How the Fading Away of the Caste Question Gave Rise to Insurmountable Hindu Unity in Bengal
Recently, the Peerzada of the Furfura Shariff in West Bengal’s Hooghly district, called for forging a social coalition of Muslims and other marginalised communities like tribals and lower-castes – to protest the dominance of Bhadraloks in Bengal. The idea of a ‘social coalition’ may be regarded as an election gimmick – as for in a parliamentary democracy like India – no party can offer to capture the guard either in the state or national level by riding on sectional support. It is ironic, however, that the esteemed cleric sought to flag off his electoral innings from the mosque named after his Sufist ancestors who died fighting the valiant local Bagdi king. Bagdis are presently the third largest scheduled caste community in the state!
But what the rhetoric fails to capture is the impossibility of such an alliance in a highly politicised state like West Bengal where, unlike other Indian states, political loyalties have erased the paramountcy of traditional identities. As a consequence of the state slipping out of the hands of the Congress in as early as 1967, the lower-castes that presently constitute 24 per cent of the state’s total population, have undergone profound mobilisation, co-option and representation in the social and political system of the state.
In this article, I wish to present briefly how the Caste Hindu leaders in colonial Bengal felt the need to accommodate the lower-castes in the mainstream of the Bengali Hindu society in order to sway them away from forging political experimentations with the Muslims. This experiment at the top-tier was occasionally interrupted by violent riots in the grassroots between lower-castes and Muslims – finally culminated in the anti-Hindu pogroms of 1946 and 1950 in East Bengal – that finally sealed the fate of the ‘alliance’. Bengali society has inherently been a Hindu society and faith in the caste system is essential to being a Hindu – Bengal was not an exception to this. But certain political and historical factors led to the gradual erosion of this identity, fomenting into an unsurpassable Hindu unity.
Cooption of lower-castes into mainstream Bengali society
The Caste Hindu politicians of colonial Bengal were Burkians in practice – as they sought to maintain a fine balance between conservatism and correctionism. This reflected in their attitude towards adjusting the lower-castes into the Hindu mainstream. The lower-castes too, maintained their ‘Hindu’ identity while striking a compromise with the Muslims in the 1930s, and so much so did they exhibit a distinct ‘scheduled caste’ identity while realigning themselves with the Caste Hindus after 1946.
The colonial objectification and enumeration of caste for purposes of affirmative action, was initially met with mellow resistance from Caste Hindu quarters. For instance, both the Namasudras and Rajbanshis – that were the second and third largest Hindu castes respectively in Bengal at that time, found a place in the provisional list of scheduled castes published by the Bengal Government in January 1933. But their inclusion was vehemently opposed by liberal Caste Hindu organisations like the Indian Association that opined that the Namasudras, “by their education and enlightenment” were “in no way backward”. Similarly they argued against the inclusion of Rajbanshis in the list as they had already been granted the right to perform upanayana – as a consequence of having undergone Kshatriyaisation.
Despite their objections, both the Namasudras and Rajbanshis found a place in the final list. Parallely, however, the Caste Hindus resolved to deal with the problem of casteism and untouchability in particular. In 1929, Swami Satyananda of the Hindu Mahasabha enacted a prolonged satyagraha that continued for months, at the Munsiganj Kali Temple in Dacca, eastern Bengal – one of the very few shrines in the province that restricted the entry of untouchables. He sought to protest against the indignity faced by a poor Namasudra devotee, when he supposedly drank a sip of the holy water that washed the feet of the Mother-Goddess, and was subsequently belaboured by a group of high-caste devotees. After this incident, a resolution was passed at the Provincial Hindu Conference, an offshoot of the Hindu Mahasabha, calling for opening Hindu public places of worship to all Hindus irrespective of caste.
Accordingly, the Dacca temple-entry satyagraha led by Swami Satyananda mobilised the local Namasudras who tried to enter the temple premises by force but were resisted by the police – making them retreat for the time being. The satyagraha went for months but ultimately died a barren death with the spilling of blood of innocent satyagrahis. Meanwhile, the Bharat Sevasram Sangha and Hindu Milan Mandir, founded by Swami Pranavananda – a former revolutionary and disciple of Yogi Gambhirnath – mobilised the lower-castes of eastern Bengal and co-opted them into the Hindu Rakshi Dal militia as esteemed ‘foot soldiers of Hindutva’.
Swami Pranavananda stressed on Hindu unity irrespective of caste and initiated various social reform measures. In the Hindu Milan Mandirs he founded, Hindu initiates of all castes could participate in yajnas, chant Vedic mantras and perform sandhyavandana. The free dispensaries funded by his Sangha, would have qualified doctors treating even untouchable caste patients. There would be free schools – formal and vernacular – imparting both western and Hindu religious education. Through fructification of these gestures, the Caste Hindus felt the need to make certain amendments in order to adjust within the mainstream fold the rising tide of tumultuous assertions that were gaining ground in the Rajbanshi, Namasudra and Kaibarta communities.
The Sangha and the Hindu Milan Mandirs, aligned to the Hindu Mahasabha, that marked a radical departure from the Past, became extremely popular among the lower-castes who found in it a convenient medium of upward social mobility. Swami Pranavananda’s pious efforts went a long way to preserve the legitimacy of Hinduism among the lower-castes and untouchables whose population was immensely concentrated in eastern and northern Bengal. In addition, the Sangha would carry out the programme of shuddhi (ritual purification) by reconverting back Muslims to Hinduism. Apart from the Sangha, all the other Bengali religious sects and cults started giving initiation to Hindus of all castes and backgrounds.
There were profound changes that the Caste Hindu leaders initiated in the political field as well. During the Civil Disobedience Movement, the membership of the Congress was extended to the lower-castes and they were co opted into the organisational framework of the party. In eastern Bengal, many Namasudras held the position of union-level Congress Presidents. But in northern Bengal, the Rajbanshi leaders of the Congress rose up to the district-level Congress Presidency as well.
The Swing Bloc Formula
Jogendranath Mondal’s ideas, which contemporary radical Bahujanites attempt to reclaim, are not only redundant today, but also suicidal to Hindu unity. In the 1930s-40s, while the Caste Hindus of Bengal were trying to win over the scheduled castes through concessions and socio-political cooption, Mondal was insisting on a political alliance between the scheduled castes organisations and Muslim League in his home province. It must be noted here that the competition for agricultural land between Namasudras and Muslims in eastern Bengal, is a historical one. The two overwhelmingly peasant communities employed under a common institution (zamindari) were embroiled very often in violent riots with each other – for instance, the 1908 Gopalpur Riot, 1923 Padmabila Riot and 1938 Jessore Riot, to name a few. Mondal hailed from the Namasudra community.
He extensively toured scheduled caste villages in eastern Bengal to convince his caste-men of not participating in communal riots against Muslims. He argued that ‘caste Hindus’ of Congress and Mahasabha were ‘using’ the Namasudras for furthering their narrow political interests. He firmly believed that the scheduled caste legislators of Bengal had the numerical potential of acting as a powerful ‘swing bloc’- that would not dither from forging issue-based give-and-take relations with either ‘caste Hindu parties’ or the Muslim League.
For instance, in the 1937 provincial election, a total of 32 scheduled caste MLAs – were elected to the 250-member Bengal Legislative Assembly – 13 Namasudras, 7 Rajbanshis and the rest hailed from Poundra, Jele Kaibarta, Chamar and other communities. Out of the 13 Namasudra MLAs, 11 were independents who defeated scheduled caste candidates of the Congress and only one was elected as a Congress nominee.
However, the popular attention was specifically on one unreserved seat – Bakharganj North-East Rural where Jogendranath Mondal had filed his candidature as an independent. When the results were out, it was found that Mondal had defeated his nearest Congress rival, Saral Kumar Dutta, a Kayastha, by a margin of more than 2,000 votes.
Two scheduled caste legislators- Mukundabehari Mullick (Namasudra) and Prasanna Deb Raikat (Rajbanshi) were inducted as cabinet ministers in the coalition ministry. Thus, Mondal’s ‘swing bloc’ formula contributed to the formative entry of the Bengal Scheduled Castes into the highest order of administration of the province alongside the Krishak Praja Party, an overtly secular party of Muslim peasants.
In the reserved seats across eastern and northern districts of Bengal, Congress had to bite dust during the 1937 election. A widespread belief prevalent among the scheduled caste leaders of eastern Bengal was that – the Congress was trying by every possible means to arrest the election of genuine scheduled caste candidates to the Legislature, as Caste Hindu Congressites and influential zamindars would field ‘proxy’ scheduled caste candidates in reserved seats who would ultimately be remote-controlled by them. But not for long were the scheduled castes to be kept away from the Congress.
Religious Cleavages in the Coalition Ministry (1937-1947)
The scheduled caste legislators elected to the Assembly were not a homogenous bloc and not all represented socio-economic interests of the scheduled castes. For instance, the Rajbanshi MLA and minister, Prasanna Deb Raikat was an influential landlord. Another Namasudra minister, Mukundabehari Mullick had prior to the election petitioned and campaigned alongside Caste Hindus against the allocation of separate electorates to Muslims in Bengal.
However, there were some differences within the Namasudra bloc itself – between the likes of Pramatha Ranjan Thakur, then an England-returned barrister, and Jogendranath Mondal – which would, within years, culminate in their parting of ways on the Partition issue.
Mukundabehari Mullick was given an important portfolio- that of Rural Cooperative Credit and Indebtedness. This infuriated the Muslims as the contender for this office was Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy who had to remain satisfied with Commerce and Labour. The Muslim League through its mouthpiece, Star of India, gave the hint that the Muslim masses were not at all ready to renounce the claim to this department even at the cost of this alliance. It argued that Suhrawardy and Mullick ‘exchanged their portfolios’ as that would ‘satisfy the Muslims’!
But at the grassroots level, the Namasudras retained their militancy, often mobilising as a ‘Hindu’ collective, and confronted the Muslims that took the form of serious riots. While the Namasudra and Muslim Leaders at the top made adjustments facilitating a smooth functioning of the ministry, the Muslim and Namasudra masses once again got involved in fierce riots in the district of Jessore, around April-May 1938.
Between 1937 and 1947 in undivided Bengal, the Congress never got a chance to form a ministry either on its own or with a coalition partner. This was for two reasons – Bengal being a Muslim-majority province, and the support received by Muslim-based parties from scheduled caste legislators. In 1943, the Shyama-Haq Cabinet was dissolved and the Khwaja Nazimuddin-led Muslim League Ministry assumed office. Jogendranath Mondal was inducted as a cabinet minister. But the question of religion now jeopardised the efficient functioning of the coalition ministry.
Khwaja Nazimuddin was an ashrafi Muslim – the rich zamindar of the Dhaka estate. Mondal discovered that the Muslim minister, Hamidul Haq Chowdhury had not implemented the ‘Communal Ratio Rule’ (employment in proportion to population) in his Food Rationing Department. Mondal was up in arms against Chowdhury and he, in a reconciliatory meeting, complained to Nazimuddin about the minister’s neglect. In that meeting, the Muslim ministers entered into a verbal fracas with Mondal, who threatened to withdraw support from the Muslim League Ministry.
This conflict was later sorted out, but it exposed the fault-lines within the ministry that was founded on common minimum programme. The political compromise that was achieved between the scheduled castes and Muslims was vehemently marred by religious cleavages – both in the apex and grassroots tiers.
Congress and Scheduled Castes in the 1946 Bengal Election
The Muslim League fought the 1946 election as a ‘referendum’ for the Pakistan demand. In Bengal, the Muslim League bagged 113 out of the 119 Muslim seats to the Provincial Legislature. The Congress, which was by then, established as the sole representative of Hindus, bagged 86 seats – but what drew special attention was its paramount dominance in the scheduled caste seats as well!
The Congress nominees won in 24 out of the 30 scheduled caste seats, marking a radical departure from the 1937 scenario when the Congress lost in majority of those seats. The Scheduled Castes Federation, whose Bengal unit was founded by Jogendranath Mondal, failed to make its presence felt. The SCF nominees lost in all seats, except one in Bakharganj district – that returned Mondal to the Legislature.
This did not mean that Mondal was subdued in the streets. Mondal joined the new Muslim League Ministry as a cabinet minister. It was at this time when the Pakistan movement was at its full swing and on receiving assurances from Jinnah, Mondal started mobilising Hindu, especially scheduled caste opinion, in favour of Pakistan. He held meetings across the province against the Partition of Bengal. But, the majority scheduled caste opinion was firmly against Mondal. Meanwhile, another prominent Namasudra leader, Pramatha Ranjan Thakur who was also the newly-elected Congress MP to the Constituent Assembly from Faridpur, began mobilising scheduled caste opinion in favour of the Partition of Bengal.
The Two Horrors of 1946 and Fate of the Alliance
So what made the scheduled caste Hindus flock to the pro-Partition camp alongside the Caste Hindus in such large numbers? The gruesome experiences of the Islamist pogrom that struck at Noakhali and Plain Tripura districts in October 1946 sealed the fate of the scheduled caste-Muslim alliance. The incidents at Noakhali brought the scheduled castes in direct confrontation with the Muslims – 90 per cent of the victims in Noakhali being of scheduled caste Hindu origin (Kaibarta, Jugi, Namasudra) and an overwhelming number of them turned homeless. Their womenfolk were ravaged and livestock that they owned were purged in the Islamist hellfire that continued unabated for a week at the behest of the Muslim League Ministry and negligence of its police in controlling the marauding Islamic fundamentalist mobs.
As the communal pogrom subsided, Gandhiji led a Congress delegation to Noakhali. Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee too extensively toured the genocide-stricken areas alongwith Swami Madhavananda of the Ramakrishna Mission. Many Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and force-fed beef. Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee successfully persuaded the Hindu pundits in bringing back the Islamic converts back to the fold of Hinduism and arranged for rehabilitation of the homeless Hindus – a majority of them being scheduled castes. This gesture on Dr Mookerjee’s part was his major achievement that went a long way in preserving Hindu legitimacy in many villages of Noakhali.
Even the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 that ravaged the Hindus in the provincial capital also brought the scheduled caste migrants (Dushads, Chamars, Balmikis) of northern India in face-off with the Islamic fundamentalists. They acted as foot-soldiers of Hindu resistance to the Islamic onslaught. Thus, in the aftermath of these two incidents, the scheduled castes were becoming increasingly wary of their future in an Islamic nation and argued before the Congress and the British that they were not to be left at the mercy of Islamist forces. Even after being criticised by his own caste-men, Mondal did not dither from his position.
However, Thakur was not the only one to press for Partition. The Depressed Classes League, Depressed Classes Association, Bengal Namasudra Association and Bengal Jele Kaibarta Association were firmly in favour of partitioning the province on religious lines. R. Das, the Secretary of the Depressed Classes Association released a press briefing that Jogendranath Mondal’s opinion did not represent the majority scheduled caste opinion. A delegation of two scheduled caste MPs from eastern Bengal met the Viceroy and petitioned against the inclusion of scheduled caste areas in Pakistan and argued for relocating the 70 lakh-strong scheduled caste population of eastern Bengal in the new Bengali Hindu Homeland of western Bengal.
However when the Partition Plan was finalised and brought into final effect, it was discovered that the scheduled caste areas – those dominated by the Rajbanshis and Namasudras were left out in Pakistan. Khulna district had a sizeable scheduled caste population of 35 per cent, which accounted to nearly 70 per cent of the district’s total Hindu population. Though Khulna was initially placed in West Bengal upon Partition, within days it was snatched away from India and traded off to Pakistan in exchange of the Muslim-majority district of Murshidabad. Hindu scheduled caste areas of Rangpur, Dinajpur, Faridpur and Bakharganj districts were also placed in Pakistan.
The Final Nail in the Coffin
Meanwhile, Jogendranath Mondal was inducted in Pakistan’s first Cabinet as the Law Minister. Jinnah died in 1948 and Mondal soon fell from the good books of the Muslim League. As the Tebhaga Uprisings (1946-50) regained momentum in East Pakistan, the scheduled caste peasants came under direct threat of violence at the hands of the police and Muslim Ansars. There were beatings, abductions, rape and other sorts of unnecessary harassment that the scheduled castes had to face in the formative years. Irrespective of their caste affiliation, all Hindus were categorised into ‘the other’ by the Islamic State – while the local Muslim League leaders assigned an overarching identity of Kaafer (infidel) to the Hindus – Brahmin and Shudra alike. Even the communist militants were labelled as being ‘Hindu miscreants’!
As mentioned earlier, the district of Khulna was placed in Pakistan upon independence. On 20 December 1949, in the Kalshira village of Bagerhat subdivision, the police came in searching for few communists. The local Hindus resisted, resulting in the death of a police constable. The next day, the police raided Kalshira with a large contingent of Muslim Ansars. The neighbouring 22 Namasudra villages were attacked and huts plundered and looted. A number of Hindus were killed and men and women converted to Islam. Household deities were desecrated. This prompted a massive outpour of Hindus, mostly Namasudras, to India. Within a month, 30 thousand Namasudras fled Khulna and arrived in West Bengal.
The outpour of Hindu refugees who spread the word of violence created ripples among the Hindus in Calcutta. Muslims in Calcutta were attacked and many were forced to abandon their properties and flee to East Pakistan. On the following year in January, the communists staged a mass peasant uprising in Nawabganj subdivision of Rajshahi district in East Pakistan. However the rebellion was ruthlessly crushed by the police and Ansar militia. Hundreds of Santal tribesmen, who acted as vanguards of the revolt, were killed and thousands started fleeing to India as refugees.
Fresh bouts of disturbances began in February 1950 when few Congressmen in the provincial legislature of East Pakistan staged a walkout after their adjournment motion condemning the atrocities in Kalshira, was rejected by the Speaker. In a concerted manner, Muslims launched serious attacks on the Hindus in the districts of Dacca, Bakharganj, Chittagong, Noakhali, Sylhet, Mymensingh, Jessore and Rajshahi. The means of violence ranged from beatings and loot to rape, abductions and killings. An estimated 5.6 million Hindus were abducted, raped, killed or forced to flee.
As the incoming scheduled caste refugees, especially the Namasudras, arrived in the districts of Nadia and 24 Parganas, they entered into violent conflicts with the local Muslims who were forced to abandon their property and cattle and flee to East Pakistan. This continued for months. As fallout of the 1964 pogrom, the situation went out of control as Namasudras of Habra, Taherpur and Dhubulia refugee camps in Nadia and 24 Parganas districts were mobilised to squat on Muslim property and forced them to vacate their land. The Congress government imposed dawn-to-dusk curfew in Namasudra areas – which prompted Pramatha Thakur’s resignation from the ministry in protest. Charged with inciting violence, Thakur was arrested days after, under the Defence of India Rules.
This tension that soared between the Hindus and Muslims in East Pakistan (and Bangladesh later) occasionally culminating into mass genocides in 1964, 1989, 1992 and 2001, brought the scheduled castes in direct confrontation with the Muslims – the latter being the perpetrator. This was the case because the Hindus of East Bengal were (and still are) overwhelmingly lower-castes, and secondly, the majority of the Caste Hindu residents of East Pakistan had left for India by 1948.
Mondal fled to India in 1950 and sent his resignation letter to Prime Minister Liaqat Ali of Pakistan, in protest against the government’s countenance to the anti-Hindu atrocities. But the poor scheduled caste peasant refugees, who did not bear the necessary socio-cultural capital to start afresh living in India, were entangled in the quicksand of survival wars. Many of them were sent to distant and uninhabitable areas like Dandakaranya in central India to explore new avenues of living. And the rest, who stayed back in West Bengal, soon realised the folly of their social position and were pushed into the arms of the communist parties due to the utter negligence of the Congress government in facilitating their rehabilitation.
On returning to India, Mondal remained active in refugee politics and founded the Eastern India Refugee Council. But this organisation was overshadowed by the two left-wing refugee groups- United Central Refugee Council aligned to the Communist Party and the Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan, aligned to the Praja Socialist Party. Mondal failed to make his presence felt as he lost every election he contested, to scheduled caste candidates of both the Congress and the Left. Most of the prominent scheduled caste leaders like Pramatha Thakur, Manindra Biswas, Apurba Lal Majumdar had by then deserted Mondal.
In the 1962 assembly election, he lost both Hanskhali and Bagdaha seats to Pramatha Thakur and Manindra Biswas respectively of the Congress. He came in conflict with the Left refugee leaders who abhorred him for bringing in the question of caste into the refugee problem. With Mondal’s death in 1968, the caste-question was relegated to irrelevance and the Left soon managed to engineer a decisive take-away of the scheduled caste vote resulting in their landslide victory in the 1977 election. The scheduled caste Hindu vote remained steadfastly with the Left till 2011.
Forging a New Loyalty to the Hindu identity
With the demand for a population exchange rejected by the Indian leadership and the absentee Hindu landlords having deserted their estates, the scheduled caste Hindus trapped in East Pakistan – a majority of them being tied to land – found it extremely difficult to migrate over to the other side of the border, unlike their upper-caste Hindu counterparts. Those who managed to cross over were won over by various refugee organisations aligned to the Left, and were pacified further by the radical land reform arrangements like the Operation Barga in the 1980s. This was coupled with the deindustrialisation of the state as a result of militant trade unionism of the Left, which was eventually followed by the rampant lumpenisation by the Trinamool, pushing the state into severe resource shortage crisis caused by defective allocative mechanisms.
When survival is at stake, then obscure loyalties like caste are receded to mere paper work. But in the meanwhile, something exceptional happened – the growth of popular Hindu consciousness, mainly due to the pro-Muslim appeasement policies of Trinamool government, and the steady electoral consolidation of the community behind the Bharatiya Janata Party, especially after 2014. No doubt the target-population of forging the loyalty to the new ‘Hindu’ identity happened to be the lower-castes and tribals that constitute nearly 30 percent of the state’s population – pitting them for both civilisational and political gains, against the Muslims – a large section of which constitutes Bangladeshi infiltrators.
The recent incidents of communal riots in the state have once again brought the lower-castes in direct confrontation with the Muslims. These factors led to the caste-question subdued for the time being, as more relevant class-based identities of their being ‘refugee’ and ‘proletarian’ assumed a greater social and political significance initially, which was later replaced and crisscrossed by more culturally-regimenting identity of the ‘Hindu Bengali’ which continues till date. This identity-in-unity will only strengthen further in the days to come.
