crystallising through the national movement of late nineteenth and the twentieth century). This chapter would show how the deployment of samaj to approximate the nation implied that India was imagined through history. This conceptualisation, occurring over a longue duree, acquired new resonances during the period under consideration as earlier ideas now came to be linked to a historically-indexed discourse on cultural nationhood underpinned by 1 See Rabindranath Tagore, Swadeshi Samaj () printed in Sankalan (Calcutta, ), pp. –; and Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj (Calcutta, ), p. . 2 For details about how the idea of desh as India burgeoned and acquired varied resonances during the late s and the following years, especially during the aftermath of the Mutiny-Revolt of , see Swarupa Gupta, “ and Ideas about Nationhood in Bengal: Nuances and Themes”, in : Essays from Economic and Political Weekly (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, ), pp. –.

from region to nation: the idea of india



an intersection between jati and samaj. This idea of India was based on a connection between the land and the people. The issue of belongingness of the people or the jati brings to the fore a significant question: Whose India was being talked about or imagined? The basic issue of Indian-ness was shot through with the fragmentations of caste, social strata, community and ethnic category. Samaj, as shown in the previous chapters, mediated such fragmentations in specific ways at regional and intra-regional levels, as well as in regard to contiguous regions and people. How were these fragementations dealt with at the all-India level? The discourse on nation, as said, had inherent complexities and multiple strands.3 There was a tension in the Bengali rhetoric equating ‘Aryan’ and ‘Hindu’, and as a result, the mental transition from a Bengali samaj to an Indian nation was internally contested and fragmented. Articulated in a cultural-nationalist climate by mainly high-caste, western educated, professional individuals, this discourse naturally had Hindu overtones. But the equation of ‘Aryan’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Bengali’, and ‘Indian’ underwent shifts in implications and resonances, making the discourse multidirectional, having many possibilities and trajectories.

Samajik Unity and Nationhood: Historical Antecedents and Colonial Civil Society I have shown in Chapter II that the recreation of jati in late nineteenth century Bengal was closely bound up with the quest for a ‘new’ history.4 The significance of this in the context of nationhood is that the literati became simultaneously preoccupied with the history of the Bengali jati, as well as with that of India as a whole. The Aitihasik Chitra, which began circulating from , emphasised that Indian history was a key theme in most Bengali periodicals:

3 According to Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta Bengali intellectuals in the late nineteenth century redefined identity in a hegemonic discourse that upheld a homogenised Hindu identity as Indian identity. See Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (unpublished thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, ), pp. , . 4 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Itihas”; “Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Kayekti Katha”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad: ), pp. – . Akshoykumar Moitreya and Rabindranath Tagore also expressed their ideas about a ‘new’ history. These viewpoints found an organised expression in Aitihasik Chitra (), as has been mentioned in Chapter II.



chapter seven In all periodicals articles on history predominated. It is specially noteworthy that the history of India gained primacy in the first periodical in the Bengali language, Digdarshan.5

In fact, the Aitihasik Chitra clearly mentioned that it was not the mouthpiece of any individual, family or sampraday (sub-caste, sect). It was devoted to an investigation of Indian history in general, and the history of Bengal in a more specific sense.6 The preoccupation with the history of India demonstrated that the Bengali search for a new jatiya and samajik identity was closely associated with wider notions of unity. The discourse on jati was incomplete unless it was located within the wider stream of Indian history. What it meant to be a ‘Bengali’ was therefore intimately bound up with what it meant to be an ‘Indian’. A quest for answers to these questions, and the inward gaze of the literati towards their own internal samaj, brought to the fore the problem of linking the regional samaj and the national samaj. The analytic thrust implicit in such issues of linkages was that notions of unity embedded in the very idea of samaj provided the bridge which could imaginatively connect the region and the nation; that is, it connected discrete elements in Bengal as well as in India. Striving to unravel the intricacies and complexities of such interconnections, the literati highlighted the bonds that the idea of samaj implied. Samaj in the narrow sense implied an individual’s immediate circle of blood relatives and the familial unit or the kula, signifying ancestry.7 But as elucidated in Chapter III, it formed the nucleus of a network of connected linkages between families, castes, sub-castes, localities and microregions. Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay pointed out that samaj was the focus for the development of a series of social and familial linkages. The feeling of oneness (jatiya bhab) developed in definite stages—() love for oneself () love for one’s family () love for friends and relatives () affection and fellow-feeling for people living in the same village () love for people of the same province. The five steps logically led to love for swajati (own jati) and for swadesh (own country).8 One’s familial and social situation gave rise to natural feelings of affection and concern for one’s father, mother, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and hence swadeshis (people of

5 Sunilkumar Chattopadhyay, “Aitihasik Chitra: Banglabhashay Itihas Bishoyok Prothom Shamoyik Patrika”, Koushiki (Calcutta, ), p. . 6 Ibid., p. . 7 Mentioned in Chapter III. 8 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Samajik Prabandha in Pramathanath Bisi (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



the same country). Thus in a narrow sense, samaj had a familial connotation. But this was extended, first to wider family including distant relatives and then to swadesh (country). So, samaj could be analysed from two angles and situations—familial and swadeshi. The difference and the interconnection of the familial and the swadeshi also implied two levels of civilisation—swakiya (related to the individual and his immediate circle of blood relatives) and samajik (related to the samaj).9 Moreover, samaj was the repository of proper codes of conduct. According to Bhudeb, it could act as a welding force because of its inherent capacity to generate affection, devotion and respect towards elders, and a sense of pride. He glorified the antiquity, bonds of affection and oneness, purity of ideals and inherent strength of the Hindu samaj.10 Bhudeb’s ideas reveal that the naturalness of patriotism was being stressed, even while it was carefully constructed.11 The emphasis on the swadeshi aspect of samaj (love for the country) developing through a process of radiating ties of affection by Bhudeb (a conservative and traditional Brahman intellectual), as well as by the Aitihasik Chitra (a professedly liberal and un-biased journal imbued with Brahmo ideals) shows a confluence of opinion among subtly variant ideological groups. Familial ties and samajik connections radiating from the patriarchal joint-family structure in Bengal, as well as traditional social links in villages, rooted in local customs, and ideas of dharma emphasised by Bhudeb, were not obviously static or equal in their impact over time. Rajat Kanta Ray has argued that these interconnections were waning towards the end of the nineteenth century when individualistic sentiments rivalled extended family ties. This came in the wake of the emergence of a civil society in Bengal after , characterised by the rule of law, print culture, and voluntary associations between people irrespective of their birth into specific castes and communities.12 These ties fostered a “new circle of society”, which was a breakaway from the social space of the extended family. To Ray, these changes were especially apparent with

9

Srikrishna Das, Sabhyatar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Samajik Prakriti”, in Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. . 11 I have related precolonial patriotism to late nineteenth century manifestations in Chapter II. 12 Rajat Kanta Ray has mentioned the emergence of a civil society in Bengal after . See Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality and Literature in the Indian Awakening (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . For the limitations of the ‘new’ civil society in Bengal see the Introduction to the thesis. 10



chapter seven

the coming of the new age at the beginning of the twentieth century.13 However, interactions between traditional loyalties emanating from the earlier predominance of familial ties definitely influenced the literati even in the late nineteenth century, alongside the individualistic sentiments of the “new circle of society”. The interaction of the two modes produced a complex, overlapping pattern of loyalties, in which actualities of earlier social and familial connections intertwined with later attitudes. In fact, it was the potential, and to some extent, the felt challenge of individualism, that inspired new efforts to define the community and the samaj. Shibanath Shastri recorded in his autobiography that, in the first half of the nineteenth century, familial moorings and extended family ties were extremely strong. In his maternal grandfather’s house, the family consisted of his maternal grandmother, her mother, two maternal aunts, and two or three widows.14 Later when he went to Calcutta he stayed in the house of his maternal uncle. In this house also lived several bhadralok of his maternal uncle’s village, and some distantly related, or unrelated young men from his native village. Shibnath’s maternal uncle was their guardian.15 This familial set-up implied links of atmiyata (familial feeling), which sometimes even encompassed people of ‘lower orders’. Shibanth Shastri arrived in his maternal grandfather’s house one day with a man of a “hina jati” (low caste). His grandmother wished to offer her own share of food to this guest.16 His grandfather gave shelter to a woman called Chinta in , and she stayed on in their family as a dasi (servant). But Shastri records: The children of my eldest paternal aunt were reared by Chinta, . . . she ran the household . . . none of us regarded her as a dasi, we called her Chinta didi [elder sister].17

These traditions of extended family ties persisted in varying degrees in the late nineteenth century. Implicated in a conscious re-articulation of jati, such ties were extended to mean fellow feeling among individuals. 13 Shibnath Shastri, “Naba Juga” or New Age, part of Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta, ), in Baridbaran Ghosh (ed.), Shibnath Rachanasamgraha, Volume II (Calcutta, ), Preface and p. , mentioned in Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History, p. . Rabindranath Tagore also referred to the coming of a new age at the end of his life, in Kalantar (), Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta, ), p. , mentioned in Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History, p. . 14 Shibnath Shastri, Atmacharit, nd edition (Calcutta, ), p. . 15 Ibid., p. . 16 Ibid., p. . 17 Ibid., p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



As mentioned earlier, these feelings did not remain confined to the ‘private’ familial social space, but permeated an outer sphere, where they were juxtaposed to variations of caste and community. The public domain regarded by Ray as a “new circle of society”18 could not be totally immune to the projection of familial values. The overall social framework and traditional loyalties exerted pulls and impulses, undermining an assumption of complete segregation. Atmiyata was thus projected at the higher plane of conceiving unity among unrelated individuals—indeed the notion of familial affection lay at its heart.19 Atmiyata, analysed in familial, and in non-familial samajik contexts, was related to enquiries about the roots of samajik interconnections in Bengal, which had been present in Bengal since the fourteenth century in social units such as the Baklanagar samaj, and developed in the sixteenth century, in the Jessore Samaj created by Basanta Ray. Caste and regional unities forged by these earlier samajs provided the historical background and the sociological basis for the late nineteenth century reorientations of samajik unity both within and beyond regional frames. In the late nineteenth century, when a ‘new’ history became enmeshed with the cultural-nationalist overtones of jati, it was necessary to highlight differences between indigenous and European societies. Eminent writers such as Rabindranath Tagore viewed samaj as central, and were disillusioned with political history. In his view histories of Bengal in textbooks popularised by the raj were nothing but an unhappy dream, devoid of any living link between the historian and history. This attitude reflects a shift from a history of polities to a history of culture and attachment, and explains his other statement that history cannot have the same meaning in all countries.20 It did not, however, mean that polity and society were rigidly sealed off from each other. Akshoykumar Moitreya idealised a bygone Bengal ruled by the Muslim nawabs, when Hindu zamindars and chieftains reigned in their respective realms. They simultaneously wielded political power and regulated society. They mediated local disputes, and settled social conflict by arbitration,21 very much in the style of 18 For Rabindranath Tagore’s views on the specific distinctions between ‘public’ and the family, expressed in Shoka Sabha (), see Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta, ), p. . In this context, see Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History, p. . 19 For details about how atmiyata was projected into an outer, ‘public’ sphere, see Chapter III. 20 Mentioned in Chapter II. 21 Akshoykumar Moitreya, “Sekaler Sukhdukhha”, a part of the tract Sirajuddaula,



chapter seven

village headmen who acted as social guardians and moral regulators. The link between samaj and polity was personified in the local zamindar, who was a tributary of the nawab (political role), as well as a samajik chief. This seems to fit the analytic grid of Nicholas Dirks, premised on the interdependence of society and politics in India.22 Terrains of the samajik and the political interpenetrated; the literati’s representation of a samaj indifferent to political changes co-existed with a concern about the origins of Bengal, its political limits, and the location of Gour as a kingdom.23 Such antecedents of interactions between domains of society and polity provided an ideological background to how samaj mediated between and intertraversed ‘inner’/socio-cultural and ‘outer’/political arenas where associational ties of a colonial civil society held sway. If nationhood was to be seen as something related to, but more than a political movement operating in an ‘outer’ space where, moulded by the colonial discourse of power, resistance was fleeting, fragmented and ‘derivative’, the samajik bonds were to be underscored and contextualised in terms of their flow into ‘outer’ arenas and their simultaneities with political processes. Samaj was prioritised within the twin contexts of its interrelation with polity, and its dharmik basis. The primacy of dharma (righteous way of life) as the quintessence of samaj was emphasised not only in the context of Bengal, but more significantly, in the context of India as well. This common feature of the regional and Indian samaj connected the fragment to the whole. Vivekananda in Prachya O Paschatya asserted that the jatiya (here meaning national) life of India had to be built on the foundation of dharma alone.24 Dharma also accounted for the unique capacity of samaj to cope with political change, upheaval, foreign onslaught and internal crisis. The alien was not excluded, but absorbed and accommodated, albeit often at a lower level. This idea of inclusion present even in ancient times in the form of “traditional xenology”25 has been variously modified

reprinted in Intermediate Bengali Selections (Calcutta, ), p. . The interconnection between rashtra and samaj has been discussed in the Introduction and formed one of the ideological bases of conceptualising samaj. 22 Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ), p. . 23 Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha (–, reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. –. 24 Vivekananda, Prachya O Paschatya (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 25 Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Idea of the Hindu Race in the Writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the s and s: A Concept Between Two Cultures”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



in accordance with historical and political exigencies. More familiarly, it has been metamorphosed to mean a hegemonic ‘Hindu’ appropriation and absorption of the alien by silencing or eroding its particularism, and oppositionally denigrating those elements (most significantly the Muslim) defying such inclusion. The deployment of dharma as an ideal and means of inclusion emanating from the concept of samaj applied in regard to dealing with the issue of Indian unity cannot be said to fit this mould of a hegemonic and chauvinistic metanarrative which now threatens Indian secularism. Rather, it was a nuanced and creative reconfiguration of unity based on co-existence of complex and separate elements and groups which despite being interrelated at a specific level, were not homogenised or shorn of their distinctness. The late colonial discourse on nationhood underscored through samajik connection, unique bonds among different people of India based on a common value system, social norms and patterns of conduct. As Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay wrote: The people of India are not parochial or narrow-minded, they have a unique trait not found among people of other countries. Despite endless differences among people of different provinces in India, they have an amazing sense of generosity, hospitality and a capacity to accept and adjust. More than any other race of any other part of the world, they can make the other a part of their self through a unique bond of relation . . . People of various parts of India can travel to distant provinces without taking any money with them, because they will always receive help and hospitality.26

This view underlay a particular vision of making the other a part of the self. The idea was present in a similar form in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Recognising India as a living reality, he too a-historicised it by ruling out the possibility of change. This was a move to meet nineteenth century challenges of disunity within and outside Bengal, when various identities hardened. In their attempt to negotiate these diverse identities, the literati prioritised their belief in the samaj’s capacity to accommodate the dissimilar. The literati around this time were articulating an identity rooted in the interplay between samajik unity and an overarching idea of harmony. Difference was admitted and accepted, and assigned a specific place. It was then accommodated within a wider scheme where orbits of the self and the other converged to create an overarching synergy and harmony which Tagore called samanjashya.27 26 27

p. .

Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Jatiya Bhab: Ihar Upadan”, Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. . Rabindranath Tagore, Bharatbarsher Itihas, printed in Sankalan (Calcutta, ),



chapter seven

Samanjashya provided the conceptual basis for the gradual unfolding of the idea of the nation. The desire to achieve it at the familial or village level implied oneness with swadesh (own province, region or country). As Rabindranath Tagore admitted, notions of unity emerging from the interaction of the earlier tradition of samajik unity and samanjashya could not perhaps be called “national unity”, because the exact counterpart of the word “nation” was absent in the Bengali language, and had been defined by European parameters.28 But these notions provided a way of rethinking oneness by arguing that samanjashya conceptualised an overarching unity within a spectrum of differences. According to this argument, a regional or provincial samaj could also extend its limits to include others. This explained why intellectuals such as Bhudeb and Rabindranath, when writing about the Bengali jati and its history, often emphasised the unique features of Bharatbarshiya or Indian samaj as a whole rather than narrowly focusing on the Bengali samaj. The Bengali samaj and other sub-regional local samajs were seen as a microcosm of a wider samajik unity. The imaginative interconnection of the region and the nation through samaj, however, needed to be problematised within temporal frames. Undoubtedly, samaj had been a focus of unity in Bengal for centuries, but this unity now had to be redefined in the historical and social context of late colonial Bengal and India. In many ways therefore, the literati sought to connect what samaj had been with what samaj was, and what samaj could be. In Nabagopal Mitra’s National Paper,29 for example, the ancient and contemporary samajs were viewed with a critical eye. Their inherent weaknesses were to be eradicated, for how else could they act as a model for unity within and beyond Bengal? The issue of samajik progress or jatiya uplift therefore came to the fore. Rajnarain Basu in Se-kal ar E-kal clearly analysed the differences between the samaj of yesteryear and that of present-day Bengal. He extolled certain qualities and characteristics that had existed before, but which were missing in late nineteenth century Bengal. There had been a decline in the physical strength and health of Bengalis. In the field of education, though there had been a popularisation of the Bengali language, moral values (niti

28 Rabindranath Tagore, Bangadarshan (Sraban, ), printed in Satyendranath Ray, Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 29 The National Paper was started by Debedranath Tagore on  August . Its editor was Nabagopal Mitra. See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



siksha) were not being inculcated among students. Moreover, according to Rajnarain, selfishness weakened samajik bonds. Previously (in se kal or the era gone by) there were deeper feelings of oneness and a closer relationship between people of the same village. Even those belonging to the lower castes were treated with compassion and concern, and often, strict rules of jatibhed (caste division) were not adhered to. Hospitality, respect towards elders, and moral behaviour had all waned. To rejuvenate the region and the nation, such samajik decline had to be stopped. Relating the primacy of a code of conduct to dynastic glories of a bygone Bengal (which implicitly also connected the political and the social) Rajnarain delineated a historic, inspirational site: Samudrasen, Chadrasen and other ancient rulers had fought against the Pandavas. Bijoy Sinha of Bengal had conquered Ceylon, Pratapaditya had taken Bengal to heights of glory. Bengalis today need to draw inspiration from such a glorious past and remodel their own samaj.30

Rajnarain’s plan of samajik uplift on the one hand advocated a revival of certain codes of conduct, and the inculcation of moral values. The practice of such prescribed codes of conduct fitted the overarching frame of dharma as an idea in practice.31 On the other hand, Rajnarain’s agenda of samajik improvement glorified past achievements of Bengali heroes. It awakened an innate pride in being Bengali, which developed from certain superior samajik values, and Bengali heroism of the past. Rajnarain’s depiction of samajik decline in Bengal was echoed in many sources, though others recollected the continuing validity of moral instruction.32 Krishnakumar Mitra in his autobiography noted that in the s, his wife Leelabati inculcated deep moral values in her children, and, when they reached the age of six or seven, sent them to a moral school every Sunday. In this school they studied Bijoykrishna Goswami’s questionnaire on dharma, Sitanath Tattvabhushan’s Brahmodharma Siksha (on Brahmo dharma), and Dwarkanath Ganguly’s Shishur Sadachar (behavioural codes for children). To instil the quality of unselfishness in her children, Leelabati made them give money to beggars. They were also made to touch the feet of elders and visitors. Leelabati had actually learnt the value of dharma siksha (lessons in dharma) from her father 30 Rajnarain Basu, Se Kal ar E Kal (Calcutta, , reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. – , –, –, –. 31 See Chapter III. 32 Relevant in this context is the discussion of dharma as an idea-in-practice. See Chapter III.



chapter seven

Rajnarain Basu.33 Subtly variant pictures of samajik decline located within the familiar spiral of past achievement/glory and present decline also emphasised dharma as a fundamental principle for uplift. Rabindranath Tagore in Prachya Samaj wrote: We lack that essential life-force, which is indispensable for the growth and progress of samaj, which would take it onwards, forsaking the old, and accepting the new in meaningful self-improvement.34

The idea shared common ground with a similar conviction of Rajnarain: Bengalis need to perform dharmiya functions for maintaining and preserving jatiya bhab, and conform to the norms of civilisation and culture. These are necessary for becoming a respected and esteemed jati in the wider collectivity of the world, in India and elsewhere.35

The Bengali agenda for samajik uplift and recreating a jati within Bengal was applied also to the nationwide uplift of the Indian jati. As Bengalis were a part of this, it was imperative that regional samajik progress should be linked to a wider programme of swajati pratishtha (recreation of swajati or own jati, referring to the entire population of India). In Bengal, this was based on a pride in being Indian. Rajnarain Basu believed that Bengalis should be proud to be Indian (they were people of Bharatbarsha). However degraded they might be at present, they (Bengalis and Indians) could claim a pride of place in the highest rung of human civilisation. At the heart of this belief was the supremacy of the Hindu dharma. Satyendranath Tagore and Manamohan Basu glorified Bharat or India and each wrote a song about its victory. Both these songs were deeply imbued with the ideals of the Hindu Mela.36 Therefore, an intimate association between Bengal and India was of crucial importance in the literati’s discourse on nationhood in Bengal. Despite barriers and internal limitations to integration, they sought to link fragments through the welding force of samajik bonding. The linking of the two samajs (Bengal and India) was paralleled by an interconnection of the terms ‘Bengal’ and ‘Bharat’ (India) in many late nine33

Krishnakumar Mitra, Atmacharit (Calcutta, ), pp. –. Rabindranath Tagore, “Prachya Samaj”, printed in the periodical Sadhana (Poush, ), mentioned in Satyendranath Ray, Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta, p. . 35 Rajnarain’s words, quoted by Bipin Chandra Pal, in “Rajnarain Basu O Swadeshikatar Unmesh”, Banglar Nabajuger Katha (series of articles in Bangabani, –), published in Nabajuger Bangla (Calcutta, ), p. . 36 Bipin Chandra Pal, “Hindu Mela O Nabagopal Mitra”, Banglar Nabajuger Katha (series of articles in Bangabani, –), published in Nabajuger Bangla (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 34

from region to nation: the idea of india



teenth century Bengali tracts. Writing in , Nandamohan Chattopadhyay applied the term jati not only to the people of Bengal but also to Indians.37 Echoing Bankimchandra’s lament in “Bharat Kalanka”,38 Nandamohan exhorted his countrymen (Bharatbashigon) to awake and make jatiya uplift a reality. Why should the country which was once the mother of brave sons now be under the yoke of foreigners? If we work and unite in spirit, it would not be long before India’s days of glory return. The first step towards jatiya awakening is love, and we must all realise that the people of our swadesh are our own brothers.39

The Nation as Mother: Reality and Imagery The above section illuminating ideological links between the region and the nation through the deployment of samajik values apprehended the idea of India in an emotive framework. The emotional identification of swadesh with India was evident in articles in well-known periodicals such as the Tattvabodhini Patrika. In , an article entitled “Swadeshanurag” equated swadesh with Bharatbarsha or India, and expressed the hope that all Indian jatis would be united by a common bond.40 To the literati, India could be known through an emotional association with the entity variously termed as ‘swadesh’, ‘janmabhoomi’, ‘Bharat mata’ and ‘desh’. Imbued with a patriotic and emotional content, India to many Bengali intellectuals in mid and late nineteenth century, was a “wonderful creation of divinity”.41 The glorification and deification of swadesh occurred in a historical framework, where past glory and present plight were arraigned in opposition to one another. But there were attempts to break this disjunction, and hopes that past glory would inspire future progress. Samaj with its associated values was supposed to hold the key to future betterment. As Akshoy Sarkar dreamed:

37

Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj, p. . Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Bharat Kalanka”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, pp. –. 39 Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj, pp. , . 40 “Swadeshanurag”, in Tattvabodhini Patrika, printed in Benoy Ghosh, Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra: – (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakash Bhaban, ), pp. –. 41 Akshoychandra Sarkar, article in Alochana () printed in Kalidas Nag (ed.), Akshoy Sahitya Sambhar (Calcutta, ), p. . 38



chapter seven The door to the future has to be opened to welcome the new light of a brighter tomorrow, when the cultivation of a common language, the observance of certain samajik practices, and inspiration from the lifeexperiences of great men of India would imbue the nation with a new meaning.42

The idea of a once-glorious India and the longing for a future better samaj evoked the image of a motherland, which had to be salvaged by courage, selflessness and devotion. This deification of the country grounded patriotism in a religious-cum-samajik idiom, closely connected to the literati’s belief in the centrality of dharma. The identification of the country with divinity through religious symbolism was one of the hallmarks of the late nineteenth century notion of a nation, different from imageries of preceding periods. Bharatchandra Ray’s description of Annapurna in Annadamangal (written in the eighteenth century) was essentially religious and devotional without underlying metaphors of nationhood: In this way Annapurna expressed herself . . . Near her sat Girish, Gouri, Ganesh, and Kartik . . . Seeing her glory, Mahadeb [Shiva] articulated tantras and mantras . . . Worship, meditation and acceptance of kabach [a talisman-like object endowed with protective powers] would help in the realisations of dharma, artha, kama and moksha . . . Whoever worships Annapurna is blessed with all happiness, and in afterlife achieves salvation . . . Whoever is her true devotee, . . . will be blessed with wealth and sons . . . 43

Bharatchandra’s image of Annapurna was very different from Nandamohan Chattopadhyay’s deification of the country and his lament for the sufferings of an entire jati: Why do you, mother India, seeing your pale face, And suffering anguish, shed tears? Once, you glowed in moonlight beauty And our happiness knew no bounds, Those days are gone, and I cannot bear this pain of yours any more.44

The motherland had to be led from darkness to light. In an earlier article (), Akshoychandra Sarkar had portrayed a Mother shrouded in darkness, personified in the image of Kali, but he hoped that one day she would embody divine strength, her ten arms extending in ten 42

Ibid., p. . Bharatchandra, Annadamangal, in Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Bharatchandra Granthabali (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 44 Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj, p. . 43

from region to nation: the idea of india



directions, while under her feet, her enemy lay trampled.45 Akshoychandra’s motherland was worshipped as a deity, and selflessly served by her sons. Nandamohan Chattopadhyay in Adhunatana Samaj also referred to the “brave sons” of mother India.46 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay had evoked a similar image in Bangadarshan in  even before the publication of Anandamath in .47 Bankimchandra’s Mother, though adorned in priceless ornaments and symbolising fulfilment, had to be saved from her current misery. Her plight was not just political subjugation; the absence of a nation-wide unity sealed the fate of Bengal and India. The brilliance of a once-glorious civilisation was eclipsed. Jatiya unity, embodied in a divine presence, was therefore contextualised with reference to India’s past glory and present predicament. The people of India had to unite as brothers to unfetter her. The idea of the motherland was applied in the context of Bengal (Bangamata) as well as to India (Bharat mata). Bankimchandra in Anandamath referred to janmabhoomi (land of birth) as the mother.48 Janmabhoomi could signify one’s local village, one’s province, and, in a wider sense, one’s country. The idealisation of the motherland in Bankimchandra’s Anandamath, and his identification of Bengal and India in Banglar Kalamka, was an emotional response to what he perceived as the degradation of his land of birth. Bengal and India shared a common national fate: The disgrace of Bengal is also that of India. In fact, in Bengal the darkness is even greater. One hears of the courage and physical strength of other Indians, but not of Bengalis. There is no historical evidence that Bengalis were always weak and cowardly. On the contrary it is proven that in the past, they were physically strong, courageous and victorious.49

The portrayal expressed a duality and an interconnection: present ‘unfortunate’ Bengal and India linked to a shared future and an interrelated

45 Akshoychandra Sarkar, “Bangadarshan O Jabajibaner Prokash”, in Kalidas Nag (ed.), Akshoy Sahitya Sambhar, p. . 46 In Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath, when Mahendra asked who the Mother was, the Brahmachari replied, “She whose sons we are”. See Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Anandamath (Calcutta, th publication, ), p. . Nandamohan Chattopadhyay also referred to the sons of Mother India in Adhunatana Samaj, p. . 47 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Kamalakanter Daptarer  hundredth issue, Number , in “Amar Durgotsab”, Bangadarshan (Calcutta, ). 48 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Anandamath, p. . 49 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Banglar Kalanka” (Calcutta, Sraban, ), Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, p. .



chapter seven

destiny. Evocations of the nation as mother symbolising love, ties of affection (embodied in the samaj), an idealisation of traditional values, feelings of respect and pride charted a composite region-nation samajik progress which was a part of a wider, and significant programme of an allIndia jatiya uplift represented imaginatively and emotionally as saving the motherland.

Obstacles to Integration The idealisation of the motherland did not make the literati less aware of the obstacles that lay in the path of union between the region and the nation. The problem of harmonising differences was recognised, among others, by Rabindranath Tagore: In ancient India, difference had existed not between the ruler and the ruled, but between various jati-sampradyas. These differed from each other in respect of varna and language. Still, they happened to be neighbours. Because of this, conflict co-existed with efforts to harmonise divergent samajs and dharmas. Attempts were made to realise the dream of a samaj embracing all, yet preserving the distinctness of the smaller samajs.50

There were distinctions among smaller samajs not just within Bengal, but also among samajs in different parts of India. In , the Tattvabodhini admitted that internal difference among Hindus was a living reality: Now the feeling of disunity among Hindus is predominant. There is lack of unity among Bengalis, Utkalis, Punjabis, and Maharashtriyans, though they are all Hindus. They envy each other, and look askance at the different languages, manners, and customs of the others. They are especially jealous of another jati’s progress . . . The condition of all Indian jatis is more or less the same, and the fact that they are disunited is a major obstacle to the progress of the Indian jati . . . We must adopt certain ways to achieve jatiya unity.51

An awareness of the barriers to unity also made the literati ponder the reasons for disunity in the past. Difference of varna, appearance, customs and manners must have had historical roots.52 Bankimchandra wrote: 50 Rabindranath Tagore, Bharat Itihas Charcha (Santiniketan, Chaitra, ), reprinted in Itihas (Calcutta: Visvabharati, ), pp. –. 51 “Hindujatir Aikyasadhan”, Tattvabodhini Patrika, Number  (Jyoishtha, ), printed in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra: – (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakash Bhaban, ), p. . 52 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Bhabishyabichar, Bharatbarsher Katha, Samajik Riti Bishoyok”, Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



During the time of the composition of the Vedas, the Aryans had established a samaj in India, and the Aryan-Brahmanic scheme of social interconnection and regulation had established a semblance of unity. Attempts of such jatipratishtha had been thwarted at a later stage, when Aryan civilisation had spread all over India, and Aryans established different local samajs. Different samajs with their distinct social practices, customs and manners failed to evolve a common bond of unity . . . now in India, there are many jatis, living in different regions and having distinct languages, religions, and familial roots.53

Thus even while samaj provided the ideological framework, and acted as a site for realising the dream of unity achieved through integrations of the region and the nation, the splintering of identities along sociological, linguistic and religious lines in different parts of India formed a dark foil offsetting the dream of unity. Mediations of fragmentations of caste, class, ethnic category and community within Bengal and in the contiguous areas via the conceptual tool of samaj negotiated linguistic, religious and class differences. How was this analytic model to be deployed in regard to inter-provincial differences in India? In this context, the literati highlighted what they regarded as the major markers of difference. These distinctive markers were problematised at two levels and comparative contexts: Bengal and India. The crucial question was: how was regional distinctness in regard to these cultural markers to be situated vis-à-vis the theme of unity at the all-India level? One of the major barriers to integration was language. In different provinces of India, different languages were used, and there were variations of dialect even within the same language. Comparisons between neighbouring languages such as Oriya and Assamese and Bengali formed a contested terrain where competing claims of superiority complicated the issue of origins and connections with Sanskrit, and differences. In this regard, a search for the ‘uniqueness’ and origins of the Bengali language was natural. The literati highlighted the distinctness of the Bengali language and script in well-known periodicals, one of which was Aitihasik Chitra: In the Lalitavistara it can be seen that at the time of its composition, a distinct script called bangalipi [script of Bengal] was in use . . . we need to ask . . . what were the characteristics of bangalipi? . . . Banga bhasha [the Bengali language] is also a distinct language.54 53 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, “Bharat Kalanka”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, pp. –. 54 Aitihasik Chitra (), pp. –.



chapter seven

Prior to the Bengali language, the people of Bengal had used Prakrit as a means of communication, and even before that the Kolarian language had been in use.55 Late nineteenth century debates about the distinctness of the Bengali language rested on new philological distinctions and theories, and on print. The putative link between Aryan-ness and Bengali culture prioritised and glorified Sanskrit and underlined its connection with the Bengali language. Jibankrishna Chattopadhyay highlighted the dharmik basis of Sanskrit rooted in () the puranic or the mythological; and () the vaidik or theological.56 Such thinking underpinned and informed attempts to elevate and enrich the Bengali language as part of the project of jatiya uplift, for language was regarded as one of the essential hallmarks of jatitva. From the second half of the nineteenth century, articles in periodicals such as the Tattvabodhini Patrika and Purnima stressed this link between language and jatitva,57 and such endeavours were praised and grafted onto the agenda of late nineteenth century organisations promoting the popularisation of the Bengali language.58 These efforts gathered momentum from () the development of print technologies especially from the beginning of the nineteenth century (which popularised a ‘high’ Bengali literature, ideologically related to the Aryan-Sanskrit prioritisation); and () the refinement of Bengali prose, evident in the writings of Rammohun Ray. The Bengali literati were also influenced by colonial linguistic views and categorisations. The census commissioners of  marked out language and birth place as criteria of nationality, and in , the importance of language in general, and the Bengali language in particular were asserted. Bengali was considered to be the parent tongue of more than half the population.59 But western linguistics was a starting point and

55

Even while stressing the Sanskrit roots of Bengali, the literati were aware that other influences had also shaped the Bengali language. Probodh Chandra Sen mentioned later that before the Prakrit language gained currency in Bengal, other languages had been used. See Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana (Calcutta, , reprinted Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla Academy, ), p. . 56 Jibankrishna Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Purabritta (Calcutta, ), p. . 57 “Swadeshiya Bhashanushilan”, Tattvabodhini Patrika (Jyoishtha, ) referred to in Rajnarain Basu, Bibidha Prabandha (Calcutta, ), p. ; and “Bangabhashar Kromonnoti”, Purnima (Phalgun, ), referred to in Sudhir Kumar Mitra, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj (Calcutta: Mitrani Prakashan, ), pp. –. 58 The interconnection between the Bengali language and the agenda of jatitva has been discussed in the Introduction. 59 Census of India, Volume V (); and C.J. O’Donnell, The Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



not a conclusion. Sanskrit was taken to be the common linguistic link that connected various Indian languages. It was regarded as the mother of Bengali. Despite Grierson’s assertion that Oriya and Assamese were sister languages of Bengali,60 a predominant view among the literati was that Bengali, derived from Sanskrit, was the mother of Oriya and Assamese, and superior to them. Romeshchandra Datta concluded, “The Bengali language is thus a descendant of Sanscrit, the mother of languages”.61 He went on: If we take up any sentence at random from our everyday conversation, we shall find that most of the words have been derived from Sanscrit, through the Prakrit.62

Using a list of words furnished by Pandit Ramgati Nyayratna, Romeshchandra sought to prove that the Bengali language was immediately derived from Prakrit.63 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay also tackled the problem of linguistic disparity by referring to Sanskrit as the common root of most Indian languages: It is true that there are many different languages in India, but this dissimilarity is much less now than it was at the time when the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans had not settled in this country. Sanskrit is ironing out differences, and welding disparate languages in India. If one reads a Maharashtriyan, Telegu, Hindi, Bengali or Oriya book, one can see that all these languages are absorbing words from Sanskrit, and are becoming increasingly understandable to Indians in general.64

In an attempt to forge linkages between Indian people on the basis of a common linguistic origin, evidence of non-Aryan or pre-Aryan words in Bengali and in other Indian languages was often glossed over or marginalised.65 The emphasis on the interconnection between Sanskrit, 60

This has been mentioned in Chapter V in connection with the Bengali literati’s evaluations of neighbouring languages such as Oriya and Assamese and their relationship with Bengali. This discussion also recorded the difference between Bengali viewpoints and colonial opinion such as those of Grierson. See Grierson, The Languages of India (Calcutta: Linguistic Survey of India, ), pp. , . 61 Romeshchandra Datta, The Literature of Bengal (London, Calcutta: ), p. . 62 Ibid., p. . 63 Ibid. 64 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Samajik Prabandha, Jatiya Bhab”, Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. . 65 Writers such as Romeshchandra Datta and Ramgati Nyayratna admitted that there were many words in the Bengali language, which did not have roots in Sanskrit. See Romeshchandra Datta, The Literature of Bengal, pp. –; and Ramgati Nyayratna, Banglar Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. –.



chapter seven

Bengali, and most other Indian languages helped the literati to imagine bonds among people speaking those languages. Linguistic fragmentation was dealt with by referring to a common linguistic origin: Sanskrit. Simultaneously, a section of the Bengali literati (specifically the Brahmos) tried to come to terms with regional linguistic distinctness and the problem of multiple languages by hoping that Bengali might become the ‘national’ language of India. They believed in the superiority of the Bengali language over any other language, and were convinced that all Indians should adopt it.66 The process and means of dealing with linguistic fragmentation was actually multistranded and contingent, shaped by specific contexts. It did not imply a hegemonic erosion of local dialects and linguistic particularisms. Rather, there was a negotiation and mediation of linguistic differences within a flexible rubric which contextually underlined the Sanskritic connection rethought within the mould of Bengali ‘superiority’, and also integrated at specific levels, multiple linguistic currents and streams into a complex weave of cultural unity. The literati’s preoccupation with language binding a jati was natural. Through language, otherwise-discrete social groups could develop feelings of a shared past expressed in print. Language nurtured and expressed dharma. The long use of one language despite political upheaval was thought to have instilled a sense of oneness, as was emphasised by Probodh Chandra Sen: India was under Muslim rule for five hundred years. But jatiya dharma, language and samajik codes were not eroded . . . In the Muslim period, indigenous languages were not used in politics, or writing political documents. But they were used in composing major religious, literary and historical works, such as Adi Granth, Dohas and Sursagar, Bhaktamala and Satsaiya of the Kabirpanthis, Gnanesvari, Abhanga and Bakhara, and the Chaitanyabhagabat, Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chandi and Annadamangal.67

On the other hand, this argument implied disunity as well as unity. Thus Bengal was distinct, presumably through language, and despite religious or political changes, with respect to its continuing jatiya character. The periodical Aitihasik Chitra claimed: Though in contemporary history it is admitted that Bengalis are weak, timid and cowardly, they are actually an independence-loving, undefeated, distinct jati. They have, over historical periods, become Buddhist, Hindu 66 67

Nabya Bharat (Poush, ), Volume I, Number . Probodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana, pp. –.

from region to nation: the idea of india



. . . but have never been quiescent under domination. They have always striven for independence. Neither the Pathans [Turkish sultans] nor the Mughals could completely subjugate the Bengalis. The English also have not defeated the Bengalis in a battlefield. The other parts of India have succumbed to the force of arms, but Bengal has not done so.68

Bipin Chandra Pal also believed that Bengal differed from other provinces of India in terms of its “history, dharma, literature and arts, and samajik lifestyle.”69 These differences were not sudden or emergent but had existed for centuries. They had developed by degrees since the origin of the Bengali jati. The distinguishing quality of Bengal was a spirit of independence. Bengal had long sought its own salvation and fulfilment even within dharmik and samajik constraints. The reinterpretation of ancient shastras loosened the grip of traditional scripture. Raghunandan, through his reinterpretation in the ‘new’ smriti, had freed the Bengali Hindu samaj from antiquated custom and tradition. Moreover, Bengal had a unique dharma of its own: The impact of the Muslim invasion and Islamic influence resulted in the establishment of a new dharma in many provinces of India. Among these were the faiths of Guru Nanak and Kabir. Though having links with the Hindu dharma, these creeds could not preserve the basic essence of the Hindu dharma. The Sikhs, for instance, became totally segregated as a community. But in the same era, in Bengal, Chaitanya founded in Bengal a yugadharma, which preserved the character of the Hindu dharma and adapted it to the need of the hour. Because of this, since the end of the Buddhist era in Bengal, a distinctiveness was apparent in Bengal’s dharma, religious viewpoints, and samajik customs and manners, which were different from the Hindu samaj in other parts of India. Saints and religious reformers in Bengal founded new sects. People belonging to these creeds remained within the traditional samaj, yet did not follow ancient shastras and customs verbatim . . . In their personal dharmik lives the followers of these sects respected and adhered to the words of both the kulaguru [family preceptor] and the sadguru [a good or virtuous instructor]. I have not heard this to be the case anywhere else in India . . . Among Bamachari Tantriks [people believing in religious practices contrary to the Vedas, and specifically the left-handed ritual according to the Tantras] and other sampradays, there was no jatibhed [caste divisions] . . . This is the distinctiveness of Bengal . . . unlike other parts of India, there is no jagatguru [preceptor of the world, the divine saint, Narada] or mahant

68

Aitihasik Chitra (–), p. . Bipin Chandra Pal, “Banglar Boishishta”, in Banglar Nabajuger Katha (series of articles in Bangabani, –), published as Nabajuger Bangla, p. . 69



chapter seven . . . Brahmanical influence in Bengal is not the same as in Madras and the Dakhyinatya [Deccan] . . . The Chandals of Bengal are not regarded as untouchables, they are not like the Parias of Madras and Maharashtra . . . The theory of incarnation (avatarbad) of Sri Krishna also acquired a unique form in Bengal. In Gouriya Vaishnava Siddhanta, Krishna was regarded not as avatar (incarnation of Vishnu) but as the origin of all avatars.70

The above quotation encapsulates the specific distinctive strands supposed to be marking out Bengal from other regions, provinces and people of India. But there was a way of dealing with such distinctness and mediating it in a mould which could move beyond dissimilarity, albeit with limitations. The essence of desh (applied in the context of Bengal) was oriented to the idea of a ‘true’ history, which could express the essential spirit of the people, and locate the origins of an emotive connection with Bengal,71 which was in turn a component of what the literati regarded as a samajik uniqueness existing in Bengal for centuries. This essence could provide the basis for transcending the narrow limits of specific localities in Bengal, and realising wider unities even amidst distinctive local types. Difference could make a unique contribution to the general stream of Indian history, enriching it, and creating a meaningful pattern out of multiple cultural strands. The key to creating unity in the historical situation of the late nineteenth century lay in awakening a latent samajik unity. But the idealisation of this utopic unity also proved to be difficult because certain crucial parameters complicated the issue of a nationwide unity. Thus, the attempted integration of the region and the nation was internally contested. The discourse on jati oscillated between endeavours to highlight the regional distinctiveness of Bengal, and an urge for a panIndian unity. The Bengali literati tried to locate overarching similarities at a higher level that could counter fragmentations of the local, regional and the national. This was attempted by locating the Bengali discourse on jati within a wider discourse on an ‘Aryan’ India, of which Bengal was an integral part.

70 71

Ibid., pp. –. Rabindranath Tagore, Itihas, pp. –.

from region to nation: the idea of india



The Idea of an ‘Aryan’ India In , Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, while discussing the contemporary condition of Bengal and India, extolled in glowing terms the jati, which was esteemed by the world. This was none other than the Arya jati of India whose sway extended from the Himalayas to Kumarika.72 A heroic Aryan identity was valued and linked to the Bengali jati because the Bengali literati were caught up in change, and had to come to terms with their subjugation. As they were drawn mostly from high caste western-educated professional sections, the literati responded by attempting to elevate themselves in the eyes of the ruler, and simultaneously by defining their position within their own samaj. As already discussed, there was a general belief in Bengal that Indian civilisation had declined from a higher plane (reminiscent of Orientalist tenets), and that the way to salvage lost glory was to invoke a glorious past. Against this backdrop, the literati forged a connection between ‘Bengali’ and ‘Aryan’, and linked a legendary past with their own history. This elevated them in their own eyes, and brought them at par with the colonial rulers. The equation forged between ‘Bengali’ and ‘Aryan’ had two facets: () emphasis on a common racial origin in central Asia of the Aryans who had migrated to India, and those who had gone to Europe; and () cultural connotations of ‘Aryan’, including certain codes of conduct, and adherence to the epics and puranas. Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay believed in three groups of central Asian Aryans: Previously the Aryans who had gone to Europe were called Celts, Greeks, Latins and Goths. Now they are called English, French and German. A second group of Aryans had gone to Persia. The fire-worshippers of Persian origin were descendants of this second group. At present the Parsi businessmen of Bombay belong to this group. The third group went eastwards, crossed the Sindhu river, and settled in the Punjab.73

The periodicals Arya Darshan () and Sadharani () as well as emphatic pronouncements by Sasadhar Tarkachudamani, Krishnabehari Sen, and Chandranath Basu,74 claimed a common origin of Indo-Euro72

Nandamohan Chattopadhyay, Adhunatana Samaj, p. . Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 74 They pioneered a movement termed by Tapan Raychaudhuri as “aggressive chauvinism”, and their views were very different from the more sober evocations of Hindu heritage by intellectuals such as Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , . 73



chapter seven

pean languages and Aryan races, and the superiority of Indian Hindus as the only true Aryans. This crude version of Aryanism, though no doubt buttressed by the writings of Max Muller, was not universally accepted. Dwijendranath and Rabindranath Tagore scoffed at it,75 and emphasised, with other eminent writers, that Aryan identity and its connection with Bengalis should be judged in terms of cultural characteristics, common codes of conduct, and a set of norms and samajik values. Enquiries led to an evaluative journey into the past—to explore the beginnings of Aryan civilisation in India and Bengal. Harisadhan Chattopadhayay’s comments provide an insight into the literati’s valorisation of cultural Aryan-ness: The Aryans were a very strong, hard-working, imaginative and united race. They united India into one dharma rajya [righteous realm] by the thread of a common culture . . . especially through their language . . . The Aryans brought Arya bhasha [Sanskrit] into Bengal . . . After the rise of the Mauryas, the inhabitants of Bengal adopted the Brahmanical heritage of North India, and Aryan texts, histories, and puranas rooted in the Sanskrit language. This happened during  bc –  ad76

The arrival of Aryans in India and in Bengal was given special importance in tracts on history, articles in periodicals, and even in history textbooks in late nineteenth century Bengal. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay devoted the first chapter of his book Banglar Itihas to the period of Aryan rule in India, giving it the heading, “Arya Jati”.77 Race, culture and territory intersected in Kshetranath Bandyopadhyay’s differentiation of Aryavarta (north India, the home of the Aryans) from Dakhyinatya (Deccan, where non-Aryans lived). He marked out Bengal as a part of Aryavarta.78 Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay also averred that India was divided into two main segments, Aryavarta or Hindustan, and Dakhyinatya. Hindustan comprised Anusangadesh, Bengal, Bihar, Allahabad, Ajodhya, and Rohilkhand.79 This historical quest was underpinned by a belief in the Aryan capacity to absorb various races into its cultural fold. The literati were crucially concerned with the spread of the Aryan civilisation eastwards to Bengal. Nagendranath Basu believed that during the early Vedic period when the Aryans lived between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers, Gourmondol 75 76 77 78 79

For details relating to their attitude, see ibid., pp. –. Harisadhan Chattopadhyay, Amra Bangali (Calcutta, undated), pp. –. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . Kshetranath Bandyopadhyay, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas, p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



or Bengal was covered with forests and inhabited by uncivilised nonAryans. Nagendranath referred to the Rigsamhita and Atharvasamhita, according to which Kikata (modern Gaya region) and Anga (including a part of Bengal) were non-Aryan lands. It was not until the time of the composition of the Ramayana that Aryan civilisation spread in Bengal. Describing a legend in the Ramayana, Nagendranath held that Amurttaraja, an ancient king of the Chandrabangshiya dynasty, established a kingdom in Dharmaranya, near Pragjyotish (in modern Assam). As the Satapatha Brahman makes it clear that Aryan civilisation spread eastwards, Nagendranath thought it was impossible that Amurttaraja went to Assam before establishing a kingdom in Bengal.80 During the time of the Mahabharata, Aryan kings were ruling in Bengal. When Judhishthira (eldest among the Pandavas, referred to in the Mahabharata) performed the Rajasuya sacrifice, a powerful king called Samudrasen was ruling in Bengal.81 These accounts and others reveal that history and myth were often inextricably interlinked in the literati’s account of the spread of Aryan culture in Bengal. S.N. Bhadra claimed that during the era of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Banga (Bengal), Bihar and Orissa were known as “dvijasebita punyasthan” (sacred place served and regulated by Brahmans). According to the Mahabharata, King Jajati’s descendant, Bali, had five sons called Anga, Banga, Pundra, Kalinga and Sumha, and each of them established a kingdom in his name.82 Late nineteenth century writers were convinced that Aryan civilisation spread to Bengal during the period of the epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The legend of Adisur was reiterated in many late nineteenth century tracts to emphasise how Brahmanical culture was re-established in Bengal at a time when there was a decline in the standard of Brahmans who were already residing in Bengal. From the “heart of Aryavarta”, Brahmanical culture spread eastwards, and laid the foundation of a Brahmanical society in Bengal. This provided the basis for the dissemination of certain codes of conduct, of specific rituals, and of awareness of the Vedas, the epics and the puranas, in Bengal. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay clearly mentioned that the five Brahmans brought by Adisur—Sriharsha, Bhattanarayan, Daksha, Vedgarbha, and Chhandar—were the ancestors of the 80 This has been mentioned in Chapter V in connection with the debate about prior Aryanisation of Bengal. 81 Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ), pp. –. 82 S.N. Bhadra, Uttar Purba Bharat (Dacca, ), p. .



chapter seven

greatest Brahmans in Bengal. Their five Kayastha companions were the forefathers of the Bengali Kayasthas.83 Therefore the spread of Aryan culture eastwards laid the foundation of a Bengali samaj that could claim a connection with the ancient samaj of the Aryans. The Bengali samaj was based on an Aryan-cum-Brahmanic scheme of social classification. Nilmoni Mukhopadhayay prioritised this social system in the context of India in general. He explained the caste system in terms of occupational diversification. Originally the Aryans depended on agriculture and livestock rearing as their means of livelihood. Gradually Vaishyas also adopted these occupations, and came to be known as Aryans. The same Arya jati came to be divided into Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. Gradually there emerged another jati. After victories in battles, those individuals whom the Kshatriyas used to imprison were called Shudras. Their duties included service to the higher castes.84 Quoting the Manusamhita and the Ramayana, Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay referred in an episodic way to the establishment of the system of classification marked by an exaggerated importance of Brahmans. Gradually they [Brahmans] became so powerful that kings came under their control. They came to be known as the rulers of this earth . . . It is said that their boons gave children to infertile women . . . People could see with the eyes of divinity, men could go to heaven . . . but their curse could turn men into stone and transform all things to ashes.85

But, in reality, the effects of Aryan civilisation were much less evident in Bengal than in other parts of India. The ‘Aryan’ cradle of Madhyadesa, implying central north India, did not embrace Bengal. The cultural implications of ‘Aryan’ were later imports, and were often locally modified. Nonetheless, the Bengali literati regarded Bengal as a focal point for the spread of Aryan influence and culture. They related this belief to their notion of Pancha Gour. Sarasvat, Kanyakubja, Mithila, Utkal and Gour were collectively called Panchagourbibhag.86 The kings of Krishnabar in the Himalayas, Sukhet, Mandi, and Keonthal, regarded themselves as the sons of the kings of Gour.87 As mentioned in Chapter V, the idea of 83

Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas, p. . Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas, p. . 85 Ibid., pp. –. 86 The idea of the cultural unity of Pancha Gour was deployed by the literati in connection with the contiguous ethnicities. Nagendranath Basu was one of the eminent Bengali social historians who referred to Pancha Gour. See Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, pp. –. 87 Bisva Kosh, Part V, referred to by Nagendranath Basu in Banger Jatiya Itihas, p. . 84

from region to nation: the idea of india



Pancha Gour implied a culturally similar north and east India. The spread of ‘Aryan’ and more specifically Brahmanical culture signified the glory of certain ideals popularised in those parts. Thus Gour Brahman (or Adi Gour or the Kurukshetra Brahmans mentioned in the Mahabharata) and Gouriya Riti meant the spread of the glory of eastern India, and implied meaningful cultural interchanges between Bengal and other parts of Pancha Gour, especially Orissa. The idea of Pancha Gour also signified a wider unity encompassing India, embodied or personified in a monarchical presence. Nagendranath Basu mentioned that Kalhan’s Rajtarangini (chronicle of the kings of Kashmir written in ) referred to Pancha Gour. In the seventh century, Harsha was the overlord of Gour, Udra, Kalinga and Kosala, and conquered the “Five Indies” (Hieuen Tsang’s account), which according to Nagendranath, was none other than Pancha Gour.88 Adisur, the legendary Sena king who brought five Brahmans from Kanauj to Bengal acquired the title “Panchagouresvar” (ruler of the five Gours).89 There were, undoubtedly however, local variations of the ‘Aryan’ theme in Bengal. Unlike the rest of India, there was an absence of the fourfold caste system, and there were only two main castes—Brahmans and Shudras. Bengalis were not one jati, but a bahujati (conglomerate of many jatis), as Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay had emphasised in a series of articles in the Bangadarshan, written in  and .90 The eminent late nineteenth century historian, Ramgati Nyayratna, also admitted that Bengalis were a mixed race. According to Hairsadhan Chattopadhyay, too, Dravid and Austric blood flowed in Bengali veins. He strengthened his argument by referring to Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay’s assertion that the Dravid jati were the original inhabitants of Bengal and Magadha. These races intermingled with the Aryan jati.91 Haraprasad Shastri pointed out that as late as the thirteenth century ad there were only  or  Brahman goshtis (groups), one hundred Kayastha goshtis, and

88

Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, pp. , . The source for this information is the Parachakrakma stone inscription of the Lichchhavi king Jaydev, referred to in Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, p. . 90 See Chapter II and Chapter III for contextual connections between the notion of a multi-jati Bengali and the evolving idea of jati and how such connection was deployed in the literati’s discourse on the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s articles included “Bangalir Utpotti”, in Bangadarshan (Poush, ); “Anarya” (Magh, ); “Anarya Bangali Jati” (Boishakh, ). See Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II, pp. –. 91 Harisadhan Chattopadhyay, Amra Bangali, p. . 89



chapter seven

their Shudra servants. If this was the case, the question arose: What was the dharma of the other people apart from this narrow group? They could either have been Buddhists or men of the Koumya tribe,92 who adhered to Koumyagoto dharma, which was completely different from Brahmanical dharma. We have seen how notions of samajik unity, rooted in dharma, attempted to locate overarching connections between the region and the nation. One of the ways of doing this was to situate the Bengali discourse on jati within a wider theme of an Aryan India. The idea of an Aryan India was reflected not only in Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s idealisation of a motherland (Anandamath, ) with its undercurrent of dharmik (righteous and religious) bonds, but also in Rajanikanta Gupta’s Arya Kirti (), in obsessive linkages between ‘Bengali’ and ‘Aryan’ in textbooks, and in articles in the periodicals Arya Darshan () and Nabya Bharat. Bengalis were supposed to be co-sharers of a glorious Aryan legacy. Evaluations of the courage of traditionally ‘heroic’ Aryan races such as the Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs were related to the idea of dharmik (non-physical) valour, applied in the context of Bengal and Bengalis. The literati thus strove to re-invoke a glorious India by exploring and reviving past heritage. At a time when the subjugated sought to counter the colonial allegation of Bengali ‘weakness’, a reiteration of Aryan qualities of courage and valour was natural. These qualities were alleged to be the key to the rise of ‘martial’ communities. The religious and social ferment that came in the wake of Mughal rule led to many religious movements in India. Ramananda, Kabir, Chaitanya and Ballabhacharya sought to redefine religion in a way as to suit the need of the hour. The Sikhs too under Guru Nanak rose to be a powerful jati. This was made possible by the new creed of Nanak, with its overtones of dharmik simplicity and generosity. His religious message transformed the Sikhs into a valiant community, bonded by ties of brotherhood.93 Thus Aryan qualities of courage and adherence to dharma inculcated the spirit of independence in a people. The valour of the Marathas under Shivaji also was imbued with an urge for independence.94 Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay idolised Shivaji as:

92 Mentioned by Bhupendranath Datta, quoted by Harisadhan Chattpadhyay, Amra Bangali, p. . 93 Ibid., pp. –. 94 Ibid., p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



a magnificent person. He was equally able in the art of war, as well as in political governance . . . Despite the turbulent political climate during that era, he established a kingdom. Though a few years after his death, his successors could not maintain intact the kingdom that he had established, it has to be admitted that Shivaji was the first to infuse a feeling of oneness among the people comprising the Maharashtriya jati, and made them have a feeling of independence . . . thus laying the foundation of the rise of his swajati.95

The same spirit of independence was sought in Bengal. As with the related theme of Aryan courage, it was defined not just in physical terms, but also in regard to codes of conduct. Such understandings of Aryan courage fed into Bengali regional and racial pride. Heroic history became an imaginary arena where the idea of an empowered ‘heroic’ Bengali jati was reworked to counter colonial ‘myths’ about Bengali effeminacy. It also offered a solace to the wounded ego of the literati who had to come to terms with colonial subjugation, educated unemployment and discrimination as a part of the colonial predicament and the changing social scenario in their own internal samaj. The Orientalist cliché that Bengal/India had slid off from a higher civilisational plane also influenced the literati’s attempts to elevate themselves. A rescue from the current, supposedly degraded condition seemed to lie in an association with Aryan heroic heritage and courage, and classical civilisational glory. In sub-regional historical accounts, therefore, links with the heroic history of Rajasthan and other sites famous for Aryan valour, formed a recurrent theme. Most often, this legendary Aryan heritage was claimed as a Bengali legacy too. Sometimes, interestingly, linkages of identity between heroic races such as the Rajputs and Marathas, and the Bengalis were projected in a way as to claim Bengali civilisational and cultural primacy over other ‘heroic’ races. A stone idol of a goddess in Ambar, the ancient capital of Jaipur in Rajasthan was supposedly taken from Bengal by Man Singh. According to legend this goddess was the famous Jashoresvari (the presiding deity of Jessore) during Pratapaditya’s reign. An article entitled “Ambarer Shiladebi” in Aitihasik Chitra claimed: Recent research shows that that the idol of this goddess was established by Kedar Ray, one of the Bar Bhuiyas of Bengal. This idol has been taken from Jessore to Rajasthan . . . We had written a letter about this. As a response to this letter, a professor of Jaipur College and Srijukta Nabakrishna Ray, a descendant of Raja Basanta Ray have expressed their views . . . Nabakrishna affirmed that the idol belonged to the famous royal family (Rays) of 95

Nilmoni Mukhopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas, pp. –.



chapter seven Jessore. This, he said, was mentioned in a poem by Bharatchandra. Abhoya Jasharesvari was none other than Shilamoyi.96

The article further asserted that the matter had been investigated by one Meghnad babu. He expressed his views in an article called “Bidyadhor”. On the basis of rare sources such as a Marwari record (dalil) of Bidyadhor’s bamsabali, he concluded that Ambar’s Shiladebi belonged to Kedar Ray.97 The engagement with a heroic history led to a search for exemplars of courage in Bengali history. Those cited for courage included Raja Basanta Ray and Pratapaditya, who belonged to the group of the famous Bar Bhuiyans, powerful chieftains of fifteenth and sixteenth century Bengal. The Bar Bhuiyans of Bengal who had fought against the Mughals were the heroes of a distinctively Bengali valiant past. They were originally samantas (local chieftains) renowned for their bravery. The most illustrious among them were the Rays of Jessore, especially Pratapaditya. An article on the local history of Faridpur mentioned that ancient relics found in Bhushana and Palong stations illuminated the glorious familial history of Mukunda Ray, Sangram Shah and Sitaram Ray. Sources such as Bikrampur’s Kathakangsha and Idilpurer Kathakangsha also referred to their heroic glory. The lore of Bengali heroism was then connected to a claim for civilisational glory. Kedar Ray joined hands with Isha Khan and declared war against Man Singh in , but they were defeated. Thereafter, Man Singh carried Kedar Ray’s presiding deity, Shilamoyi to Jaipur. The simultaneous preoccupation with traditionally ‘heroic’ races such as the Rajputs and Marathas, and with Bengali valour was noticeable in many tracts. Rajanikanta Gupta’s Arya Kirti, though focusing mainly on Rajputs, Sikhs and the Marathas under Shivaji, included the exploits of the Bengali hero Sitaram Ray of Jessore: Sitaram was an Uttarrarhiya Kayastha. His familial title was Biswas. He was born in a small village called Hariharnagar located east of the Madhumati river at the end of the seventeenth century . . . Sitaram dreamed of becoming a powerful and courageous hero. Shivaji, the saviour of the Maratha jati had mesmerised both the Hindus and the Muslims by his courage at a very early stage of his life. The illustrious regime of Ranjit Singh had led to a new dawn of glory in Punjab. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sitaram made Bengal proud by his courage.98 96 “Ambarer Shiladebi”, Aitihasik Chitra, Number  (Baishakh-Jyoishtha, ), pp. –. 97 Ibid. 98 Rajanikanta Gupta, Arya Kirti (Calcutta, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



Rajanikanta implicitly connected Aryan glory with pride in swadesh (own country). Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta has drawn attention to his valorisation of the Aryan quality of courage as especially exemplified in the acts and deeds of Rajputs such as Rana Kumbha, but has elided the nuances of how Rajanikanta also posited Aryan courage in the context of Bengali history.99 In this portrayal, a common thread connected the lives of heroic Indians and those Bengalis who had certain qualities, especially courage, gratitude, self-esteem and trustworthiness, considered ‘Aryan’.100 Other qualities also added to a people’s greatness— eloquence in speech, simplicity,101 adherence to the Vedas, epics and the puranas. Such courage helped salvage the esteem of a supposedly ‘weak’ people. In a narrative of heroism, the literati highlighted historical episodes of an even earlier era when exploits of Bengali heroes had brought foreign lands under their sway. Referring to a Ceylonese chronicle, Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay praised Bijoysinha, who had been banished from the kingdom of his father, Singhabahu. After enduring many hardships, Bijoysinha finally reached Ceylon, defeated the inhabitants and became the king. After his death, his brother’s son, Pandubash came to Ceylon from Bengal, and ascended the throne. Pandubash was the ancestor of the Ceylonese royal family, and because Ceylon was the kingdom of the Sinha family, it was called Sinhala.102 According to legend, Bijoysinha arrived in Ceylon in the year of Gautama Buddha’s death ( bc approximately), and, Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay concluded, “During that time, Aryan influence had spread over Bengal . . . and they braved the seas, and conquered foreign lands.”103 Bengali valour was celebrated in sub-regional histories as well. Anandanath Ray, the writer of the local history of Faridpur extolled the courage of Meghamiya, a prominent zamindar. He grafted local legends and ballads onto a heroic history of Bengal, where each local/sub-regional hero belonged to a common Bengali heroic family. Concluding the article on heroes of Faridpur, Anandanath Ray wrote, 99 See Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (unpublished thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, ), p. . 100 Rajanikanta Gupta, Arya Kirti, p. . 101 These qualities were mentioned by Tarinicharan Chattopadhyay, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. . 102 Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyay, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas, p. . 103 Ibid.



chapter seven Portraits of some Bengali heroes from the mid-sixteenth to the mideighteenth centuries were drawn in this article . . . These local heroes were our predecessors and Bengalis need to draw inspiration from them.104

These articles were popularised locally as well as at the all-Bengal level. The article on Faridpur heroes was read out in the monthly meeting of the Senhati Pitambar Library. Like Anandanath Ray, Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty discussed Bengali courage in a sub-regional context. In his tract Birbhum Rajbangsha, he depicted Birbhum as a site of combat between ‘uncivilised races’ and the people of Rarh, traditionally renowned for their heroism.105 The portrayal is reminiscent of W.W. Hunter’s graphic description of Aryan and non-Aryan conflict,106 which strongly influenced the literati’s distinction of Aryan from non-Aryan. Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty believed, further, that the Bengalis of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Birbhum were the wardens of the western gateway, and that they protected the wealth, status, and lives of the Aryans of lower Bengal.107 In a similar vein, Bholanath Chakraborty wrote that ancient Bengalis were extremely brave. For two thousand years many independent Hindu rulers such as Samudrasen and Chandrasen (of the era of the Mahabharata) ruled in Bengal. “Even at a later period, there were striking examples of individual valour . . . Pratapaditya, the king of Jessore, challenged the Mughal emperor Jahangir.”108 Even more crucial was the emphasis that Bholanath Chakraborty placed on evidence of courage (here meaning physical courage) among the ‘lower orders’ in Bengal. “The courage of Goalas and the Charals of the eastern region is known to all . . . they often fought on behalf of local zamindars.”109 The Kaibartas including the Halik and Jalik groups were a courageous people too. In  when Mahipal was the overlord of Bengal, two Kaibartas called Dibbok and Bhim were famous for their heroism.110 The quality of courage, therefore, was equally praised, whether among educated and aristocratic Bengalis, or among the ‘lower 104 Anandanath Ray, “Faridpurer Itihaser Ekangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, second year, Number  (Boishakh-Jyoishtha, ), pp. –. 105 Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty, Birbhum Rajbangsha (Calcutta ), p. . 106 W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal th edition (London: Smith, Elder and Co., ), p. . 107 Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty, Birbhum Rajbangsha, p. . 108 Bholanath Chakraborty, Banger Purba O Bartaman Abastha (Calcutta, ), pp. – . 109 Ibid., p. . 110 Upendranath Bhattacharya, Banger Bir Santan (reprinted Calcutta, ), pp. – .

from region to nation: the idea of india



orders’. This could act as a bond between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ of a jati. Many local legends of Bengal were about brave individuals from different rungs of society. Ashananda Dheki was one such legendary individual, who: attacked by robbers one night, defeated them and swam across the Ganga river. . . . He could fight for zamindars single-handedly and resolve their conflicts . . .. Waving a dheki [instrument used for threshing grains] he arrived in the middle of armed men, and wounded them . . . . Because he used to fight with a dheki he was popularly known as Ashananda Dheki.111

Ramdas Babu of Meteri was also famous for his incredible strength and courage. According to Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty, Babu Kirtichandra Chattopadhyay of Raragram near Barrackpore was also very strong, and, requested by the contemporary ruler of Burdwan, had once fought with a wild animal single-handedly, without any weapons.112

Aryan courage was thus part of the historical landscape in Bengal from ancient times. What needed to be developed in colonial times was jatiya character; and, as there had been antecedents of courage among Bengalis in the ancient and medieval period, could there not be a revival of that courage? Moreover, if Bengalis were to become a new, united jati linked to a wider pan-Indian Aryan identity, the distinguishing characteristics and qualities of Aryan-ness needed to be present in the contemporary context. Following this line of argument, the Bengali literati simultaneously stressed more recent examples of courage, and discussed which qualities should be developed to bring about samajik progress. It was a two-way process of forging unity—() a revival of Aryan qualities such as courage would connect Bengali history with a mainstream legendary Aryan past common to other ‘heroic’ Indians such as Marathas, Rajputs and Sikhs; and () inculcation of certain samajik qualities, such as those discussed by Rajnarain Basu in Se Kal ar E Kal,113 would make the Bengali samaj a model and a means for transiting from regional to national unity. To the quality of courage were added generosity, hospitality, selflessness, and righteous conduct.114 According to Mahimaniranjan, the racial character of the Bengalis in the past included the qualities of dharma, karma (righteous conduct), teja (strength), virjya (valour), 111

Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. . 113 See Rajnarain Basu, Se Kal ar E Kal (Calcutta, ). 114 These qualities were mentioned by Rajanikanta Gupta in Arya Kirti, p. , in connection with Rajsinha’s bravery. 112



chapter seven

strengthened by resources, riches, independence, self-esteem, and patriotism. They had the capacity to make sacrifices for their province and their country.115 Bengalis in the present samajik context needed to imbibe these qualities. Only then could samajik progress be linked to the agenda of a nationwide unity.

A Space for Integration: Inclusions within ‘Culturally Aryan’ As mentioned above, the literati problematised and negotiated the transition from a regional to a pan-Indian unity by situating their discourse on jati within the wider theme of an Aryan India. This involved a conceptual shift from race to culture, and thus provided a space for integrating ‘nonAryan’ ‘lower orders’ and non-Hindu communities such as the Muslims. The idea of a ‘virtual Aryan’, one who adhered to ‘Aryan’ practice and social customs, and accepted the epics and puranas, was deployed to negotiate the complex, conflicting and overlapping sets of loyalties that fragmented the region and the nation. The literati were torn by contradictory pulls between regional distinctiveness and national harmony. In a bid to come to terms with this internal turmoil, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay admitted that in India the urge to unite and the wish to segregate had both been at work: but the urge to unite is stronger . . . History reveals that that there has been a lot of jatiya disunity among Hindus, which has led to a segregative spirit, and political subjugation, and lack of independence . . . but it must be emphasised that there are some overarching similarities in samajik customs and norms all over India.116

The perception of such similarities can be seen to spring from the notion of cultural Aryan-ness, which situationally inducted non-Aryan and non-Hindu elements into a common cultural fold. The roots of this cultural accommodation were thought to have been present in the ancient period. According to Rabindranath Tagore, Cultural and social assimilations in the Buddhist period broke barriers between Aryan, non-Aryan, Brahman, non-Brahman, high caste, low caste . . . Most significantly, the Aryan and non-Aryan came within the same cultural orbit . . . This historical watershed [in the Buddhist era] led 115

Mahimaniranjan Chakraborty, Birbhum Rabangsha, p. . Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Jatiya Bhab”, Samajik Prabandha, in Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. . 116

from region to nation: the idea of india



to changes, which need to be re-evaluated to understand our “present era”. We have been prevented from knowing the nature of the changes in the Buddhist period because the British have placed emphasis on the Hinayana sect of Buddhism. Unlike the Mahayana sect, Hinayana expounds theoretical doctrines rather than emphasising a communion of heart among different people . . . The Mahayana sect popularised a creed and a stream of life within which flowed and melted various rituals, modes of worship, and religious beliefs. An analysis of the Mahayana shastras reveals an astonishing resemblance with the Hindu puranas. This similarity is due to the very nature of Buddhism, and also due to commingling with the nonVedic samaj in India . . . [which] provided the basis for the intermingling of jatis.117

Dharma, conceptualised as the basis of samaj, also fed into the scheme of cultural integrations. These reorientations and refractions of the meaning of ‘Aryan’ through the prism of dharma were connected to contemporary religious doctrines and beliefs. An article in Tattvabodhini Patrika in  envisaged an overarching “sadharan Hindudharma”, which was none other than the Brahmo dharma. This dharma would unite people of the Sakta, Vaishnava, Saiva, and Ganapatya sects (worshippers of mother goddesses such as Durga, and of Vishnu, Shiva, and Ganapati respectively). There was an interplay between the dharmik basis of samaj, cultural Aryan-ness, and Brahmo religious philosophy. It construed “sadharan Hindudharma” as: The ancient Indian dharma, the spread of which would create a mental and spiritual communion among all Indians. But this dharma could not be presented in a deviant form, because then, Indians would not follow it. The Buddhists had once spread a very different faith in India, but in a Hindu garb. Because of this, Buddhism had many followers. It has to be remembered that Brahmo dharma is not segregated from Hindu dharma. It is not an independent or breakaway creed. It is not even a wave on the sea of Hinduism, it is the sea itself.118

These reconfigurations necessitate a critical evaluation of the relationship between ‘Hindu’, ‘Aryan’ and ‘Bengali’. The discourse of nation grounded in a notion of samajik unity, articulated in a cultural-nationalist environment, was inevitably grounded in a religious and cultural idiom that was often Hindu, and which sought antecedents of unity and glory in a Hindu 117

Rabindranath Tagore, “Bharat Itihas Charcha”, Itihas, pp. –. Mentioned in an article entitled “Hindujatir Aikyasadhan”, Tattvabodhini Patrika (Jyoishtha, ), Number , printed in Benoy Ghosh (ed.), Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, – (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakash Bhaban, ), pp. – . 118



chapter seven

past. However, I seek to qualify Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta’s contention that it was a hegemonic, homogenised universalist discourse erasing differences between and across class, time and geographical regions.119 The jatiya identity was made more complete by multiple strands of evaluation, and varying layers of contingent attitudes, across social groups and periods, and in accordance with individual experiences, ideological shifts and circumstances, as is evident in the wide ranging meanings of ‘Hindu’ during this period. To Rajnarain Basu, the notion of Hinduness was subsumed within a cultural Aryan-ness that stressed belief in the puranas and adherence to the epics.120 In addition to these criteria, certain codes of samajik behaviour were stressed, such as folding hands to greet strangers and acquaintances, touching the feet of elders, and respecting parents and elders. There was also a conscious cultivation of the Bengali language especially in conversation. These guidelines were emphasised in a concrete way (as practice), or through an organisational framework such as the Hindu Mela,121 or as ideas in speeches122 and tracts123 (Hindu achar byabastha). Identity depended on behaviour more than birth. This reorientation of ‘Aryan’ as culture made it possible, within a samajik framework, to blur the polarity between Hindu and non-Hindu. The main concern is not whether ‘Aryan’ could at all be taken to mean ‘Hindu’,124 but to trace the intricacies of the literati’s equation of ‘Hindu’, ‘Aryan’, and ‘Bengali’ in terms of their ideas on what ‘Aryan’ implied. In mid and late nineteenth century Bengal, it is undeniable that ‘Hindu’ was equated with ‘Aryan’. This was due to the specific historical situation, characterised by the colonial predicament, and the literati’s desire to elevate themselves in the eyes of the ruler. The impact 119

Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (unpublished thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, ), pp. , . 120 Rajnarain Basu’s speech, “Hindu Dharmer Sreshthattva”, was delivered at the National Association in . He also gave a speech on this in the fourth meeting of the Jatiya Sabha. See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri ), p. . 121 The Hindu Mela stressed these behavioural codes. It also emphasised the use of the Bengali language. Especially relevant in this context is Rajnarain Basu’s Anushthanpatra, . See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 122 Examples include Rajnarain’s speeches such as “Hindu Dharmer Sreshthattva”, in the fourth meeting of the Jatiya Sabha. See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 123 Tracts on samajik behaviour included Gopal Chandra Majumdar’s Niti Darpan (Calcutta, ). 124 According to Gavin Flood, ‘Hindu’ was actually a blend of Aryan and non-Aryan. See G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –.

from region to nation: the idea of india



of Orientalist views, glorifying a classical Aryan age, and responses to the Aryan/non-Aryan dichotomy of colonial writers such as W.W. Hunter and H.H. Risley were also relevant to such equations. But during this time, ‘Hindu’ had multiple and wide-ranging connotations grounded in culture. Cultural Aryan-ness contextually intersecting with the wide-ranging connotations of ‘Hindu’ made possible the inclusion of neighbouring ethnicities, occupationally ‘low’ groups, and even Muslims and their culture, within a Hindu context. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay for instance mentioned that some Muslims of good families could be called Arya jatiya.125 Of course, the exclusion or inclusion of Muslims and other groups was dependent on various other criteria too, as discussed in earlier chapters.126 But it is important to note that, as well as defining ‘Aryan’ ideals of conduct, the literati also grafted folk and non-Aryan elements on to their narrative of the nation. Much later works took up this theme. Dineshchandra Sen127 and Niharranjan Ray prioritised ‘folk’ tradition over Aryan Brahmanism in the evolution of religion in Bengal. In rural Bengal, they claimed, outside the boundary of a village, there was a special place designated as sthan, where local village deities were worshipped. These were none other than the deities of the ancient pre-Aryan village communities, who were gradually accepted by Brahmanical society. The deities included Sitala, Manasa, Banadurga, Shashti, Chandi, Kali, and Siva.128 A cultural heterogeneity, which contextually acquired varying overtones, therefore informed the nationalist consciousness of the Bengali literati. This multistranded discourse on nation underpinned by cultural Aryan-ness needs to be situated within a historical process, rather than being regarded as emerging suddenly in the late nineteenth century context of colonial rule. The argument that nationalism, being implicated in the western post-enlightenment rationalism (and therefore colonialism), cannot be anti-colonial beyond a certain point, claims that only “traditional precolonial communalism can avoid its ensnaring discourse”. 125 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, “Samajik Prakriti: Hindu Samaj”, Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, p. . 126 The question of inclusion/exclusion of Muslims has been dealt with in Chapter II. The Bengali literati’s viewpoints relating to the ‘lower orders’ and neighbouring ethnicities have been discussed in Chapter IV and V respectively. 127 See Dineshchandra Sen, Purbabanga Geetika (Calcutta, ). 128 Niharranjan Ray, History of the Bengali People, Ancient Period translated by John W. Wood (Calcutta: Orient Longman, ), p. .



chapter seven

This somewhat a-historical analysis presupposes a contradiction between ‘national’ and ‘modern’,129 and misses the sense of historical realities and embedded continuities in nationalist discourse. But the ‘national’, to use Rajat Kanta Ray’s words, was “the modern as well as the old, fused into an ongoing emotional transformation.”130 The emotions, identities and notions of the premodern “felt community” or “community of sentiment”131 intertwined with ‘modern’ ‘western’ political and social theories, to produce a complex discourse on identity. In the formulation of this new orientation, I have argued, late nineteenth century samaj was not merely an archaic relic, or a sequestered ur-traditional world of precolonial communalism, but a lived reality, reinterpreted in the colonial milieu. In particular, its contradictions were diluted as well as expressed in reorientations and redefinitions of ‘Aryan’ and ‘Hindu’. The notion of a nation, reworked in a samajik framework, was not only articulated in emotional terms, in the form of inchoate longings of a western educated, mainly high-caste, professional literati. It found concrete expression in print, in speeches, and in the organisational network of the Hindu Mela.132 In such expressions of unity, emotion and reason intersected. Much of the complexity and ambiguity in the late colonial discourse on nation, grounded in ideas of samajik unity, sprang from the fact that the realms of imagination and of practice did not always converge. While the literati dreamed of incorporating many ‘non-Hindus’, such as Muslims, and the Hindu ‘lower orders’,133 in their scheme of a pan-Bengali and

129 The contradiction between ‘national’ and ‘modern’ in Subaltern historiography has been referred to by Rajat Kanta Ray. The national was not always secular and modern, the popular and democratic quite often traditional and even fanatically antimodern. See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. ; and compare with Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 130 Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History, p. . 131 Rajat Kanta Ray has recently argued that the prehistory of every national movement lies in emotions, identities and notions of the premodern “felt community”. A study of the community of sentiment and the ideology of nationalism is necessary to understand the historical process that has produced the modern world community of nation-states. Ray mentions that Max Weber discussed “community of sentiment” in Gesammelte Augsaetze zur Sozialpolitik (posth. ). See Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. , , . 132 Details about the organisational network of the Hindu Mela have been discussed in the Introduction to the book and in Chapter II. 133 Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay deified India as Adhi Bharati Devi, and hoped that in this idealised India, the Muslims would also be included. The description of this unity is

from region to nation: the idea of india



pan-Indian samajik unity, they did not do so except occasionally, or in particular contexts. Such contextual inclusions of ‘others’ demonstrate that the realms of a social utopia and a world of lived-in experience confluenced at a complex interactive level. What made their notion of a nation overarching and encompassing so that they could imagine a Bharatbarshiya samaj? It is here that the interplay between reality and utopia comes in. The idea of the nation grounded in samaj and based on inclusions through cultural Aryan-ness was not merely an imagined ideological and cultural entity floating in a vacuum de-linked from material, sociological and experiential contexts. The very ways in which the region and the nation were sought to be connected demonstrated this. The idea of India based on this linkage was not only an emotive and ideological space, but also a historic-geographic entity. It was an index of how the discourse on cultural nationhood operated within a wider material and political nexus, spanning associational movements of nationalism seeking to create a political unit. Cultural nationhood entwined in samaj strove not just to create an imagined India but also debated and problematised the issue of its territoriality. This was expressed in a quest for the origins of desh and the tracing of its lineaments. The idea of desh traversing and transiting the multiple connotations of village, province/region and country had fluid territorial boundaries, but a limited-ness too. The dual configuration of desh as region and desh as nation underscored the fluid territorial connotations of nationhood seen through the prism of samajik unity. Unlike certain Tamil nationalist ideologies and debates which projected the region-as-nation,134 this interconnection between Bengal and Bharatbarsha underlined the fact that the region was an essential component in a broader Indian nation. This set apart the Bengali redefinition of nationhood from other contemporaneous formulations of identity in India. As mentioned in the Introduction, identity debates in Maharashtra reworked notions of swadeshabhiman and deshbhakti implying rooted-ness to a particular territory, which drew inspiration given in Pushpanjali (Calcutta, ). See Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, Introduction by Promothanath Bisi, p. . In Svapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas (Hugli, ), Bhudeb regarded Muslims as foster children of Mother India. See Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar, pp. –. The protagonists of the Hindu Mela, such as Manamohan Basu, also hoped for the unity of all Indian jatis. See Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Hindu Melar Itibritta, p. . 134 See Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).



chapter seven

from Shivaji’s memorialisation of a Maratha homeland.135 The notion of the Tamil inam136 also implied a geographical unit of language. In various parts of India, the rooted-ness of present identities in the past revolved around the axes of polity and territory. As evident from the works of Romila Thapar, Hermann Kulke and R.S. Sharma, precolonial state formation was also linked to the idea of territoriality.137 Bengal offered a contrasting picture, where the idea of an ordered and harmonious society had more fluid territorial connotations. The notion of flowing and incorporative borders transcending local and regional boundaries afforded a means to approximate the idea of India (desh as nation). This, in a sense, set a limit to the de-territorialised nature of nationhood in Bengal.138 Desh (as region and nation) was conceptualised through a dual process of rethinking its political/territorial and its cultural boundaries. Though cultural boundaries were prioritised, a search for the physical and political boundaries of desh (as region) was evident in various local histories of Bengal. While emphatically writing a ‘social’ or samajik history of Bengal Durgachandra Sanyal delved into the origins of Bengal as a clearly demarcated, administrative and political unit. He wrote that the Muslims occupied the five rajyas (realms) of the Gouriya Pancharajya. Uniting Magadha and Mithila they created a separate subah, while the remaining four rajyas formed the subah of Bengal.139 The next major change occurred when colonial cartography mapped a new Bengal, sharply demarcating it from other regions and provinces. What is remarkable is that this idea of Bengal as a geographic-political-historical-territorial entity was paralleled by, and connected to similar ideas about India as expressed in travel accounts and histories of Bharatbarsha written during the second

135 The terms swadeshabhiman, deshbhakti and deshhitakari dated back to the early nineteenth century, and were cognate with older concepts which implied rooted-ness to a particular territory. See C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 136 Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam, “Is There a Tamil Race?” in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia, p. . 137 See Romila Thapar, From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the Mid-first Millennium bc in the Ganga Valley (Bombay: Oxford University Press, ); and Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (London: Routledge, ), mentioned by Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, p. . 138 Though the idea of desh set a limit to the fluid boundaries so that the idea of Bharatbarsha could be approximated, there were other wider ramifications of de-territorialised nationhood. See Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Delhi: Permanent Black, ), pp. –. 139 Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ), p. .

from region to nation: the idea of india



half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century.140 The function and uniqueness of a history of culture and attachment lay in the fact that though it underscored the trajectory of territorialised identity, it simultaneously demonstrated that this could not effectively explain the intricacies of ideas about identity and nationhood evolving within the framework of samaj. The agenda of recreating a collective self (nationhood) revisited the question of jati and desh from the angle of samajik unity and a history of a shared culture, which drew different borders than those set by the colonial raj. Desh was reified in terms of samajik and cultural boundaries. This underpinned the conception of a greater Bengal as part of a composite cultural zone encompassing entire eastern India drawing on ancient ideals of cultural unity. The idea of Pancha Gour as the synergetic fountainhead of a common culture was especially glorified. This notion illustrates how in the preolonial period too, culture and polity intersected in conceptualisations of wider territorial units beyond the region. In this sense, desh did not signify only Bengal but in an implicit sense included those areas of northern and eastern India which had formed part of Pancha Gour, as well as other areas (such as Kamrup in Assam) which had the same elements of a shared culture. Pancha Gour was not merely a cultural region, but also a unity of distinct territories ruled by a common king, the Panchagouresvar. The premodern desh (including Pancha Gour), glimpsed and reified in terms of cultural identity, acted as an inspirational background for imagining a greater Bengal141 during the late colonial period, which transcended the political/administrative borders set by the raj. Despite the emphasis on incorporative borders forged through a common culture, desh, in both 140

Kumkum Chatterjee, “Discovering India: Travel, History and Identity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century India”, in Daud Ali (ed)., Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 141 The idea of greater Bengal and the incorporative boundaries forged by notions of samajik unity and cultural Aryanism seems to place the conviction of a rigidly territorialised Bengal in some doubt. Reece Jones has argued recently that the territorialisation of a Hindu-based vision of a national homeland was the key process in the development of communal difference. Once the boundaries of the homeland were delineated and the homeland was linked to the Hindu history of the population, the non-Hindu communities became ‘others’, which initiated a contestation of hegemony within the territory. See Reece Jones, “Religion, Identity and Homeland in Bengal: A Territorial Interpretation of Religious Nationalism”, South Asia Research, Vol. , No.  (Sage Publications: ), pp. –. I seek to qualify this view by arguing that notions of fluid and incorporative boundaries of a greater Bengal, and inclusive strands in the literati’s ‘Hindu’ discourse (Muslims were not denigrated in all contexts, and some voices stressed plurality) co-existed alongside conceptions of communal otherness.



chapter seven

premodern and modern contexts was not completely de-territorialised or a fluid cultural space. This demonstrates how samaj (socio-cultural unities) and rashtra (the trajectory of polity and political processes) intersected in the refiguring of desh both as region and as nation.142 The intersection indicated the way in which samajik unity entwined in cultural Aryan-ness and a shared cultural heritage negotiated the issue of territoriality even while setting inclusive cultural boundaries. The conceptual framework outlining an eastern Indian unity (extending the idea of desh as region) was an intermediate step in the conceptualisation of India (desh as nation).

142 The samaj-rashtra connection was implicated in the configuration of desh as region (through emphases on the incorporative nature of sub-regional caste samajs) and this was related to the idea of desh as nation. This forms part of the argument that nationhood in Bengal and the forging of an Indian nation occurred in a conceptual site where samaj, jati and desh interlocked. Samaj was the central conceptual category which could mediate the fragmentations of the jati, and link the jati to the desh. See Swarupa Gupta, “Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal”, Studies in History, Vol. , No. , New Series (New Delhi: Sage Publications, December ), pp. –.

CONCLUSION

While emphasising continuity through change, this book indicates the late nineteenth century as constituting a transformative era when earlier inchoate and fragmentary ideas about cultural identity were woven into a discourse on nationhood. This discourse needs to be located against the ideological backdrop of forces unleashed by the late colonial situation, especially the literati’s relation to the colonial power-knowledge nexus. Debate has centred around the question: Were the literati’s opinions and ideas an “autonomous assertion”, or merely echoes of dominant western political discourses? To claim that Bengal’s indigenous elites adopted a “derivative discourse” is to deny agency to the colonial intelligentsia, and to apply to them the Saidian views regarding the overwhelming nature of post-Enlightenment colonial power and knowledge. Such arguments also ignore the complexities and variations in indigenous domains, which are seen as being without internal tensions.1 This book has instead sought to show that not all aspects of colonial knowledge were accepted. For instance, denigrations of Indian society and allegations about being a history-less people were dismissed as kalamka.2 Thus the “colonised subject” was not constituted by colonialism alone. Through redefinitions and intersections between samaj as a historical community and as an idea-in-practice, the literati addressed the ontological question of being and becoming a nation. This imagination of a nation in cultural terms focusing on samaj implied the autonomy of the colonised subject not merely in education, art, literature, domesticity and religion (supposedly ‘private’ domains sealed off from the ‘public’ arena). As this book has sought to demonstrate, rashtra and samaj being interrelated domains, and samaj being inter-traversed by Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft identities,3 the supposed polarity between ‘public’/

1 Sumit Sarkar has contended that this was not so. See Sarkar, “Orientalism Revisited: Saidian Moods in the Writing of Modern Indian History”, Oxford Literary Review, (), Vol. xvi, pp. –. 2 Mentioned in Chapter II. 3 Mentioned in Chapter III.



conclusion

‘private’ and ‘material’/ ‘spiritual’ became rather muted in the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal. The inchoate, early civil society in Bengal (from ) could not be fitted into the classic Gesellschaft mould. While some societies established for the cultivation of science or for setting up journals and newspapers used a principle of open access, there were also other extremely powerful associations based on ascriptive, “gemeinschaftlich loyalties of caste, homeland or language.” The Kayastha Sabha, a highly successful caste association, demonstrated that the indigenous elite did not conform to the functionalist norm of choosing between consistently traditional or consistently modern forms of behaviour.4 Juxtaposed to intersections of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft criteria in earlier historical associations (for instance the Jessore Samaj of the sixteenth century, which though originally based on ascriptive loyalties of a single caste came to include members of other castes too), examples of Gemeinschaft loyalties in late nineteenth and early twentieth century associations offer insights into samajik connections between the past and the present. The intersection of samaj/culture and rashtra/polity was evident in applications of samaj to issues of unity in Bengal and in the context of India. While the emphasis was on the imagination of a cultural unity, the Bengali Hindu literati during the second half of the nineteenth century by no means believed in a cultural unity that was de-territorialised (without political unities and boundaries). As mentioned in Chapter V and VII, they idealised the unity of Pancha Gour and applied it to their agenda of samajik unity in late colonial Bengal. Pancha Gour was not merely a cultural region encompassing the whole of eastern India, but also a unity of distinct territories ruled by a common king, the Panchagouresvar. Thus it is difficult to accept, without qualification, the idea that the “universalism of Brahmanism directed the attention of Hindu rulers . . . towards a de-territorialised cosmic order” and provided a framework of a cultural community, but did not produce a conflation of culture and polity necessary to the emergence of nations.5 Nor is it possible to agree that 4 See Sudipta Kaviraj, “In Search of Civil Society” in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . 5 Ainslee Embree has contended that Brahmanism directed the attention of Hindu rulers from political goals towards a de-territorialised cosmic order. See Ainslee Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to  (New York: Columbia University Press, ), pp. , . Embree’s views have been referred to by Prasenjit Duara, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China”, in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of

conclusion



prior to the Muslim invasion of Bengal in the thirteenth century there was no idea of a Bengali regional identity, as claimed by Barrie M. Morrison, referring to the division of Bengal into units such as Varendra, Kotivarsha, and Dandabhukti, each having a distinctive political history.6 Viewed in overtly political or administrative terms this may perhaps be partially true, but if identity is conceptualised primarily in cultural terms (so that administrative and political boundaries were of less consequence though not entirely irrelevant), a notion of a cultural Bengal (including areas even beyond the limits of Gour) did exist. This unity (Pancha Gour) was moreover, as mentioned above, not merely a cultural entity because its political unity was personified in a monarchical presence. In the specific social-cultural milieu of late colonial Bengal the literati undoubtedly prioritised a history of culture over a quest for a “subcontinental empire” or for a “polity of ancient origins”.7 They connected regions when they imagined a Bengali and a Bharatbarshiya Samaj. They did so through an emphasis on the cultural bonding of pilgrimages, devotional cults, religion and language (that remained entwined in the notion of cultural Aryan-ness) as well as through actualities of travel, observance of specific social codes of conduct, and a world of lived experience. Their discourse, prioritising samajik and cultural identities over political ones, nevertheless informed a wider process of imagining the nation through other discourses, admittedly more political. This book has attempted to demonstrate how different aspects of the literati’s discourse on identity both in relation to ‘others’ (‘lower orders’ in Bengal, contiguous ethnicities, and other Indians) and the ‘self ’ (the regional self) reflected a deployment of specific elements of samaj. In the case of the ‘lower orders’ and the contiguous ethnicities, the specific elements of samaj especially underlined in matters of inclusion/exclusion were culture, and the degree of civilisation (sabhyata) defined to mean cultural Aryan-ness subsuming the adherence to customs and conduct deriving from dharma. The role of samaj as a moral regulator intertwin-

Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India (New Delhi: Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Gyan Publishing House, ). 6 Barrie M. Morrison, “Region and Sub-Region in Pre-Muslim Bengal” in David Kopf (ed.), Bengali Regional Identity (Michigan: Michigan State University, ), pp. –, – . 7 The Rudolphs referred to the idea of a subcontinental empire and a polity of ancient origins. See Rudolph and Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. .



conclusion

ing with the notion of “Hindu dharma” was implicated in the literati’s idea of ‘proper conduct’ as applied to the ‘others’. Another major element of samajik unity, samanjashya (the idea of creating unity not by suppressing difference but assimilating it into a well-ordered scheme), juxtaposed to aikya (unity), situated within contexts of atmiyata and a wider discourse on cultural Aryan-ness, fed into the analytic grid of the regionnation interconnection. The discourse was limited because of the absence of an interactive process of significant depth, scale and uniformity between the Bengali Hindu literati and the ‘others’ they sought to define, classify, and co-opt. The concept of cultural Aryan-ness too, as it was applied to these ‘others’, had inherent limitations. Aryan-ness of this type was oriented to ideas about a religious system imagined to have preserved in India a sense of national unity. To intellectuals such as Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, it signified a system of values emanating from rules prescribed in the Smritis.8 Social cohesion was seen as an attribute of the family system of the Hindus, and certain familial norms of respect to parents and elders, and a code of conduct inculcating purity, non-attachment and selflessness was valorised and applied to individuals and groups in the literati’s scheme of inclusion and exclusion. That these values and codes were embedded in a Brahmanical system is undeniable. The logic of cultural Aryan-ness was that the code of conduct prescribed for the Brahmans was worthy of emulation by everyone else.9 The rooted-ness of cultural Aryan-ness in a Brahmanical value system limited its application. When ‘lower’ nonBrahmans were included in the samajik scheme because of their adherence to a ‘culturally Aryan’ code of conduct, they occupied an inferior position in the social hierarchy. To the limitation of cultural Aryan-ness as a system was added the restrictive impact of social forces limiting the literati’s outlook. They were situated within an upper caste nexus of social relationships and could not elude the class dimensions emanating from their social situations and high-caste affiliations. Criteria for inclusion and exclusion were set by the literati and not by the ‘lower orders’. But as demonstrated, the prevailing view that the voice of the latter were uniformly stilled or echoed the ‘dominant’ narrative of the western

8 Mukundadeb Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb Charit,  Volumes (Calcutta, –), p. . See Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . 9 Notes in Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Diary for  April , quoted in Bhudeb Charit, Volume III, p. . This has been mentioned in ibid.

conclusion



educated, high caste, professional literati must be qualified. The discourse on ‘lower orders’ was not a homogenised, hegemonic high-Hindu metanarrative which uniformly appropriated (on its own unilateral terms) or excluded/denigrated the lower ‘others’. There were intermediate layers in the discourse and multiple strands which qualified models of simplistic oppositions/exclusions/contestations. The limitations of the discourse applied also in regard to specific groups among the Oriyas and the Assamese. The evaluations of these groups remained enmeshed in influences emanating from the class dimensions of the literati. Naturally, the ‘lower orders’ among the neighbouring ethnicities such as gardeners, palanquin bearers and coolies were accorded a low place in the literati’s samajik scheme. The literati’s derision of (for example) educated Assamese babus was explained by their argument that the rise of a western-educated, professional, high-caste Bengali group (themselves) had not been matched by the emergence of similar groups in Assam or Orissa. To the criteria of cultural Aryan-ness, therefore, was added education as a hallmark of social status, an index of changing social status patterns. Moreover, elite orientation was not the sole reference point for understanding the intricacies of the discourse. Attitudes towards ‘others’ were also related to differences of group and individual experiences, belief in specific ideological currents, and personal contact with the ‘others’ who were being defined and classified. All these sets of parameters were crucial in influencing attitudes toward the neighbouring ethnicities. A study of ‘primary’ literature relating to the Oriyas and Assamese reveals that the writers were drawn from different social groups (while belonging in a broader sense to the western-educated professional literati). Undoubtedly, individual and group experiences, travel in neighbouring areas, the influence of Brahmo philosophy (most of the writers were Brahmo), and personal interaction with certain social groups among the neighbouring people accounted for subtle differences in evaluating various social sections among the Oriyas, Assamese, Manipuris and Cacharis. Hence this book does not contend that opinion was monolithic and homogeneous. Rather, it was a complex mosaic. However, it is possible to trace certain identifiable strands that were common to different groups. An overview of the criteria for inclusion in a re-imagined samaj admits that some among the ‘others’ were necessarily excluded. This limited the literati’s conception of nationhood. Indeed, it may be relevant to ask: What made their notion of a nation overarching and encompassing so



conclusion

that they could imagine a Bharatbarshiya samaj? It is here that the interplay between reality and utopia comes in. To the literati, identity was a matter of re-writing history in a way that studied not only what had been, but also what could have been, and (as an extension of this idea) what could be. The borders were blurred between the literati’s high caste, western-educated, professional samaj, the Bengali samaj including some among the ‘lower’ others in Bengal, and other samajs of India (including those of the neighbouring ethnicities). Such overlapping boundaries, and the intersection of multiple identities within larger, more unifying structures permitted the conceptualisation of a utopic swadesh that would ideally include all srenis (groups, classes). As articulated in the Hindu Mela, this notion of including all srenis implied inclusions of ‘lower’ groups and communal ‘others’ such as the Muslims. As the specific social-cultural climate of late colonial Bengal prioritised Hindu cultural identity, the imagination of unity occurred within the framework of cultural Aryanness which occluded a uniform valorisation and inclusion of a composite Indo-Islamic cultural heritage. The literati were unable to include many Muslims or most of the ‘lower others’ through actual social interaction. But within a predominantly ‘Hindu’ discourse, through multiple voices stressing plurality in specific contexts, the arraignment of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ moved beyond familiar and continuing oppositional frames of (Muslim) denigration and (Hindu) glory. These perspectives reflect the fact that within specific limitations, the literati’s notion of samaj retained a space for inclusivity. The deployment of specific aspects of unity entwined in samaj helped realise a wider Bharatbarshiya identity. The reinvention of the indigenous therefore did not remain confined to the creation of a cultural self-image of the Bengalis that did more to establish only a regional identity of Bengal. The nuances and modes of intersection between Bengali (regional) and Indian (Bharatbarshiya) samajs as analysed in this book qualifies David Kopf ’s view: Bengalis are perhaps justifiably proud of their achievements in language, literature, the arts and revolutionary techniques. Though Bengalis are by no means agreed to which era best reflects the distinctive quality of Bengali culture, they seem to agree that Bengal is the chosen setting of rebirth and revitalization on the subcontinent . . . this Bengali pride of heritage should suggest a pronounced regional identity.10

10

See David Kopf, Editor’s Preface in David Kopf (ed.), Bengali Regional Identity, p. i.

conclusion



This book has sought to demonstrate the specific ways in which the transition from region to nation was accomplished in the discourse on samaj and jati.11 Conceptualisations of the region as a part of a wider national whole were enmeshed with a unique self-other relationship where ideas about identity flowed out from the samajik self of Bengal to embrace wider ideas of pan-Indian unity. Knowing the ‘other’ was a means of knowing the Bengali self. It informed a process of two-way interaction (between the self and the other) revolving around the themes of comparison, contrast and connection. Bipin Chandra Pal overcame the ideological obstacle to the integration of self/other (Bengal/Bharatbarsha) by emphasising that a meaningful pattern could be woven from the many ways in which the self was differentiated from the ‘other’ in various provinces of India. In other words the self and the ‘other’ could be connected at specific levels in the idea of a national samaj. Further than this, the quest for a Bengali identity was being located within a wider discourse of a pan-Indian unity; it seems to have been an attempt to discover cultural ‘others’ in the self. As Richard Shusterman has pointed out, Sometimes these others are already deeply there in one’s . . . self . . . , but sometimes they are lurking more in the margins as potential dimensions waiting to be incorporated into the self.12

The discourse on nationhood in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal prioritising samajik and cultural identity should not be viewed as isolated from other discourses (contemporaneous and subsequent) and movements concerned with identity. The valorisation of samaj later intertwined with the “constructive Swadeshi” trend during the movement against the partition of Bengal. Constructive Swadeshi included autonomous self help efforts in indigenous enterprise, education and village organisation. The legacy of late nineteenth and early twentieth century notions of samajik unity was developed by later historians too, some of whom overcame its limitations (due to the social and economic situations of the literati in the late nineteenth century). Dineshchandra Sen and Niharranjan Ray widened the basis of samajik integration by including low castes, common people, and attempting to write a people’s history through a re-appraisal of Vaishnava 11

See Chapter VII for details. Richard Shusterman, “Understanding the Self ’s Others”, in Chhanda Gupta and D.P. Chattopadhyay (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond (Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, ), p. . 12



conclusion

traditions, studies of ecological and economic conditions, caste and class structures, statecraft, religion, culture and everyday life.13 The contributions of late nineteenth century samajik historians were acknowledged by eminent social historians of postcolonial Bengal, including Benoy Ghosh and Sudhir Kumar Mitra. Benoy Ghosh’s depiction of samajik forces over historical eras in a Brahman-centred social system, their interplay and changes, and the influence of other factors as keys to social status, drew upon late nineteenth century social history perspectives. He indicated the last years of the Hindu yuga (late Sena rule during the thirteenth century) as a turning point in Brahmanical values and their application to samaj.14 His account had links with late nineteenth century samajik history in its prioritisation of the Adisur legend and the resuscitation of Brahmanism in an era of social decline. Social realities of nineteenth century Bengal were also grafted onto his explanation of samajik change. Eighteenth century Bengali samaj was very different from its later counterpart (in the second half of the nineteenth century). It was (Ghosh claimed) a samaj where self-earned wealth and education had nothing to do with the improvement of status, which depended on hereditary occupations and ancestral wealth. Trade, business, profession, religious rites, customs and activities were under the hegemony of familial heritage and not related to personal wish.15 Grafting late nineteenth century samajik history on to theoretical viewpoints and social actualities with western theoretical perspectives,16 Benoy Ghosh contrasted eighteenth century stagnation to the ‘modern’ dynamism in a ‘new’ urban samaj. The crucial point about this modernity was that it constituted an evolving context and frame for reconsiderations/reorientations of ‘traditions’ of samajik unities, and was not a de-linked, sudden turning point of change, born and fashioned through the colonial encounter, during which identity discourses inevitably followed ‘western’ intellectual trajectories. Comparisons between late nineteenth and early twentieth century sub-regional histories and postcolonial local histories illuminate links and continuities that afford a better understanding of the deployment of sociological techniques in mid twentieth century samajik texts. Benoy 13 See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. 14 Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, ), p. . 15 Ibid. 16 Benoy Ghosh referred to Sorokin and Zimmerman, Principles of Rural Urban Sociology (New York, ). See ibid.

conclusion



Ghosh’s sociological technique connecting discrete historical events and cultural aspects through a study of cultural traits in a cultural area,17 can be linked to lineages of Nagendranath Basu’s Bardhamaner Itihas and Jogendranath Gupta’s Bikrampurer Itihas. These prioritised microhistories of parganas which were seen as emblematic of a people’s history and as supporting a wider idea of history oriented to creating a jati. Such perspectives were reflected in Benoy Ghosh’s writing of history using local sources, and with a local focus.18 The discourse on nationhood viewed through the prism of samaj drew on a historical retrospective, being located in a long tradition of community consciousness. It also contained possibilities for the future, for it was situated in an interactive arena where the past, present and future of the jati intersected to produce a complex notion of the nation which informed a continually evolving process of revisiting questions of identity. By rescuing the agency of the colonial intelligentsia from the ensnaring discourses of colonial disciplinary power which haunt postcolonial realities and predicaments, this book has outlined a different paradigm for recalibrating the ways in which ‘colonial’ stereotypes, and strategies of segregation continue to shape postcolonial identities. Fragmented communities, continuing motifs of caste as a symbolic site of hegemony and hierarchy, and the predicament of ethnic separatism and subnationalisms (often seen as colonial legacies) are perpetuating the predicament of an “India against itself.” By looking beyond the familiar frame of seeing these categories as shaped primarily and even solely by a relatively recent encounter with colonialism, a different interpretative pathway may open. By situating identity issues and categories within a longer ontological development of nationhood deriving both from fluid precolonial pasts, as well as early and late colonial discourses, the perspective of samaj may open new analytic ground for reconsidering central identity-categories playing crucial roles in shaping postcolonial politics, and moving beyond the predicament of fragmentation.

17

See Benoy Ghosh, Paschimbanger Sanskriti (Calcutta: Pustak Prakashak, ),

p. . 18 In writing local histories Benoy Ghosh also drew upon western theoretical viewpoints. He referred to Caroline F. Ware (ed.), The Cultural Approach to History (New York: Columbia University Press, ), and Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Culture (London: Routledge, ). See ibid., p. .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources Government Proceedings and Papers Allen B.C., Assam District Gazetteers, Kamrup, Volume IV (Allahabad: Government Press, ) [Seen in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library, London for studying official attitudes toward the culture and history of neighbouring ethnicities, especially about divisions between Bengal and her neighbours and references to ancient Sanskrit texts] Gait, E.A., Census of India, Volume I (Shillong: Assam Advertiser Press, ) ———, The Census of India, , Assam, Volume II (Shillong: Assam Secretariat Press, ) [Seen in the British Library, London for studying official attitudes toward the culture and history of Assam] Hunter W.W., A Statistical Account of Bengal,  Parganas and Sundarbans, Volume I (London: Trubner and Co., ) [Seen in the SOAS Library, London because this source is useful for understanding quantitative arguments about sociological categories] ———, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. X (London: Trubner and Co., ) Mackenzie, Alexander, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of Bengal (Calcutta: Home Office Department Press, ) O’Donnell C.J., The Census of India, , The Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories, Volume V (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ) [Seen in the SOAS Library, London for studying official arguments about enumeration and re-definition of sociological categories] O’Malley L.S.S., The Census of India, , Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Volume V (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ) [Seen in the SOAS Library for understanding the basis of colonial distinctions between Bengal and neighbouring areas] Report on Native Newspapers for the Fortnight Ending the  April, , Number  (Fort William, June ) [Seen in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. It provided official details about the education of ‘lower orders’ in small towns and villages, and the attitude of the indigenous literati toward such issues] Risley, H.H., Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary, Volume I (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, ) [Seen in the SOAS Library, London for understanding quantitative arguments about sociological categories]



bibliography

Private Papers and Diaries Chattopadhayay, Ramananda, Private Papers, obtained from Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi Shastri, Shibnath, Private Papers, obtained from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta Journals and Serial Publications English Amrita Bazar Patrika () [Seen in the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta] Dawn (–) [Seen in Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi] Hindu Patriot () [Seen in the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta] National Paper (–) [Seen in the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta] Bengali Aitihasik Chitra (–, –) Alochana () Arya Darshan (–) Bangadarshan (–, –) Bharati (, –) Grambartaprakasika () Hindu Darpan () Janmabhoomi (–) Madhyastha (–) Nabya Bharat (–) Nadia Darpan () Pradeep (–) Rahasya Sandarbha (–, –) Sadhana (–) Som Prakash (, , ) Tattvabodhini Patrika () Utsaha (–, –) Vividartha Sangraha () [All of the above were seen in the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, except Rahasya Sandarbha and Utsaha, which were seen in the National Library Rare Book Section, Annex Building, Calcutta]

bibliography



Directories and Dictionaries English Bengali Library Yearly Report () [Seen in the National Library, Calcutta] Pamphlets, Books and Articles English Bose, Shib Chunder, The Hindoos As They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal (Calcutta, London: Thacker, Spink, ) Dalton, E.T., Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta: Government Press, ) Dasgupta, J.N., Bengal in the Sixteenth Century (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ) Datta, Romeshchandra, The Literature of Bengal (London, Calcutta, ) Elphinstone, Montstaurt, History of India, Hindu and Mahommedan Periods (Bombay: Union Press, ) Gait, E.A., A History of Assam (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, ) Grierson, G.A., The Languages of India (Calcutta: Linguistic Survey of India, , reprinted from Government of India Press, ) Hunter, W.W., A Brief History of the Indian People (London: Trubner and Co., ) ———, Annals of Rural Bengal (London: , reprinted, th edition, Smith. Elder and Co., ) ———, The Indian Mussalmans (London: Trubner and Company, ) Hussain, Ghulam, Seir Mutaquerin, translated Abdus Salam (reprinted Calcutta, ) Karan, Mahendranath, A Short History of the Cultivating Pods: Their Status, Ways of Life, and Social Manners and Customs (Calcutta, ) Long, James, Returns from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta, ) Majumdar, B.C., Orissa in the Making (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ) Mill, James, A History of British India (London: J. Madden, Piper, Stephenson and Spence, ) Risley, H.H., The People of India (London: Thacker, , reprinted ) Sen, Dineshchandra, The Ballads of Mymensingh (reprinted Delhi, ) Bengali “Ambarer Shiladebi”, Aitihasik Chitra, Number  (Boishakh-Jyoishtha, ) Anonymous, Asam Bhraman (Calcutta, ) Anonymous, Dacca Jelar Bhugol O Sankhep Itihas Bibaran (Dacca, ) Anonymous, Hindu Jati (Calcutta, ) Anonymous, Baishya Tantubay Jatir Jagaran (Calcutta, )



bibliography

Bandyopadhyay, Bishnucharan, “Nabya Banga”, Nabya Bharat, Volume IV, Number  (Ashvin, ) Bandyopadhayay, Kaliprasanna, Banglar Itihas: Ashtadash Satabdi, Nababi Amal (reprinted Calcutta, ) ———, “Rajshahi”, Utsaha (Bhadra, ) Bandyopadhyay, Nabinkrishna, Bhadrapurer Itibritta (Murshidabad, ) Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ) “Bankurar Rajhati”, Bangiya Tambuli Vaishya (Calcutta, ) Bandyopadhyay, Kshetranath, Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, ) “Bangadesher Adivasi”, Aryadarshan (Chaitra, ) Basak, Gobindachandra, Bangiya Jatimala (Dacca, ) Basak, Nilmoni, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, –) ———, Naba Nari (reprinted Calcutta, ) Basu, Baradaprasad, Urishyar Purabritta: Tirthadarshan, Part  (Calcutta – ) Basu, Nagendranath, Banger Jatiya Itihas (Calcutta, ) ———, Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ) ———, Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (Calcutta, ) ———, Bardhamaner Itikatha (Calcutta, ) ———, “Kalinga Rajya”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Sraban, ) Basu Rajnarain, Se Kal ar E Kal (Calcutta, ) ———, Atmajibani (Calcutta, ) ———, Gramya Upakhyan (Calcutta, ) ———, Bibidha Prabandha (Calcutta, ) Bhadra, S.N., Uttar Purba Bharat (Dacca, ) Bharatchandra, Annadamangal, Bharatchandra Rachana Sambhar (reprinted Calcutta, ) Bharati, Sebananda, Tamluker Itihas (Calcutta, ) Bhattacharya, Digindranarayan, Jati Bhed (Calcutta, , reprinted ) Bhattacharya, Kalikrishna, Banger Ratnamala, Part I (Calcutta, ) Bhattacharya, Upendranath, Banger Bir Santan (reprinted Calcutta, ) Bisi, Pramathanath (ed.), Bhudeb Rachana Sambhar (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ) Chakraborty, Bholanath, Banger Purba O Bartaman Abastha (Calcutta, ) Chakraborty, Mahimaniranjan, Birbhum Rajbangsha (Calcutta, ) Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra, “Bangalir Utpotti”, Bangadarshan, (Poush, ) ———, “Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Kayekti Katha”, Bangadarshan (Agrahayan, ) ———, “Banglar Kalanka”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ) ———, “Bharat Kalanka”, Bankim Rachanabali, Volume II (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, ) ———, “Anarya”, Bangadarshan (Magh, ) ———, “Bange Brahmadhikar”, Bangadarshan (Agrahayan, ) ———, “Banglar Itihas”, Bangadarshan () ———, “Anarya Bangali Jati”, Bangadarshan (Boishakh, )

bibliography



———, Anandamath (Calcutta, ) Chattopadhyay, Harisadhan, Amra Bangali (Calcutta, date of publication not available) Chattopadhyay, Jibankrishna, Bharatbarsher Purabritta (Calcutta, ) Chattopadhyay, Nandamohan, Adhunatana Samaj (Calcutta, ) Chattopadhyay, Ramananda, “Samanya Loker Abasthonnoti O Siksha”, Pradeep () Chattopadhyay, Tarinicharan, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Calcutta, , reprinted, ) Chaudhuri, Bhabanigobinda, “Bangiya Pradeshik Samiti”, Utsaha (Ashar, ) Chaudhuri, Kalinath, Rajshahir Sankhipta Itihas (Calcutta ) Das, Kaliprasanna, Barnasram Dharma O Hindu Jiban (Calcutta, ) Das, Srikrishna, Sabhyatar Itihas (Calcutta, ) Dasgupta, Mohinimohan, Srihatter Itihas (Calcutta, ) Dhar, Goshtha Behari, Tirthadarshan Kahini or Bharatbarsha Tirtha Samuher Mahatmya Prokash (Calcutta, ) Datta, Romeshchandra, Pabandha Sankalan (Calcutta, ) Devi, Prasannamoyee, Aryavarta () Dvijendralal Ray Rachanabali, Volume I (Calcutta, ) “Ghoshparar Mela”, Som Prokash ( Chaitra, ) Goswami, Prasad Das, Amader Samaj (Serampore, ) Guha, Upendrachandra, Cacharer Itibritta (Dacca, ) Gupta, Jogendranath, Bikrampurer Itihas (Calcutta, ) Gupta, Mahimchandra, Goure Brahman (Calcutta, ) ———, “Kamakhya”, Pradeep, Part III, Number  (Poush, ) Gupta, Rajanikanta, Arya Kirti (Calcutta, ) Haraprasad Shastri Rachanabali, Volume I, part of Rachana Samgraha (Calcutta, ) “Hindujatir Aikyasadhan”, Tattvabodhini, Number  (Jyoishtha, ) “Hindu Samaj”, Som Prokash ( Agrahayan, ) Intermediate Bengali Selections (Calcutta, ) “Itihas Sangraha”, Tattvabodhini, Number  (Bhadra, ) “Kushdaher Saptagrami”, Bangiya Tambuli Vaishya (Calcutta, ) Lahiri Chaudhuri, Dharanikanta, Bharat Bhraman (Calcutta, ) Majumdar, Gopal Chandra, Niti Darpan (Calcutta, ) Majumdar, Kedarnath, Mymensingher Itihas (Calcutta, ) Mallick, Kumudnath, Nadia Kahini (Calcutta, ) Mallick, Priyanath, Balya Siksha Banglar Itihas (Habra, ) “Manipur”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Chaitra, ) Mitra, Anandachandra, Prachin Bharat O Adhunik Iyurope Sabhyatar Bhinna Murti (Mymensingh, ) Mitra, Krishnakumar, Atmacharit (Calcutta, ) Moitreya, Akshokumar, Sirajuddaula (Calcutta, , reprinted ) ———, Gourer Katha (Calcutta, –, reprinted, Calcutta, ) Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb, Svapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas (Hugli, ) ———, Samajik Prabandha (Calcutta, ) ———, Pushpanjali (Calcutta, )



bibliography

Mukhopadhyay, Debendranath, “Hindu Samajer Prachin O Adhunik Abastha”, Nabya Bharat, Volume IV, Number  (Ashar, ) Mukhopadhyay, Rajkrishna, Prothom Siksha Banglar Itihas (Calcutta, , reprinted, ) Nag, Kalidas (ed.), Akshoy Sahitya Sambhar (reprinted Calcutta, ) Nyayratna, Ramgati, Banglar Itihas (Hugli, ) Pal, B.C., “Rajnarain Basu O Swadeshikatar Unmesh”, Banglar Nabajuger Katha (series of articles in Bangabani, –) published as Nabajuger Bangla (Calcutta, ) ———, “Banglar Boishishta”, Nabajuger Bangla (Calcutta, ) ———, “Hindu Mela O Nabagopal Mitra”, Nabajuger Bangla (Calcutta, ) “Raja Rajendralal Mitrer Jiboni”, Janmabhoomi, Part I, Number  (Bhadra, ) Rakshit, Durgacharan (ed.), Tambul Banik (Calcutta, ) Ray, Anandanath, “Bir Kahini, Faridpurer Itihaser Ekangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, second year, Number  (Boishakh-Jyoishtha, ) Ray, Jnanendralal, Prabandha Lahari (Krishnanagar, ) Ray, Jogendranath, Utkaler Panchatirtha (Calcutta, ) Ray, Nikhilnath, Itikatha (Calcutta, date of publication not avaliable) ———, Murshidabad Kahini (Baharampore, , reprinted Calcutta, ) Ray, Probhash Chandra, Parbattya Kahini: Santhal Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta, ) Raychaudhuri, Kshirodachandra, “Banglar Borbor Jati”, Nabya Bharat, Volume IV, Number  (Sraban, ) Raychaudhuri, Satishchandra, Bangiya Samaj (Barahanagar, ) Sanyal, Durgachandra, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta, ) Sarkar, Pitambar, Jati Vikash (Calcutta, ) Sen, Asvinikumar, “Noldangar Rajbangsha”, Aitihasik Chitra, Volume IV, Number  Sen, Dineshchandra, Mymensingh Geetika (Calcutta, ) ———, Brihat Banga (Calcutta, ) ———, Purbabanga Geetika (Calcutta, ) Sen, Nikhilnath (ed.), Romeshchandra Datta: Prabandha Samkalan (Calcutta: Everest Book House, ) Sen, Probhash Chandra, Prachin Bangasahitya Hoite Bangalir Doinandin Jibon O Samajik Achar Byabaharer Porichoy (Calcutta, ) Sen, Ramdas, Bharatbarsher Purabritta Samalochan (Calcutta, ) Sen, Surendranath, Sri Sri Jagannath Mahatmya O Srikhetra Tattva Sudha (Calcutta, ) Sengupta, Kaliprasanna, Banglar Sankhipta Itihas (Calcutta, ) Shastri, Shibnath, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta, ) ———, Atmacharit (reprinted Calcutta, ) Sinha, Kailashchandra, “Urishyar Itihas”, Bharati (Jyoishtha, ) Som, Sibchandra, Urishyar Itihas (Calcutta, ) “Swadeshanurag”, Tattvabodhini () Swami Vivekananda, Prachya O Paschatya (Calcutta, ) Tagore, Rabindranath, “Brahman”, Bangadarshan (Ashar, )

bibliography



———, “Samaj, Purba O Paschim”, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Santiniketan, ) ———, “Swadeshi Samaj”, Bangadarshan, (Ashvin, ) ———, “Bharatbarshiya Samaj”, Bangadarshan, (Sraban, ) ———, Jiban Smriti, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (Calcutta: Vaisvabharati, ) ———, Lokhit, Kalantar, Rabindra Rachanabali, Volume  (reprinted Calcutta, ) ———, “Samajbhed”, Bangadarshan (Ashar, ) ———, Bharat Itihas Charcha (Santiniketan, ) ———, Bharatbarsher Itihas (Bhadra, ) ———, Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, ) Vidyanidhi, Lalmohan, Sambandhanirnoy, Volume I (reprinted Calcutta, ) ———, Bharatiya Arya Jatir Adim Abastha (Calcutta, ) Vivekananda, Swami, Prachya O Paschatya (Calcutta, ) [These primary Bengali sources were seen in the Oriental and India Office Collection, the British Library, London; the South Asia section in the SOAS Library, London; the National Library, Rare Book Section, Annex Building, Calcutta; the National Library Main Section, Calcutta; the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Calcutta; and the Rabindra Bhaban, Bisvabharati, Santiniketan] Secondary Sources Books and Articles English Ahmed, Rafiuddin, The Bengal Muslims –: A Quest for Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, ) Armstrong, John, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ) Balakrishnan, Gopal (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ) Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, “Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, –” in Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Abhijit Dasgupta, and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi: Manohar, ) ———, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ) ———, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, – (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, ) Banerjee, A.C., The New History of Modern India (Calcutta, New Delhi: K.P. Bagchi, )



bibliography

Banerjee, Sumanta, The Parlour and the Street: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull, ) Barrow, Ian J., Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, c. – (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “Moving Frontiers: Changing Colonial Notions of the Indian Frontiers,” South Asia Graduate Research Journal, sponsored by Centre for Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Vol. I, No.  (Fall, ) Barth, Frederik (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference (Boston: Little Brown, ) Baruah, Sanjib, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Basu, Ranu, “Some Aspects of the Composition of the Urban Elite in Bengal”, – in Studies on Bengal, Papers Presented at the Seventh Annual Bengal Studies Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May –,  (Michigan, ) Basu, Subho, Does Class Matter? Colonial Capital and Workers’ Resistance in Bengal, – (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Baumer, Rachel Van M., “The Reinterpretation of Dharma in Nineteenth Century Bengal: Righteous Conduct for Man in the Modern World” in Baumer (ed.), Aspects of Bengali History and Society (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, ) Bayly, C.A., Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Bayly, Susan, Class, Caste and Politics in India since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Beteille, Andre, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) Bhagat, R.B., “Census and the Construction of Communalism in India”, Economic and Political Weekly Commentary ( November, ) Bhattacharya, Tithi, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, – (New York: Oxford University Press, ) Bose, Sugata, A Hundred Horizons. The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press and Delhi: Permanent Black, ) Breckenridge, Carol A., and Peter van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press ) Brace, Catherine, Adrian Bailey and David Harvey, “Religion, Place and Space: A Framework for Investigating Historical Geographies of Religious Identities and Communities”, in Progress in Human Geography, Vol. , No.  () Chakraborty, Jagannath (ed.), History: Studies in the Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta: National Council of Education of Bengal, ) Chakravarti, Ramakanta, Vaishnavism in Bengal: – (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, ) Chakravarty, Papia, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment: Bengal, – (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, )

bibliography



Chatterjee, Kumkum, “History as Self Representation”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No. , (Cambridge University Press, ), ———, “The King of Controversy: History and Nation Making in Late Colonial India”, American Historical Review (), Vol. , No.  ———, “Communities, Kings and Chronicles: The Kulagranthas of Bengal”, Studies in History, N.S. Vol. , No. , (New Delhi: Sage Publications, July– December, ) ———, “Discovering India: Travel, History and Identity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-century India”, in Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, The Nation and its Fragments: The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “Claims on the Past”, in Arnold, David, and David Hardiman (eds.), Subaltern Studies, Volume VIII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “The Manifold Uses of Jati” in T.V. Satyamurthy (ed.), Region, Religion, Caste, Gender and Culture in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “Whose Imagined Community?”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ) Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad, Interdisciplinary Studies in Science, Society, Value and Civilizational Dialogue (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, ) ———, “Itihasa, History and Historiography of Civilization” in Gupta, Chhanda, and Debiprasad Chattopadhyay (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond (Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, ) Chowdhury, Indira, The Frail Hero and the Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, ) Chowdhury-Sengupta, Indira, “The Effeminate and the Masculine: Nationalism and the Concept of Race in Colonial Bengal”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Cohn, Bernard, and Milton Singer (eds.), Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ) Cohn, Bernard S., India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, (ed.), An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command”, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol. IV (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Dasgupta, Ranajit, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, )



bibliography

Dasgupta, Tamanosh Chandra, Aspects of Bengali Society from Old Bengali Literature (Calcutta, ) De, Sushil Kumar, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century, – (Calcutta, ) Deshpande, Prachi, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, - (New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi: Permanent Black, ) Dirks, Nicholas, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ) ———, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, ) Duara, Prasenjit, “On Theories of Nationalism for India and China” in Tan Chung (ed.), In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India (New Delhi: Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Gyan Publishing House, ) ———, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ) Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, translated by Mark Sainsbury et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ) Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, ) Edney, Matthew H., Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Eisenstein, Elizabeth “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Modern Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. , No.  Embree, Ainslee, “Brahmanical Ideology and Regional Identities”, in Ainslee Embree (ed.), Imagining India: Essays on Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to  (New York: Columbia University Press, ) Eriksen, Thomas H., Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, ) Flood, Gavin, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Eschmann, Anncharlott, Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa (New Delhi: Manohar, ) Feld, Steven and Keith H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place (Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press, ) Feldhaus, Anne, Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage and Geographical Imagination in Maharashtra, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ) Forbes, Geraldine, Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmission and Assimilation of Ideology (Calcutta: Minerva, ) Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution” in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, ) Ghosh, Anindita, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture, – (New York: Oxford University Press, )

bibliography



Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, ) Gorecki, Piotr, “A View From a Distance”, Law and History Review, Vol. , No.  () Gupta, Chhanda and D.P. Chattopadhyay (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond (Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, ) Gupta, Swarupa, “Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, –”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ) ———, “ and Ideas about Nationhood in Bengal: Nuances and Themes”, in : Essays from Economic and Political Weekly (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, ) ———, “Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal”, Studies in History, Vol. , No. , New Series (New Delhi: Sage Publications, December ) Habermas, Jurgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Massachusetts: MIT Press, ) Hellman-Rajanayagam, Dagmar “Is There a Tamil ‘Race’?” in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Herder, Johann Gottfried, Herder on Social and Political Culture, translated and edited by F.M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) ———, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,  Volumes (Riga, –), translated by T.O. Churchill as Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (London, ,  and New York: Bergman, ) Hobsbawm, E.J., On History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ) ———, Nations and Nationalism since : Programme, Myth and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Hodgkin, Thomas, Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path (London: Macmillan ) Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Fifty Key Thinkers of History (London: Routledge, ) Inden, Ronald B., Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ) ———, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) Inden, Ronald B., and Ralph B. Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, ) Inwood, M.J. (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York, London: Macmillan, ) Irschick, Eugene, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, – (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ) Jaffrelot, Christophe, “The Idea of the Hindu Race in the writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the s and s: A Concept Between Two Cultures”, in Peter Robb (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ). Jatava, D.R., Indian Society: Culture and Ideologies (Jaipur: Surabhi, ) Jenkins, Keith, From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London and New York: Routledge: )



bibliography

Jodhka, Surinder, Communities and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, ) Jones, Reece, “Religion, Identity and Homeland in Bengal: A Territorial Interpretation of Religious Nationalism”, South Asia Research (Sage Publications, ), Vol. , No.  Kane, P.V., “History of the Dharmashastras” in Sukthankar V.S., On the Meaning of the Mahabharata, in D.R. Jatava, Indian Society: Culture and Ideologies (Jaipur: Surabhi, ) Kapila, Shruti, “Race Matters: Orientalism and Religion, India and Beyond c. –”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ) Karim, Abdul, History of Bengal, Volume I (Rajshahi, ) Karve, Irawati, Yuganta: End of an Epoch (New Delhi: Manohar, ), Kaviraj, Sudipta, and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, ) Kaviraj, Sudipta, “The Imaginary Institution of India” in Chatterjee, Partha, and Gyanendra Pandey (eds.), Subaltern Studies, Volume VII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of the Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Kedourie, Elie (ed.), Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ), Kesavan, B.S., History of Printing and Publishing in India, Volume II (New Delhi: National Book Trust, ) Kohn, Hans The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background (New York: Macmillan Co., ). Kopf, David, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernisation, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) ———, (ed.), Bengali Regional Identity (Michigan: Michigan State University, ) Kulke, Hermann, and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (London: Routledge, ) Leach, E.R. (ed.), Aspects of Caste in South India: Ceylon, North West Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Lefebvre, Henri, translated N. Donaldson-Smith, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ) Leifer, Michael (ed.), Asian Nationalism (London: Routledge, ) ———, “The Changing Temper of Indonesian Nationalism,” in Michael Leifer (ed.), Asian Nationalism (London: Routledge, ) Loden, Torbjorn, “Nationalism Transcending the State: Changing Conceptions of Chinese Identity,” in Stein Tonnesson and Hans Antlov (eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, ) Majumdar, B.C., Orissa in the Making (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ) Malinar, Anjelika, Johanns Belts and Heiko Freses (eds.), Text and Context in the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa (New Delhi: Manohar, )

bibliography



Mandelbaum, David, Society in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ) Mc Guire, John, The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta (Canberra: Australian National University, ) Misra, Sanghamitra “Changing Frontiers and Spaces: The Colonial State in Nineteenth-century Goalpara”, Studies in History, Vol. XXI, No.  (New Delhi: Sage Publications, July–December, ) Morrison, Barrie M., “Region and Sub-Region in Pre-Muslim Bengal” in David Kopf (ed.), Bengali Regional Identity (Michigan: Michigan State University, ) Mukherjee, Minakshi, Realism and Reality: The Novel and the Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Mukherjee, S.N., and E. Leach (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Mukherjee, S.N., “The Bhadraloks of Bengal” in Gupta Dipankar (ed.), Social Stratification (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta”, in S.N. Mukherjee and E. Leach (eds.) Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) ———, S.N. Mukherjee, Calcutta: Myths and History (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, ) Mukhopadhyay, Subhash Chandra, The Career of Raja Durlabhram Mahendra (Varanasi, ) Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of the Colonial Self (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Nish, Ian, “Nationalism in Japan”, in Michael Leifer (ed.), Asian Nationalism (London: Routledge, ) Obeyesekere, Gananath, “The Buddhist Pantheon in Ceylon and its Extensions,” in Manning Nash (ed.), Anthropological Studies in Theravada Budhhism (New Haven: Yale University Press, ) Pandey, Gyanendra (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today (New Delhi: Viking, ) Pati, Bisvamoy, Situating Social History: Orissa, – (New Delhi: Orient Longman, ) Paul, Promode Lal, The Early History of Eastern Bengal (New Delhi: Sharada Prakashan, ) Ramaswamy Sumathi, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, ) ———, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) Ray, Niharranjan, History of the Bengali People: Ancient Period, translated John W. Wood (Calcutta: Orient Longman, ) ———, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, th edition, ) Ray, Rajat Kanta, Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality and Literature in the Indian Awakening (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, )



bibliography

Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Raychaudhuri, T., and Raychaudhuri B., The Brahmans of Bengal (Calcutta, ) Reynolds, Susan, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, – (Oxford: Clarendon Press, , nd edition, ) Ricoeur, Paul in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, edited and translated by J.B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Robb, Peter (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Rudolph, Lloyd and Susan, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ) Saikia, Yasmin, “Religion, Nostalgia and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  () Sanyal, C.C. The Rajbangshis of Bengal: A Study of a Hindu Social Group (Calcutta, ) Sanyal, Hitesranjan, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta: Papyrus, ), Sarkar, Sumit, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) ———, “Orientalism Revisited: Saidian Moods in the Writing of Modern Indian History”, Oxford Literary Review, Vol. xvi () Sen, Amiya P., Hindu Revivalism in Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Sen, Dineshchandra, History of the Bengali Language and Literature (Calcutta, ) Sen, Samita, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Sengupta, Sankar, Folklorists of Bengal (Calcutta, ) Richard Shusterman, “Understanding the Self ’s Others”, in Gupta, Chhanda and D.P. Chattopadhyay (eds.), Cultural Otherness and Beyond (Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, ) Sinha, J.N. A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume I (Calcutta: Sinha Publishing House, ) Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ) Sivasundaram, Sujit “Tales of the Land: British Geography and Kandyan Resistance in Sri Lanka, c. –,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. , No.  (Cambridge University Press: ) Smith, Anthony, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ) ———, National Identity: Ethnonationalism in Comparative Perspective (Reno: University of Nevada Press, ) ———, “Nationalism and the Historians”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, ) Srinivas, M.N., Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, )

bibliography



Tanaka, Stefan, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), Thapar, Romila, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations (reprinted Delhi: Orient Longman, ) ———, From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the Mid-first Millennium bc in the Ganga Valley (Bombay: Oxford University Press, ) Tonnesson, Stein and Hans Antlov (eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, ) Tonnies, Ferdinand, Community and Civil Society, edited by Jose Harris, translated by Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Trautmann, Thomas, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) Veer, Peter van der, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ) Weber, Max, “Ethnic Groups”, in G. Roth and C. Wittich (eds.), Economy and Society, Vol. I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ) Yoshino, Kosaku, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry (London: Routledge, ) Bengali Anonymous, Bharater Adivasi: A Study of the Aboriginal Tribes of India (Calcutta, ) Bagal, Jogesh Chandra, Hindu Melar Itibritta (Calcutta: Maitri, ) Bandyopadhyay, Brajendra Nath, Bangla Shamoyik Patra, Volumes I and II (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) ———, Shamoyikpatre Sekaler Katha, – (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) Bandyopadhayay, Brajendra Nath, and Sajanikanta Das (eds.), Dvijendra Rachanabali (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ). ———, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay: Bibidha (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) ———, Bharatchandra Granthabali (Calcutta, , reprinted ) Bhowmick, Promode, “Adivasi”, in Bharat Kosh, Vol.  (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) Bidyalankar, Shashibhushan, Jiboni Kosh: Bharatiya Aitihasik (Calcutta, Debabrata Chakrabarty, ) Chattopadhyay, Gautam (ed.), Itihas Anusandhane (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, ) Chattopadhyay, Sunilkumar, “Aitihasik Chitra: Banglabhashay Itihas Bishoyok Prothom Shamoyik Patrika”, Koushiki (Calcutta, ) Chattopadhyay, Suniti Kumar, Bangla Bhashatattver Bhumika th edition (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, ) Chaudhuri, Kamal, Dakshin Chabbish Parganar Itibritta (Calcutta: Model Publishers, ) Das, Satyanarayan, Bangadarshan O Bangalir Manan Sadhana (Calcutta: Jijnasa, )



bibliography

Dasgupta, K.K., Itihas O Sanskriti (Calcutta: Birendranath Bhattacharya, ) Datta, Bijitkumar, Bangasahitye Aitihasik Upanyash th edition (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, ) De, Sushil Kumar, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century: – (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, ) Devi, Santa, Ramananda O Ardha Satabdir Bangla (Calcutta, date of publication not available) Ghosh, Benoy, Bidyasagar O Bangali Samaj (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, ) ———, Paschimbanger Sanskriti (Calcutta: Pustak Prakashak, ) ———, Shamoyikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, Volume II (Calcutta, ) and Volume IV (Calcutta: Viksan Granthan Prakashak Bhaban, ) Koley, Asru, Rajnarain Basu: Jibon O Sahitya (Calcutta: Rabindranath Kole, ) Majumdar, Kamal, Bangalir Itihas (Calcutta: The Author, ) Mitra, Asok, Paschimbanger Ustab O Mela (Calcutta: Anu Press, ) Mitra, Sudhir Kumar, Hugli Jelar Itihas O Bangasamaj (Calcutta: Mitrani Prakashan, ) Mukhopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar, “Rabindranath O Tripura” in Ghosh Sagarmoy (ed.), Desh, Subarnajayanti Prabandha Sankalan, – (Calcutta: Ananda, ) Palit, Mriduchhanda, Itihas Chintay Rabindranath (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, ) Ray, Atulchandra “Madhyajuger Banglar Samajik, Samskritik Itihas Rachanar Samasya”, in Gautam Chattopadhyay (ed.), Itihas Anusandhane (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, ) Ray, Niharranjan, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba (Calcutta: Paschimbanga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, ) Ray, Satyendranath (ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta (Calcutta, ) Sen, Probodh Chandra, Banglar Itihas Sadhana (reprinted Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla Academy, ) Sen, Sukumar, “Santhal”, Bharat Kosh, Vol.  (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) Sur, Atul, Banglar Prothom (Calcutta, ) Dictionaries and Encyclopaedia English Audi, G., (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ) Soanes, Catherine, (ed.), The Compact Oxford Reference Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ) Paul Edwards (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Volume  (New York, London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and the Free Press and Collier Macmillan Publishers, )

bibliography



Bengali Basu, Nagendranath, (ed.), Bisva Kosh, Volume IX (reprinted Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, ) Bharat Kosh, Vol. , V (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, ) Bidyalankar, Shashibhushan, Joboni Kosh, Bharatiya Aitihasik (Calcutta: Debabrata Chakrabarti, ) Biswas, Sailendra, Shashibhushan Dasgupta, and Dineshchandra Bhattacharya (eds.), Sangsad Bangla Abhidhan (reprinted Calcutta, ) Ghosh, Sourindrakumar Sahityasebak Manjusha, Volumes I and II (Calcutta, ) Unpublished Theses Chowdhury-Sengupta, Indira, “Colonialism and Cultural Identity: The Making of a Hindu Discourse” (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, ) Ghosh, Anindita, “Literature, Language and Print in Bengal, –” (University of Cambridge, ) Seminar Papers Kumar, Avinash, “Defining the Disciplines: Hindi History versus Hindi Literature” (South Asian Seminar Series, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, March, )

GLOSSARY abhijat, aristocracy. achar byabastha, a system of rules and regulations governing the observance of customs. adhunik, modern, contemporary. adivasis, original inhabitants, usually applied to ‘non-Aryan’ tribal groups. aikya, unity. aitijhya, traditional instruction. akhyan, dramatic narrative. amanush, non-human. antebasi, literally refers to a student residing in the house of his teacher, also used to mean dwellers on the periphery such as ‘low’ groups residing on the borders of a village. antyaja, of low birth. anusthan, a social event or programme. artha, the aim of an action, or everything that is useful and conducive to material interest. It is one of the goals of man (purushartha) directed toward the pursuit of wealth and material prosperity. ashraf, Muslim aristocracy. asramas, the stages of life, including the period of study, of being a householder, of retirement, and reclusion. asura, not having divine descent, a term applied to non-Aryans of India. atmiya sajan, one’s own people. atmiyata, bonds of related-ness existing not only among blood relatives but also among acquain-

tances, people of the same caste, sub-caste, village, social and professional group. avatar, incarnation. avrata, term applied to non-Aryans who were designated as people who did not observe vratas, religious ritual for expiation. babu, epithet attached to respectable Hindu men. This term also referred to clerk, and head of a Hindu household. In a pejorative sense it signified a foppish, indolent and ease-loving man. bahujati, an amalgam of people belonging to different castes and racial groups. bamachari tantriks, people believing in religious ritual contrary to the Vedas, specifically the left-handed ritual according to the Tantras, and the common participation of men and women in meditation. bamsa, family. bamsabali, familial lists. bangalipi, script in which the Bengali language is written. baralok, literally a wealthy man, but this term was used in the late nineteenth century to mean men who were devoted to the uplift of the jati. bhadralok, a respectable man having certain hallmarks such as education, a specific position in the economic and social hierarchy, and observing a ‘proper’ code of conduct. bhasha, language.



glossary

bhite, ancestral house. bhumi, land. bidhi byabastha, a system of rules and regulations governing society. bidya, education, especially traditional knowledge. bitta, monetary donations, wealth. borgi, Maratha plunderers. brittanta, an event or a fact. britti, employment. chakla, administrative unit during Muslim rule in Bengal. chhotolok, poor and non-respectable folk. cutcherri, law court, place for settling disputes; also used to mean office; and applied to groups formed on the basis of caste affiliation, weilding the power to mediate and settle social disputes. dada, elder brother. daiva, fate or providence. dal, social faction led by rich men. dasas, literally, servants; it was a term applied to non-Aryans. dasi, female servant. dasyus, term applied to non-Aryans. deb, of divine extraction, a god, a term applied to Aryans. desh, country. deuri, priest. devanagri, script in which the Sanskrit language is written. dharma, set of duties and codes of conduct emphasising righteousness. dharma-rajya, righteous realm. dheki, instrument used for threshing grains. dhoni, rich. didi, elder sister. dihari, leader of Santhal hunters. diksha, a ritual of the initiation ceremony; also used to mean religious training.

dvijasebita punyasthan, holy place served and regulated by Brahmans. ekjai, forum including men of different castes. ghatak, a mediator, especially in arranging matrimonial alliances. gosain, Vaishnava priest. goshti, a social group comprising the family and an extended circle of relatives. gotra, familial sub-division based on supposed descent from one of the twenty four sages including Sandilya, Kasyapa and Saktri. grama devata, village deity. grama panchayet, village-level, non-governmental court or organisation for the improvement of a village, usually formed by chiefs of a village. grihastha, householder. hina/nimna jati, ‘lower orders’ especially belonging to the lower and untouchable castes. itibritta, account of the past. itihas, indigenous term for history, literally meaning, “thus it was”. Its connotation included myth, epic, ancient lore in addition to fact. jagatguru, preceptor of the whole world. janasadharan, commonalty. janmabhoomi, land of birth. jati, a multifaceted term implying birth, caste, racial stock, tribe, species and nation. jatibhed, divisions among a jati. jatipratishtha, the recreation and uplift of a jati. jatra, a type of drama, a folk form of entertainment.

glossary johor than, place of worship and abode of the gods. kalamka, infamy; applied in context of historical slander or a misrepresented past. kaliyuga, the fourth and last yuga, considered the worst of times. kalpurush, a mythological man; also used to mean a galaxy of stars, and more generally, time. kama, desire, one of the goals of man. karma pantha, an individual’s mode of action. kathak, reader. kathakatha, a folk form of entertainment, narration of a popular tale. kavya, poetry. kirtan, religious or devotional song. kula, family. kulabrata, specific duties of a particular family or caste. kulaguru, family preceptor. kulajis, genealogical lists. kulapanjikas, books containing ancestral lists. kumbhakar, potter. loksadharan, term used to mean the general mass of common or ordinary people. loukik, human, as opposed to divine. madhyabitta sreni, middle class, encompassing mainly western educated professionals, lawyers, college teachers, journalists and clerks. mahant, priest, intermediary between man and God. majhi, Santhal chief. marjyada, respect and recognition; also used to mean status, especially social status. mel, endogamous groups. mela, assembly or meeting of different groups of people.



misrajati, a sub-caste resulting from intermarriage among castes. mofussil, area outlying a city or town. moksha, salvation, one of the goals of man. mridhhravach, of unintelligible speech. mrigoya, hunt. mukti, salvation. namaskar, the folding of hands to greet strangers and acquaintances, considered a part of ‘proper’ conduct. niti, moral principles and conduct based on such principles. nyaya, justice or fairplay. pahariya, hill tribe. palli, village. pargana, administrative unit. parganayit, a Santhal chief in charge of a pargana. patidar, peasant propreitor. pitabastra, scared cloth, yellow in colour. pradeshik, provincial. praja, subjects; people ruled by a king or zamindar. prakriti, literally, primordial form; it is also used in the sense of nature or essential characteristic. pramanik, Santhal leader. pranam, touching the feet of parents and elders as a mark of respect. pouranik akhyan, account based on the puranas. puja, worship. punthi, ancient book, manuscript. purabritta, narration of past events. purakatha, ancient lore. puranas, texts comprising traditional knowledge. Usually regarded as being eighteen in number, these contain genealogical lists of kings, and relate the origins of humanity and Indian history.



glossary

purohit, officiating priest, usually a Brahman. rashtra, polity. rojnamcha, a book or diary describing everyday life. sabha, meeting or forum for discussion. sabhyata, civilisation. sadguru, good or virtuous instructor. sadharan, ordinary or common. samaj, etymologically, to move together in a united manner. It denoted social collectivity or aggregate of individuals related on the basis of blood and/or atmiyata; in a wider sense it denoted groups of individuals belonging to the same or (contextually), different caste, sub-caste and region. samajpati, chief of a samaj. samaj-rajya, a term signifying the interconnection between society and polity; a realm ruled by a chief who had samajik (moral and regulatory duties) and political duties. samanjashya, idea of harmony even amidst difference. samanta, local military chief. samanya lok, ordinary or common people. samhitas, collection of Vedic hymns written in verse. samiti, assembly or meeting directed toward achievement of specific aims. sampraday, group formed according to economic, cultural, educational and occupational criteria. This term could also signify a religious sect. sankarjati, a mixed jati or sub-caste resulting from intermixture. sanskriti, culture.

saptapadi, seven auspicious steps taken by the husband and wife as a part of the marriage ceremony. sardars, local chiefs. sarkar, administrative unit; also used to refer to a local chief. shastras, authoritative treatises, authored by Brahmans; ancient scriptural books including the Vedas, smritis and puranas, written in Sanskrit. shikar, hunt. siksha, education. sloka, verse. smritis, literally, memory. It included traditional texts, and treatises of socio-religious laws. sramajeebi, an individual who earns his livelihood by manual labour. sreni, class, in terms of social and economic criteria. srijankartritva, creative power. sthan, place. swadesh, own province, applied in a wider sense to mean own country. swajati, own people; could refer to people of one’s own province or of one’s own country. swakiya, one’s own. tantra, a set of texts teaching yogic and ritual practices. It embodies the concept of the divine as formed of the union of the god and his power or energy, especially concerned with the worship of Siva and Sakti. teja, strength. upadhi, title. upakatha, story. upanayan, initiation ceremony observed by Brahmans. varna, literally, colour; a term designating a social function, a

glossary status and implying a relationship to Vedic ritual. varnasankar, belonging to a different (alien) caste; intermixture of castes. virjya, valour. yavanas, term applied to foreigners,



especially Muslims. yogi, a sage, adept of yoga. yuga, name given to cosmic periods; each indicating a state of perfection or degradation/decline of dharma. yugadharma, the characteristic feature of a yuga.

INDEX Abhijat, – changing meaning of, , – Aboriginal groups,  differentiation from ‘Aryan’ literati,  exclusion of,  Academic Association,  Adivasis, , , , –, –,  Hinduisation of,  Aitihasik Chitra, agenda of,  and Indian history, – and Rabindranath Tagore,  circulation,  Anderson, Benedict, – and role of print-capitalism,  difference between role of print in European nationalism and in Bengal,  Anglo-vernacular schools,  Aryan, as culture, ,  as race,  as racial categories,  Bengali-Aryan connection, , , , –,  Bengali-Hindu connection, , ,  colonial disjunction of, from non-Aryan groups, ,  dharma,  differences from non-Aryan,  difference from non-Aryan in Bengali discourse,  early samaj, , ,  equated with ‘Hindu’, ,  idea,  India, –, , , , –

M. Monier-William’s views on,  negative assessments of,  Orientalist lineages of, ,  racial and sociological connotations, ,  valour, ,  valour, in regional context of Bengal, – virtual, ,  Asiatic Society,  and history-writing,  Atmiyata, among unrelated individuals,  as welding people of the samaj, ,  Atmiya sajan,  Bagal, Jogeshchandra,  Bandyopadhyay, Krishnamohan,  Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, and variations of caste rank in Bengal,  and ‘low’ caste protest movements,  Bangiya Sahitya Parishat,  Romeshchandra Datta as its first chairman,  Bar Bhuiyans, , – Basanta Ray, ,  Kedar Ray, , ,  Pratapaditya, , , , ,  Barth, Frederik and ethnic boundaries,  Basu, Nagendranath, , ,  and fieldwork undertaken to reconstruct samajik itihas,  emphasis on kulagranthas,  on caste, 



index

on Dashinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj,  on Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj, ,  reference to colonial sources,  social roots and employment,  Basu Rajnarain, adoption of Brahmo faith,  and attitude to ‘lower orders’, ,  and patriotism,  and samajik uplift,  connections with Swadeshikatar Sabha,  ideas, – lecture, on superiority of Hinduism,  on past and present samajs, – on ‘proper’ conduct and dharma,  preoccupation with history and identity,  supervision of Surabhi,  viewpoints on English education and incommensurate jobs,  Basu, Ramram,  association with the Fort William College,  biography of Raja Pratapaditya,  Baumer, Rachel Van M., on reinterpretation of dharma,  Bayly, C.A., on precursors of Indian nationalism,  patriotism,  Bengal, and jatiya uniqueness, – and narrative of heroism,  Aryanisation of,  as a late-Aryanised land, – ,  as non-Aryan land,  as the desh of the Muslim nawab, 

exclusive regional identity,  ideas about a continuous and united Bengal, ,  ideas about the cultural and political ‘independence’ of Bengal during Pathan rule,  lack of unity among distinct groups,  origins and physical boundaries, –, , – origins of nomenclature,  political and cultural boundaries of, – Bengali(s), and their past racial qualities, – Aryanisation of, – as a mixed race/bahujati, , , –, – as history-less people,  intelligentsia,  interrelations with other Indians in conceptions of social harmony,  language, and mixed elements, – samaj, as part of wider entity,  Bhadralok, and elite, – and literati, ,  and ‘lower’ orders,  and madhyabitta,  and relation to elite/folk, ,  Bharatbarsha, as desh,  as homeland of the Aryans,  as utopia including ‘lower’ orders,  deification as Bharat Lakshmi,  origins and physical boundaries, , – Bharati, elite orientation,  publishing and printing of,  Bharati, Sebananda, on Bengal as desh, 

index Bhattacharya Digindranarayan, on caste system in Bengal, – egalitarian social order,  Bhattacharya, Kamalkrishna, editor of Hitavadi,  Biographies, of kings and famous personalities of Bengal,  Bidyabhushan, Dwarkanath, , ,  editor and printer of Som Prakash,  family background and education,  on identity,  Bidyalankar, Mrityunjoy, ,  Rajabali, , – Birbhum, valour of its people,  British Indian Association,  British Sanskritists,  Brahmanical, and non-Brahmanical worldviews,  hegemonic metanarrative, and qualification of, ,  metanarrative,  predominance of,  power,  Brahmanical discourse,  accommodation of pluralities,  flexibility,  in relation to ‘lower’ orders,  shifts from,  Brahmoism, ,  Brahmos, ,  leaders,  spread to suburban towns,  Calcutta,  as a centre of bhadralok culture,  importance as administrative capital,  urbanisation in, 



Calcutta School Book Society, ,  and history textbooks, , – indigenous aristocrats’ and Brahman pundits’ contributions,  Carey, William, and the Sanskrit press,  Caste,  abhijat, and inclusions,  and ekjai,  and intersections with class, ,  and pride of culture,  and racial model,  and regional culture,  and samajik union,  and sampraday, ,  and social mobility in medieval Bengal,  and social mobility during the colonial period, ,  and social transformation in Bengal,  and tradition,  as a modern phenomenon, – as an occupational category,  as antipathetic to nationality, – as hierarchy, ,  as misrajati (mixed castes), – as race, ,  as samaj,  colonial opinion of, , ,  divisions,  hardening of, under colonial impact,  histories,  ‘low’, ,  ‘low’, and occupational and social flexibility,  low caste authors,  mobility,  relative fluidity of caste system in Bengal, –



index

shifts from colonial discourse on caste, – subcaste, in Bengal,  system in Bengal, , , – Census, colonial,  of , and caste,  of , and Hinduisation of tribes,  Chatterjee, Kumkum, on Indo-Islamic genre of histories,  Chatterjee, Partha, on centrality of state,  on derivative discourse of colonial nationalism, – on disjunction between ‘inner’/cultural and ‘outer’/political spheres,  on division between precolonial and colonial history-writing,  on ‘hegemonic’ project of nationalism, – on nationalism as a political concept,  Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra, ,  adherence to Positivism,  and Anandamath,  and Bangadarshan,  and the Bengali project of writing history,  and reference to ordinary readers,  articles in Bangadarshan on history, ,  articles in English,  as baralok,  as employee of the raj,  distinction between Pathan and Mughal rule in Bengal, – family,  interactions with Romeshchandra

Datta, – on the Mahabharata as a source of history, ,  on the relationship between the individual and the samaj,  use of the term janmabhoomi,  Chattopadhyay, Jibankrishna, and new way of history-writing in Bengali,  Chattopadhyay, Ramananda,  as editor of Pradeep,  empathetic treatment of ‘lower’ orders, –, – on ‘lower’ orders,  on egalitarian social order,  Chaudhuri, Kalinath, on Kayastha samaj,  on local samajs,  on history of Rajshahi,  Civil society,  and its interconnection with private, familial space in Bengal,  classic western,  colonial civil society in Bengal, ,  difference between ‘classic’ western models and colonial/Bengali,  in Europe,  in European public life,  Civilisation, difference between Indian and European,  Clan,  Class,  as social rank/status, , ,  criteria of, in Bengal, – dimensions of social situations of,  divisions,  in Marxian/economic sense, ,  ‘low’, workers and manual labourers, – more important than caste divisions, 

index reconstitution of,  relation to caste and occupational mobility,  Cohn, Bernard, S., and the  census,  on biradari and jati,  Colonial, cultural hegemony of,  discourse, and its adaptation by the Bengali literati,  dissemination of values,  intelligentisia,  Colonial Sociology, , , –, ,  dichotomies,  impact of,  transmutations,  Coloniser, political role of,  Communal, division,  ‘others’,  sentiments, ,  Community, and fragmentation, ,  felt,  identification with several,  pre-colonial and pre-modern notions of, ,  Comprador-rajas, – Conduct,  codes of,  in past and present contexts,  Continuity, and unity,  historical,  through change,  Culture, and nationhood,  and polity, , ,  and power,  new conception of,  plural, –, – prioritisation of,  Cultural, as ‘inner’ domain, ,  identity, , 



integrations, and dharma,  in Bengal,  markers, – Cultural Aryan-ness,  and dharma, – and inclusions of ‘low’ groups,  and inclusive logic, ,  and limitations,  and traditional xenology,  and unity,  as code of conduct,  as historicised model,  criteria of,  Hindu-ness of,  in relation to neighbouring ethnicities,  in relation to sub-regions of Bengal,  meaning, , , , – spread in eastern India, – Cultural Nationhood,  difference from earlier ideas about unity,  dynamics of,  Customs,  indigenous, ,  Das, Kaliprasanna, and prioritisation of samajik itihas, ,  Datta, Akshoykumar,  and Sanskrit press,  Datta, Romeshchandra,  as employee of the colonial government, , – education,  imaginary histories in Bengali, – influence of indigenous tradition,  love for swadesh,  on history, literature and jatitva,  pilgrimage to Bakresvar,  ‘real’ histories in English,  real histories in Bengali, 



index

stay in London, – Deb, Danujamardan, founder of Baklanagar Samaj,  Debs, and ekjais,  of Shobhabazar, ,  Radhakanta,  Derozio (Derozian), retreat from social utopia,  Society,  Young Bengal, ,  Desh,  and territoriality, – as Banga Mata,  as Bharat Mata, ,  as birthplace of Hindus and Muslims,  as country (swadesh, janmabhoomi),  as motherland,  as nation, ,  as province as region, ,  as village,  Bengal as, ,  essence of,  in premodern and modern contexts,  in relation to the idea of India,  limits and meanings of,  reification of,  religious imagery of,  transformation into emotive arena,  Deshbhakti,  Dharma, , ,  and its reinterpretation in late nineteenth century Bengal – and non-Hindu,  and politics,  and the samhitas,  and traditional xenology,  application in practice, , – as a basis of unity, –, 

as duties to caste, clan, family and the country, – as the ideological basis of samaj, – as unique nature of indigenous society,  in past and present contexts,  meaning, –,  to remodel samaj,  Vedanta,  Dharmarakhhini Samaj, ,  Dirks, Nicholas, on interconnection between society/caste and politics, ,  Discourse(s), Acceptance/adaptation of colonial,  contestation of colonial,  hegemonic,  not simply hegemonic, high-caste, – Duara, Prasenjit, on links between modern nation and historical society,  on nature of nationalist consciousness, – Education, English,  in Bengal,  western,  Ekjai,  Patrika,  Elite,  and literati,  connections with ‘folk’, and the masses,  intellectual world of,  westernised,  Employment, of the literati, – patterns, under the colonial authority,  England, centralised state systems,  Enlightenment, , 

index European or western,  influence on colonial middle classes,  post,  Epics, ,  and historical truth,  relation to itihas,  Irawati Karve’s views on,  Eriksen, Thomas H.,  on ethnic ranking,  on model of ethnic division,  Ethnic, category,  Ethnies, ,  Ethnicity and language,  and nationhood,  as site of conflict and separatism,  entanglement/interfusion with culture,  mediation of otherness through jati,  as site of self-other differences and similarities,  in China,  in India,  in Indonesia,  indigenous (Bengali) differences from western models of,  in Japan,  western models of,  Contiguous Ethnicities, , , ,  and Bengali shifts from colonial sociology, , , ,  and Bharatbarshiya samaj,  and colonial cartography, – and colonial sociology, – and comparisons with the caste system of Bengal, – and cultural Aryan-ness, , –, ,  and cultural unity, 

 and demarcation from Bengalis,  and intersections of samaj (society) and polity,  and liminal boundaries with Bengal,  and prior Aryanisation of Bengal,  and territorial division, – and the Bengali literati’s interest in , – and tribes, – as external ‘others’,  as jatis,  as uncivilised, – Bengali discourse on, and shifts, – colonial reference to classical sources,  counterdiscourses by, ,  cultural connections expressed in the idea of Pancha Gour,  difference from Bengal,  distinctions of language,  distinctions and connections between their samajs and Bengal, – divided into Aryan and non-Aryan jatis, ,  elision of Muslim element,  exploration of their histories,  hierarchisation of the uncivilised tribes, – Hinduisation of ‘alien’ kings, ,  Hinduised samajs among,  idea of jatitva,  inclusions of culturallyAryanised groups among,  linguistic comparisons,  middle classes/madhyabittya among,  Pahariyas, 



index

Pilgrimage to, – Place-making,  process of Hinduisation, ,  religious connections with Bengal, ,  religious geographies,  royal dynasties and their Bengali origins, ,  sociological overlap with Bengal,  spread of Sanskrit and Bengali languages among, – temples, and their similarities with other temples in Bengal,  travels to neighbouring areas by Bengalis, –,  Assam/Assamese, Ahom identity,  bhadralok,  colonial depiction as deHinduised people,  cultural backwardness of, – Hinduisation of Ahoms,  liminal zones between Bengal and Assam, –,  language, and Grierson’s views on,  non-Aryan kings,  Parbattya Gosains, as a superior samaj,  shared sovereignties,  subnationalism, ,  travels in,  Vaishnavism,  Cachar/Cacharis, as separate jati,  Hinduisation, – precedence due to epic reference,  Manipur/Manipuris, identification of Kshatriyas among,  inclusion within Bharatbarsha, 

Vaishnavism in,  Orissa/Oriyas, and Nagendranath Basu’s viewpoints,  as an inferior jati,  Baniks/Vaishyas among,  Brahmanisation of,  Brahmans among, and comparisons with Bengali Brahmans,  connections between Buddhism, Jainism and Brahamnical Huinduism,  cult of Jagannath,  caste contrasts with Bengal,  denigrations of labourers and ‘lower’ orders,  dynastic connections with Bengal,  Ganga kings of,  historical description of, by Baradaprasad Basu, – labourers,  language, and Grierson’s views,  language and its comparison with Bengali, ,  legend of Jajati Kesari,  Puri as a pilgrim-site and a Vaishnava centre,  religious intermixture, – religious and cultural connections with Bengal,  Vaishnavism in, and spread to Assam,  Tripura, and connections with Bengal, – and Rabindranath Tagore’s idealisation of,  Ethnographers, colonial, 

index Ethno-religious community, in colonial censuses,  Ethno-symbolist, paradigms,  Europe society, and distinction from samaj,  Family, in Bengal,  and samaj,  Festivals, local, in Bengal, ,  Folk,  in opposition to ‘elite’,  connection with elite, ,  Dineshchandra Sen’s views on, – elements of Bengali culture, ,  Fort William College,  and history-writing,  Foucault, Michel,  Fragments,  of the nation,  Fragmentation, , , , ,  and mediation of postcolonial,  and samaj,  France, centralised state systems,  Gait, E.A.,  view about upper caste Hindus involved in colonial sociological projects,  Gazetteers, ,  Geertz, Clifford, on language,  Gellner, Ernest,  Gemeinschaft, – and past samajs of Bengal,  connection with gesellschaft in the site of samaj,  Gender perspectives, – Gesellschaft, –



Ghosh, Benoy, and samajik history of eighteenth century Bengal,  on the decline of the Brahmanical samaj in Bengal, , – on the significance of kulagranthas,  Godhead, supreme, , ,  Gupta, Jogendranath,  and Aitihasik Chitra,  and Bikrampurer Itihas, – expert on sub-regional history,  use of myth and legend in sub-regional history,  Gupta, Rajanikanta, Arya Kirti,  on Aryan glory,  Shipahi Juddher Itihas,  Habermas, Jurgen, on civil society,  Hegel, a-historicism,  on lack of history in India,  Hegemony, and ideologies,  and nationalism, ,  cultural,  Herder, Johann, Gottfried, romantic nationalism, – Hindu(ism), and Aryan,  and Bengali samaj,  and difference from Brahmanism, – and its wide-ranging meanings,  and national,  intersection with cultural Aryan-ness,  Hindu discourse,  and tensions in the rhetoric of Hindu discourse, –,  pluralities in,  and Indo-Islamic past, 



index

Hindu Mela, , ,  and civil society,  and concrete expressions of nationhood and culture,  and Hindu jati, used to mean Indian jati,  and Muslims,  and redefinitions of jati, –,  and swadesh,  association with the Asiatic Society,  fifth session,  ideological mould of, – jati, samaj and history,  links with jati,  links with the Tagore family,  main aims,  organisational network of,  Hindu(s), of Hindustan,  and Muslims, ,  chieftains and Muslim nawabs, – composite ruling class, with Muslims,  dichotomy between Hindus and Muslims in colonial works,  inclusions and exclusions of,  interactions,  interactions with Muslims and their histories,  Hinduisation, of Ahoms of Assam,  of specific ‘low’ castes, – of foreign neighbouring groups,  of tribes, – History, and identity, –,  and cultural nationhood,  and textbooks in Bengali, – and the recreation of jati,  as itihas, and its meanings, – colonial division (of Indian history) into Hindu, Muslim

and British periods,  colonial historical periodisation, ,  connection between real and imagined,  difference between Bengali and English/European methods of writing,  empirical, of the Rankean type, , ,  imaginary or imagined, –, , ,  impact of religion and literature on Bengali histories,  jatiya,  in Bengali, ,  indigenous, , , , –, ,  indigenous popularisation of ancient,  influence of colonial types on indigenous,  intellectual and social, ,  Islamic influence on indigenous history,  methodologies of social and intellectual, ,  of culture and attachment to social collectivity in Bengal, , , ,  of heroic ancestors, events, linguistic groups, race, and religious entity,  popularisation of, in Bengal,  pre-colonial,  ‘real’, – rescuing Bengali history from misrepresentation by foreigners,  samajik, in Bengal,  search for an indigenous,  shifts from western types of,  social,  social, in Bengal,  western traditions of,  with myth and epic, in Bengal, , 

index Histories, European, and translations of,  indigenous tracts on,  local, of Bengal,  regional, – Historical, causality,  drama, , – memory,  slander,  Historicism, as related to social and intellectual history,  perspective,  Historiographical types, western,  colonial,  Hunter, W.W., on Bengal, Indian people and Muslims,  on lack of nationality among Bengalis,  Identity, and indigenous pattern of connections,  debates, in Bengal and popularisation of ideas among different social sections in Bengal,  fuzzy and enumerated, , ,  heroic Indian,  in South Asia,  in ‘outer’ worlds,  Maratha,  syncretic, including Islamic elements,  Tamil,  Ilbert Bill Controversy, , ,  Inam, Tamil,  India (Indian nationhood), and Bhratbarshiya samaj, – and discourse on an ‘Aryan’,  and jati and samaj, 



and religious symbolism,  and samajik betterment,  and samanjashya, – and swadesh,  application of samaj to idea of,  as imagined through history, – as samajik utopia, – concrete expression of notion of,  connection with Bengal (Bengali samaj),  deification as Adhi Bharati Devi by Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, – deification as mother, – fragmentation of, and mediations,  historic-geographic entity of, – idea of,  multistranded discourse on, – mythical,  obstacles to integration of,  samaj and dharma,  transition from Bengali samaj to,  uplift of Indian jati,  Indigenous, civilisation,  legacy, as basis of samaj,  notion of family,  origins,  reinvention of,  reorientations through samaj,  social unities,  ‘Inner’ or cultural domain, connections with ‘outer’/political/public sphere, – seen in opposition to ‘outer’ domains, ,  Intelligentsia, agency of Bengali, –



index

and the masses,  colonial,  Janmabhoomi, – as India,  Jati, and Aryan theorising,  and Bengali language,  and biradari, – and desh,  and education,  and fuzzy and enumerated identity,  and itihas (history), ,  and its ideological genealogy, – and links with indigenous history,  and multilayered identities, – and samaj,  and sreni,  and valour,  and swadesh,  and Muslims,  and unity, , – as a key site of Bengali identity, ,  as caste, , ,  as an overarching category,  as approximating nationhood,  as indicating difference between Indian and foreign (English) races,  as nation and nationality, , , –, ,  as race,  as tribe, –,  Bengali, ,  Bharatiya/Indian,  comparison with Assamese jati,  comparison with biradari in northern India,  comparison with ethnicity and ethnic group, –

concrete expressions,  distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan,  discussion in Nabya Bharat,  historic antecedents of,  in late colonial Bengal, , , , ,  in a heroic past,  inclusions of ‘low’ castes,  inclusions of neighbouring ethnicities,  inclusions of other Indians,  intersection with race, – jatibhed (divisions), ,  jati dharma, – jatiya unity and its origins,  jatiya uplift and self-help,  limitations of jati as nation, – multifunctional,  multiple meanings,  multilayered discourse on,  new meanings,  nuclei,  origins, according to the Mahabharata,  premodern Bengali jati,  reconfigurations through history,  recreation of, , ,  regeneration by local aristocrats,  semantic genealogy of, – upper and lower of, ,  use in multiple senses, from second half of nineteenth century,  vis-à-vis European civilisation,  Jones, William,  Kanauj,  and the Adisur legend,  as homeland of five legendary Brahmans brought by Adisur,  visited by Rajnarain Basu and Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, 

index Kaviraj, Sudipta,  on history and jati,  see also identity (fuzzy and enumerated) Kedourie, Elie,  Khan, Purandar, and Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj,  and Bangaja Kayastha Samaj,  connections with Brahman samaj,  Kinship,  between Indians and Europeans,  see also Max Muller Kula, and varna and jati,  hierarchies and status,  Kulagranthas,  as sources of racial and national pride,  controversy about whether they qualified as history, – use in reconstructing the social history of Bengal  Kulinism, arrangement of kulin families into mel,  introduction, to contain Brahmanical decline,  evil of,  Landed aristocracy, in Bengal, ,  Landholder’s Society,  Language, and print,  and the Bengali jati, , ,  and Indian patriotism,  and nationhood in Bengal and Europe,  as a component of cultural nationhood, ,  colonial linguistics and deviations, –, – 



Bengali, and connections with Sanskrit, – Bengali, and difference from tribal languages,  Bengali, and jatiya uplift,  Bengali, and Sarasvat Samaj,  Bengali, as a regional standard,  Bengali, connection with nationhood,  Bengali, popularisation of,  connections, differences and similarities with Oriya and Assamese languages,  , – criterion of cultural Aryan-ness,  geographical unit of, ,  Indo-Aryan and European,  links with jatitva,  literary and colloquial levels of,  modern vernacular, as a means of re-articulating tradition,  Sanskritised,  popularisation of,  Legend(s), and sociological realities,  as ingredient of history,  local, ,  main,  of Adisur, , , , ,  of Adityasur, ,  of contiguous ethnicities,  Pahariya, – Libraries of aristocrats,  of intellectuals, to disseminate ideas about history,  Literati (Bengali Hindu), , , ,  agency of, , ,  as abhijat, – as aristocracy of culture,  audience and reach of their ideas, – composition,  crystallisation of, –



index

dissemination of their ideas through print,  high-caste, , , ,  ideas and their dissemination, – ideological moorings of, ,  ideological affiliations of,  ideological differences among,  ideological rendezvous,  in neighbouring regions,  influence of indigenous tradition upon,  interconnections within their group, , ,  loyalty to the raj, – multiple roles, ,  own samaj, ,  professional, ,  relation to colonial powerknowledge,  relationship with the colonial authority, ,  rural roots,  similarity of origin and education,  social world of, – transitions in their own samaj, – western educated,  parallelisms with bhadralok, elite and middle class, , – Long, James,  on popularisation of historywriting in Bengal,  on social composition of the literati,  Low-cost journals,  ‘Lower orders’, and application of cultural Aryan-ness, – and differences among the literati in attitudes towards,  and egalitarian samaj, in Mymensingh,  and importance of ‘proper’ conduct,  and improvement of conditions of

workers, – and low classes (workers), – and Sanskritisation,  and shifts from colonial sociology,  and the application of jati to them, –,  and their relation to ‘elite’ samaj, –,  and their different world view, – and use of the models of samaj and dharma, – as a multilayered group, –,  authors of tracts and articles on, – courage of, , – direct experience of their culture,  early colonial literature about,  Goalas, Gops, Pods and Tantis, – in Bengal, , , , , , ,  inclusions through deployment of samaj,  integrations of,  interactions, and connections of viewpoints with high-caste literati,  occupationally ‘low’ groups, Chasadhobas, Chasatis, Haladhars, Tambulis, – occupationally ‘low’ castes and their mobility, – opinion about, prior to colonial period, – otherness,  relation to samaj as an idea-inpractice,  rise in the social hierarchy, ,  untouchables,  Madhyabitta,  Maharashtra,

index region and nation interrelation,  Majumdar, Harinath, and Grambartaprakasika,  Mallick, Priyanath on origins of jatis as described in the Mahabharata,  Mangalkavyas, portraying social turmoil in Bengal,  Manu,  Maratha (s), as valiant race, – homeland, memorialisation of,  low racial origin of,  Melas,  and regional historical societies,  as a bridge between ‘elite’ and ‘folk’,  including ‘lower’ groups,  local, in Bengal, ,  Micro-region, ,  samaj applied to,  Mill, James, on lack of historical sense among Hindus,  on low place of Indian civilisation, ,  Mill, John Stuart, on liberalism,  Misra, Dhruvananda, on ‘lower’ orders in medieval Bengal,  Mitra, Anandachandra, on difference between Indian and European civilisations,  Mitra, Rajendralal, ancestors and familial connections, – and Barendra Research Society,  connection with Asiatic Society, ,  Modern, modernity,  indigenous, vis-à-vis western, 



premodern-modern polarity,  western models of,  Mofussil newspapers,  Moitreya, Akshoykumar, ,  and Aitihasik Chitra,  and Barendra Research Society,  and disenchantment with English histories of Bengal,  and use of histories of Bengal written by Muslims, ,  connections with the colonial authority,  deviations from colonial denigrations of Muslim ‘misrule’, – on interconnections between society and polity,  on Muslim legacies,  on samajik itihas and commonalty,  valorisation of a joint IndoIslamic historical legacy, –,  Muller, Max, racial-linguistic theories, ,  Mukherjee, S.N., and caste mobility, , – Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb,  adherence to Positivism,  attitude toward Muslims, –,  and jatiya bhab, ,  and patriotism,  and utopic samajik history,  as employee of the colonial authority,  description of Hindu samaj,  ideas about jatiya unity,  imaginary histories,  on pan-Indian (‘Hindu’) samaj,  Mukhopadhyay, Rajiblochan,  and the Fort William College,  biography of Maharaja Krishnachandra,  Mukhopadhyay, Rajkrishna, 



index

as publisher of Bharat,  on ‘lower’ orders,  viewpoint on tribes being non-Aryan,  textbook on history,  Mukhopadhyay, Upendranath, as printer,  Mukumdaram, comparison between his works and local histories of Gujarat,  ideas about social harmony in medieval Bengal,  on inclusions of ‘lower’ orders,  portrayals of sixteenth century Bengali society,  Muslims, against Hindus,  Bengali literati’s ideas about their culture,  denigrations of Muslim rule in Bengal, – exclusions of,  in relation to jati,  inclusions, , , –,  inclusions in Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s conception of Adhi Bharati Devi, – inclusions in jatiya utopia, – incorporations, on Hindu terms,  of Hindustan,  relationship between the Bengali literati and Muslim samajs in Bengal,  Mutiny-Rebellion of , , , ,  Myth, and Aryan-ness,  and Bengali history-writing,  and history and legend, ,  and linear history,  and popular imagination,  as itihas, – in sub-regional histories, , 

intertwining with knowledge of English and western historiographic types,  local,  re-interpretation of,  role in strengthening samaj,  Nabya Bharat, and elite culture,  Nation,  cultural entity, ,  connections with historical society,  constructivist ideas about,  genealogy of, – in cultural terms,  in Bengal,  notion of, grounded in samaj,  tradition of, in Bengal,  shift from modernist definitions of,  Nationalist, consciousness, in Bengal, – histories, – ideologues,  social world of,  mythologies of,  novel and modern nature of, – Eurocentric definitions of,  Nationalism, ,  academic models of, – as novel mode of consciousness,  modernity,  modular,  negative, – non-western, ,  political, in India,  political discourse in India,  political ideology and movement of,  political nature, -  romantic, – Colonial nationalism, ,  ‘borrowed’, , ,  critique of modernist paradigms of, 

index ‘derivative’, , , , , , ,  ‘hegemonic’ project of,  indigenous inheritances or origins of, , – intellectual roots of,  negative, – modernity of, – ontology of, ,  political ideology and nature of, , ,  qualifying the ‘hegemonic’ project of,  socio-economic developmental theories of, – typologies,  Nationalist, ideologues, – Nationality, in comparison with nationhood and nationalism,  Nationality Promotion Society,  Nationhood, ,  and Indian-ness,  and contestation of colonial tenets,  and interweaving of past traditions and present identities,  and precolonial pasts,  and postcolonial identities,  as cultural entity, , – as ‘Hindu’ discourse, and pluralities,  contrasts with nationalism and nationality,  cultural and religious,  experiential reality,  framed in Hindu rhetoric,  in Bengal,  historicist perspective of,  modernist,  multiple strands,  in non-western terms and ontology of, , ,  not ‘derivative’, –, ,  ontology of, grounded in culture, , 



overlap with nationalism,  political definitions of,  reality and utopia,  samajik, and limitations, – , – shifts from modernist and political definitions of,  Nation-state, modern,  political,  political ideology of,  Non-Aryan, as part of ‘lower orders’,  tribal groups,  also see Aryan, and tribe Nyayratna, Ramgati, on categorisation of hill tribes of Bengal,  on origins of Bengalis, – O’Malley, L.S.S., on difference between Bengalis and contiguous ethnicities, ,  Orientalism/Orientalist, constructions of an unchanging India,  discourse and tenets,  on race, – reformulation of views by the Bengali literati,  search for lost golden ages,  tenets of Indian cultural value, ,  Otherness, politics of,  ‘Outer’, domain,  Pancha Gour, – and desh,  areas included in,  as a political and cultural concept,  as encompassing India,  rulers of,  Palit, Lokendranath, 



index

on histories in Bengali,  Patriotism,  and ethical government,  and language,  ethnic, in China, Vietnam and Japan,  linking Bengal and India,  Periodicals in Bengal, connections between ‘high’ and ‘low’,  Pilgrimage, ,  and samajik unity,  and links with neighbouring areas, – and precolonial ideas about trans-local communities,  and the idea of India,  in Bengal, , – Positivism, –,  Press,  Print, , – after , in India and Bengal,  and the role of the Bengali language, – and capitalism,  and dissemination of nationalist ideas in Bengal, – and familial and social ties,  and links with the social and ideological world of the literati, –, –, –,  and modernity of the civil society,  and reorientations of earlier traditions, – and links with samaj as an idea-in-practice,  as colonial instrument,  connected to public sphere in Bengal,  connections with ‘low’ print cultures or Bat-tala, , – cultures,  difference between print dynamics in Bengal and in Europe, , 

dynamics of, in Bengal,  non-profit, nationalist turn,  technologies in colonial Bengal,  Printing presses in Bengal,  and Charles Wilkins,  and Panchanan Karmakar,  ideological and commercial factors for establishment of,  ownership and control of, ,  Politics, of the Congress brand, ,  Politicisation, of identifications,  Polity,  See also society, and its connection with polity Positivism,  and its adherents,  Postcolonial, predicament of fragmentation,  Public, arena,  as ‘outer’ sphere,  Habermasian,  opinion,  public/private dichotomy, in Bengal – Puranas, , ,  debates about their historical truth,  conception of time,  cited by colonial writers and the Bengali literati,  Race,  and culture and territory in Bengal,  in Japan,  Racial Theory, and Aryan/non-Aryan division,  colonial, in Bengal,  European, – hardening of,  of E.T. Dalton,  of Indian civilisation, 

index Rajbangshis, , , , – Ray, Dvijendralal, ,  Ray, Nikhilnath, as author of sub-regional histories, ,  editor of Aitihasik Chitra,  Ray, Probhash Chandra on Santhal social world,  Ray, Rajat Kanta, felt community, – on civil society, ,  on idea of the nation/national,  Ray, Sitaram, valour of,  Raychaudhuri, Kshirodachandra, on tribes,  Raychaudhuri, Tapan, , ,  Raychaudhuri, Satishchandra, and his use of sources of samajik history,  on Baklanagar Samaj, – on high status and contextual inclusions of Muslims,  on the Adisur legend,  Risley, H.H., , – Roy, Rammohun, ,  Royal Asiatic Society,  Region,  and notions of Indian nationhood,  and transition to nation,  (Bengali), and Indian nation,  interrelations with nation, , , ,  Regional, centres for the investigation of local Bengali history, – histories, as mentioned in Aitihasik Chitra,  identity, medieval Bengali,  religious tradition, – selfhood, ,  Sub-regions/regional (‘essences’), , ,  and Bengali valour, – and blending of Aryan and

 non-Aryan, –, ––, , –  and connections between Hindus and Muslims, –, – and ‘external’ elements,  and ‘proper’ conduct,  and cultural Aryan-ness, , ,  and cultural heritage of Tamluk, ,  and high-caste samajs,  and Hindu glory, ,  and idea of Bengali-ness,  and involvement of local aristocrats, – and medieval samajik turmoil,  and pan-regional (Bengali) identity, –, , , – and pilgrimage, –, – and place-naming, of Burdwan,  and place-naming of Rajshahi, –,  and religion,  and Rajshahi conference,  and search for ‘Bengali’ Brahmans,  and western Indian religious forms, – application of jati to,  application of rashtra-samaj connection/dichotomy to,  application of samaj to,  as links in construction of regional self,  Brahmanisation of non-Aryan, – famous ruling families, and their Brahmanical connections, – fragments, 



index

Hindu Brahmanical faith and local variations,  history of Rajshahi, –,  histories, – histories, and jati,  human gods in,  links between Muslims and Burdwan raj,  low-caste rulers, – melas in,  micro-studies of, and Bengali history,  Muslim, as oppositional element in,  Mymensingh, ,  Non-Aryan elements, –  Non-Aryan local religious cults,  Rajbangshis,  samajs, ,  samitis, ,  Sankrayil, and Brahmanical culture,  Sankrayil, and non-Aryan elements,  use of local genealogies,  Religion, ,  and regional culture,  links, with neighbouring groups,  links with political processes,  local, in Bengal,  movements,  Revivalism, Hindu, of orthodox section,  Risley, H.H., on Hindus and Muslims,  on centrality of race,  on the  census, and Hinduisation of tribes,  Said, Edward, ,  perspectives, , – Saiyad Elahi Baksh Angrejabadi,

manuscripts on pre and early colonial Bengali history, ,  Samaj (s)  and atmiyata,  and experience,  and familial nucleus,  and history-writing,  and inclusions of jatis and sampradays,  and interlocking of the past, present and future of the jati,  and its regulatory role,  and mediation of ‘lower’ orders in Bengal,  and nationhood, – and polity, ,  and relationship with the individual, ,  and the transition from region to nation,  and sampradays,  and shift from Saidian perspectives,  and unity, ,  as historical society, ,  Bengali ,  Bengali-Hindu,  Bharatbarshiya or Indian, ,  Brahmanical basis of,  conceptual nucleus,  connection between local and pan-regional,  connections between ancient and modern Hindu samajs,  connections between Bengali and Bharatbarshiya/Indian, , –,  downslide of Bengali samaj,  decline-progress paradigm, , – description in ancient texts,  discourse on,  egalitarian,  etymological meaning of, ,  familial connotation of, , 

index future, as utopic construction, – history of,  idea-in-practice, , , ,  ideological trajectories of, ,  interrogation of,  intersection with rashtra/polity in refiguring the nation,  limitations due to Brahmanical basis, and overcoming such limitations, – main elements of,  medieval, , , , – meaning or connotation of, – methodological approach, – modern functionality of,  of eighteenth century Bengal, , ,  past and present contexts, ,  past, and their gemeinschaft-like qualities,  prioritisation of, ,  rajya [realm],  regional, or pan-regional (Bengali),  regional, sub-regional, and pan-Indian levels, –, ,  shifts from high-caste, elite and paternalist conceptions of, – social values of,  sub-regional and regional connections,  swadeshi connotation of,  types of,  Caste Samajs,  accounts of Kayastha samaj, – and connections with the Muslim court of Bengal,  and connections with ancient and medieval samajs,  as a site for forging unity, –



fusions between Brahman and Kayastha samajs,  Bangaja Kayastha Samaj,  Dakshinrarhiya Kayastha Samaj,  medieval, comprising many castes,  puranic origins of,  rise of, in Bengal,  Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Samaj,  Sub-regional samajs,  and inclusions of diverse castes, – and roots of unity, – Baklanagar Samaj, –,  branches of,  Bikrampur Samaj of Ballal Sen,  comparison with European contexts,  emblematic of regional unity,  existence in Bengal since the medieval era,  intersections with caste samajs and idea of a pan-Bengali samaj,  Jessore Samaj, – significance,  spread of their ideals,  Samajik betterment, , –– chiefs, and their political and social roles, ,  chiefs and their titles, , – chiefs of precolonial Bengal, ,  history and elite orientation,  history and fieldwork, ,  history of eighteenth century Bengal,  and participation of ‘lower’ orders,  history and its dissemination, 



index

history, and its sources, ,  history over eras, ,  identity, linked to reconfigurations of jati,  integration and extensions,  nationhood, and its limitations, – progress, , – transitions,  texts,  unity,  unity, and contestations,  unity and cultural nationalism,  unity and dharma,  unity, and legacies, – unities, , ,  Sanskritisation,  Sanskrit Press,  and distribution of textbooks,  and Vidyasagar,  Sanyal, Durgachandra, difference between Bengalis and tribes, – on social history of Bengal,  on territorial boundaries of Bengal,  Sarkar, Pearycharan, as editor of Hitasadhak,  Sarkar, Sumit, ,  on samaj as high-caste and paternalist,  School Book Society,  and circulation and production of textbooks,  Sect,  Self help, , ,  Sen, Dineshchandra, and non-Brahmanical folk elements of Bengali culture,  Sen, Ramdas, on lack of history in empirical sense in Bengal,  Shastri, Haraprasad, on history, 

on rewriting the history of Bengal,  Shastri, Shibnath, autobiography,  on civil society in the nineteenth century,  on social and urban history and modernity,  views on unity, jatitva and the Bengali samaj, , ,  Shivaji,  Sikhs, as valiant race, – Sinha, Kaliprasanna, articles in Tattvabodhini Patrika,  donation of printing press to Tattvabodhini Sabha,  Smith, Anthony D., ethno-symbolism,  Society, contrast between Indian/indigenous and western/European, , – interconnection with polity, , , , , , , , – pre-colonial traditional, – Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge,  Society for the Promotion of National Feeling among the Educated Natives of Bengal,  Social and intellectual history,  codes of correlation,  community and group,  contrast and connection with polity,  decline in Bengal,  harmony,  history,  history of Bengal,  mobility, , – power, and dals,  status, and its indices,  turmoil in Bengal, 

index Social community, and resolution of opposition with individual,  Sociological, affinities with neighbouring ethnicities,  orientation and methodology,  techniques, applied to Bengal, – theory,  Som Prakash, ,  and its circulation,  Swadesh, , , , , ,  Akshoykumar Moitreya’s love for,  and Hindu Mela,  as Bharatbarsha,  as jati, used by Derozians,  as utopic space, ,  patriotic and nationalist content of,  romantic fascination of,  Swadeshi Movement, ,  and samajik history,  Swadeshikatar Sabha,  Swajati, , ,  And Hindu Mela,  Swadeshabhiman,  Tagore, Debendranath, ,  and the Sanskrit Press,  Tagore, Dvijendranath, ,  Tagore family, connections with Nabagopal Mitra, Rajnarain Basu and Akshoykumar Moitreya, – Tagore, Gaganendranath,  Tagore, Ganendranath,  contributions to jatiya uplift,  Tagore, Jyotirindranath,  Tagore, Rabindranath, Brahmanical basis of samaj, ,  high caste orientation,  on history and historical memory,  on indigenous historiography, 



on jati and desh,  on meaning of history in Bengali and Indian contexts,  on relation between regional and pan-Indian (swadeshi) samaj, ,  on samajik history,  on social improvement, – on the regulatory role of samaj,  patriarchal basis of samaj,  shifts from high-caste and patriarchal basis of samaj, , ,  Tattvabodhini Patrika, , – and self-help,  audience and circulation, ,  Tattvabodhini Sabha,  Third world, ,  as a site of division and fragmentation,  Toyoshi, idea of,  Tradition,  and modernity,  historical, ,  indigenous,  interactions with western impact,  reinvention of,  ur-tradition,  Trautmann, Thomas, on complexities in ‘Aryan’ colonial discourse,  Travel, , ,  greater ease of,  within and beyond India,  Tribes,  and accounts of desh,  and racial identity of the Bengali self, , – and the late-Aryanisation of Bengal,  and their languages, – application of racial division of Aryan and non-Aryan to,  as belonging to non-Aryan racial



index

stock, –,  as misrajati, ,  as part of a wider conception of Bengali jati, ,  as uncivilised,  Beerhors,  Bhils, ,  Bhumiyas,  complexities in discourse on,  culturally-Aryanised, and their inclusions,  Hinduisation of, –,  in Bengal, , ,  Kols, ,  Mogs, of Jumia and Chakma groups, ,  Mundas, , , ,  Nagas,  of neigbouring regions,  otherness of, –, – Pahariyas,  produced as a result of intermixture,  romanticisations of their worlds,  Santhals, ,  Santhals and their different samajik norms, – Santhals and their habitat,  Santhals and their Hinduisation, – Santhals, and their segregation,  situational inclusions of, ,  social contrasts,  territorial segregation of, – Unity/unities indigenous,  pre-colonial samajik,  socio-cultural, ,  Untouchables, , 

and high-caste treatment of, in Bengal,  Chandalas,  involvement of the literati with,  Vaishnava movement, as emotive focus of identity in Bengal,  Vaishnavism, and social flexibility and harmony,  connecting Bengal and neighbouring areas, –  Veer, van der, Peter, on pilgrimage and national identification, – Vernacular Literature Society, ,  and the Vividartha Sangraha, , ,  Vidyanidhi, Lalmohan, ,  Vidyasagar, and Som Prakash,  Voluntary associations, , ,  Barendra Research Society, ,  Baharampore Sabha,  Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti,  Rarh Anusandhan Samiti,  Tamralipta Anusandhan Samiti,  Uttar Bangiya Sahitya Parishat,  Weber, Max, on language,  Yuga cycles, ,  Zamindari Association, 

Philosophy of History and Culture ISSN 0922-6001

1. HERTZBERG, L. and J. PIETARINEN (eds.). Perspectives on Human Conduct. 1988. ISBN 90 04 08937 3 2. DRAY, W.H. On History and Philosophers of History. 1989. ISBN 90 04 09000 2 3. ROTENSTREICH, N. Alienation. The Concept and its Reception. 1989. ISBN 90 04 09001 0 4. ORUKA, H.O. Sage Philosophy. Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy. 1990. ISBN 90 04 09283 8 5. MERCER, R. Deep Words. Miura Baien’s System of Natural Philosophy. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09351 6 6. Van der DUSSEN, W. J. and L. RUBINOFF (eds.). Objectivity, Method and Point of View. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09411 3 7. DASCAL, M. (ed.). Cultural Relativism and Philosophy. North and Latin American Perspectives. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09433 4 8. WHITE, F.C. On Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of SuYcient Reason. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09543 8 9. ZEMACH, E.M. Types. Essays in Metaphysics. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09500 4 10. FLEISCHACKER, S. Integrity and Moral Relativism. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09526 8 11. Von WRIGHT, G.H. The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09764 3 12. WU, Kuang-ming. On Chinese Body Thinking. A Cultural Hermeneutic. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10150 0 13. ANDERSSON, G. Criticism and the History of Science. Kuhn’s, Lakatos’s and Feyerabend’s Criticisms of Critical Rationalism. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10050 4 14. VADEN HOUSE, D. Without God or His Doubles. Realism, Relativism and Rorty. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10062 8 15. GOLDSTEIN, L.J. The What and the Why of History. Philosophical Essays. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10308 2 16. BARRY, D.K. Forms of Life and Following Rules. A Wittgensteinian Defence of Relativism. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10540 9 17. Van DAMME, W. Beauty in Context. Towards an Anthropological Approach to Aesthetics. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10608 1

18. CHATTOPADHYAYA, D.P. Sociology, Ideology and Utopia. Socio-Political Philosophy of East and West. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10807 6 19. GUPTA, C. and D.P. CHATTOPADHYAYA (eds.). Cultural Otherness and Beyond. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10026 1 20. WU, Kuang-ming. On the “Logic” of Togetherness. A Cultural Hermeneutic. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11000 3 21. DESJARDINS, Rosemary. Plato and the Good. Illuminating the Darkling Vision. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13573 1 22. MOFFITT, John F. “Inspiration”: Bacchus and the Cultural History of a Creation Myth. 2004. ISBN 90 04 14279 7 23. MOU, B. Davidson’s Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy. Constructive Engagement. 2005. ISBN 90 04 15048 X 24. BOULTING, N.E. On Interpretative Activity. A Peircian Approach to the Interpretation of Science, Technology and the Arts. 2006. ISBN 978 90 04 15409 4 25. STRAYER, J. Subjects and Objects. Art, Essentialism, and Abstraction. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15714 9 26. VANHESTE, J. Guardians of the Humanist Legacy. The Classicism of T.S. Eliot’s Criterion Network and its Relevance to our Postmodern World. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 16160 3 27. MOU, B. (ed.). Searle’s Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy. Constructive Engagement. 2008. ISBN 978 90 04 16809 1 28. KRAUSZ, M. and D. DUTTON and K. BARDSLEY (eds.). The Idea of Creativity. 2009. ISBN 978 90 04 17444 3 29. GUPTA, S. Notions of Nationhood in Bengal. Perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867-1905. 2009. ISBN 978 90 04 17614 0

Brill — P.O. Box 9000 — 2300 PA Leiden — The Netherlands