Bengali Identity, Sociopolitical Hegemony of Caste and the Emergence of Subnationalism Subhajit Naskar T his is a 1991–92 ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research) project that was transformed into a book in 2020 by Sumanta Banerjee with a new introduction to engage with the contemporary sociopolitical developments. In fact, the book begins with a larger problematic of defining and constructing an “Indian nation” and confronts the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government for imposing a “centralised order” in the name of nationalism in order to bring about a hegemonic sociopolitical cultural order that suits majoritarian Hindu beliefs and customs. The author premises his book on late 18th century when upper-caste Hindu bhadraloks assertions for a distinct subnational Bengali identity clashed with the nationalist factions of the Indian National Congress, which led to the resignations of Bengali leaders in Congress. Though the Bengal faction of Congress leaders wanted to bring communal solidarities by accommodating Muslims through the “Bengal Pact’’ but that had to be later abandoned in the wake of objections from conservative sections of Bengali Hindu leaders like Surendranath Banerjee. Their main fear was that if the Muslims were promised such rights, it would threaten the Bengali Hindu landlords, who provided financial support to congress politicians. They apprehended that the Muslim peasantry would demand increased share from the profits gained by the Hindu landlords. (p 27) Chapter 1 places the historical records and events to put on record Bengal’s upper-caste/class Hindu revolutionaries’ refusals to M K Gandhi’s call for a nonviolent civil disobedience movement. The author reveals the growing influence of Bhagat Singh among Bengali Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 1, 2022 book reviewS Unravelling the Bengali Identity: Sub-nationalism and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal by Sumanta Banerjee, Kolkata: Purbalok Publication, 2020, pp 198, `280. revolutionaries. They looked at Gandhi’s mechanism of anti-imperial struggle as “compromising with the British.” The Indian National Congress’ leadership’s disrespect for these regional popular sentiments and political demands, was reflected in the Gandhi–Irwin Pact of 1931. (p 32) However, the 1937 election verdict gave Bengal a split verdict in favour of Fazlul Haq’s Krishak Praja Party (KPK) which aimed at cutting down uppercaste Bengali Hindu landlords’ oppressive zamindari system. Nineteenth-century Bengal had witnessed severe division of the society between Hindus and Muslims along communal lines. Interesting to note, the chapter misses the opportunity to engage with the personality of Jogendra Nath Mandal, a giant lowcaste Dalit Bengali leader of time. Bengali Brahmin Supremacism Chapter 2 traces the historical roots of Bengal’s cultural identity. The author attempts to unveil the dilemma of 19thcentury Bengali community faced with two divergent “self-identification” concerns. First was at the level of defining itself as a distinct nationality in relation to the alien community of British rulers and the other was at the level of defining its relationship with the heartland of the Aryavarta (the north central region of India). (p 50) Later, Bengali intellectuals’ encounter with the educational system introduced in Bengal by the British colonial power vol lVii no 40 exposed them to the books of British historians on the Rajput and Maharashtrian wars against the Mughals created passion and “pride in the past glory of Indian Hindus.” The emergence of this awareness of a separate Hindu identity that could be harnessed to the larger pan-Aryan nationalism, among the educated Bengali Hindus coincided with the rise of an educated Muslim middle class among the Bengalis which tried to assert their interests while negotiating with the colonial power by seeking support from and identifying themselves with the pan-Islamic movement in north India and the Middle East. (p 50) Towards the latter half of the 19th century, Bengal’s Hindu intellectuals academically started resurrecting the “past of Bengal” and bringing on “mythological legends,” “genealogical records” and “archaeological evidences” to determine the competing puzzles of, Are the Bengalis Aryans or Non-aryans? Is the Bengali language derived from Sanskrit? When did the Brahmins first emerge in Bengal? Can the Bengali Brahmins trace their origins to the north Indian Brahmins? (p 54). In their attempts to assimilate Bengali society and culture into the traditions of the Aryavarta, the Bengali Hindu intellectuals of the 19th century tended to emphasis the Brahminical, Sanskrit oriented element in that culture. (pp 56–57) The upper stratum of Bengali society, more specifically upper-caste Hindu Bengali intellectuals, inched closer to Aryavarta by adopting Sanskrit and introducing Brahminical codes of behaviour “while the majority was stuck to Buddhism which was being pushed to the wall by the rising Brahminism.” Persecution of Buddhism Brahminical persecution led to the retreat of Buddhism into localised religious practice followed by lower-caste Bengali people. Brahmins raging hierarchical caste-based social order was angered so much by the localised religious practices that they “imposed taxes on the people of Malda and killed the followers of Buddhism” (p 63). There were rapid and competing developments of major religions taking place. The Sufi influence and the lower-caste religious cults (offshoots of the earlier 29 BOOK REVIEW Buddhist religious movement) allowed diverse sociocultural life. Interestingly, Islam embraced localised traditions of its Bengali converts but the orthodox religious Hindu and Muslim elites insisted on a purist adherence to rituals and religious customs that aimed not only at dividing the two communities but also at discriminating against the weaker members of their own communities. (p 72) In Chapter 3, the author recounts the reconfiguration of Bengals rural society in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire. With the end of the 18th century, British colonialists’ introduction of “qualitatively stronger market framework” disrupted “patron–client” relationship of Brahmins and upper-caste Muslims with that of the lower-caste orders of both the communities. Also, the destruction of the handloom-weaving industry by the British East India Company and the ruthless system of revenue collection by its Indian agents aggravated the rural agricultural production. Traditional rural beliefs and customs of the Bengali villagers and the orthodox religious beliefs and practices of the puritanic Hindu and Muslim clergy and upper classes reveals a basic difference that becomes crucial to an understanding Hindu–Muslim relations. (p 108) The 19th-century sociocultural life of rural Bengal was shaped by peasants, artisans and members of lower-castebased occupations like boatmen, bullock cart drivers in the face of “Hindu Muslim orthodoxy and strict sermons by handful of Brahmins, Mullahs and Wahabi-Faraizi followers.” Both the Bengali Hindu and the Muslim intelligentsia of the 19th century tended to respectively identify themselves with the North Indian Aryavarta and the pan-Islamic movements of the Middle East (p 114). Crafting Space Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the emergence of Bengali Hindu and Bengali Muslim leadership. From the late 18th century through the last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a tussle between orthodox-caste Hindu Bengalis with urban Bengali social reformers. Till almost third quarter of the 19th century, the Bengali Hindu bhadraloks (mainly 30 consisting of Brahmins, Kayasthas, Baidyas, Savarna Baniks and Sunris) remained split on attempts at social reforms like the ban on Sati, child marriage, widow remarriage and Kulin polygamy. (p 120) faith in the case of women was one of the most significant facets of that divide. Pan-Islamism versus Local Islam On the other hand, The orthodox Bengali caste Hindu gentry like Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay was of the view that since Bengali Muslims were formerly low caste Hindus and converted to Islam were therefore similar to the Bengali Hindus and share pan Aryan ideology. (p 125) On the other hand, the other sort of upper-caste bhadraloks like Nabagopal Mitra and Rajnarayan Basu were promoting Hindu melas. These melas were basically directed at educated upper caste-class Bengalis and to revive puritanic Hindu religion to its full glory. At the political level, Surendranath Banerjee was organising the Bengali Hindu youth around the concept of all-India nationalism. (p 129) Bengali society in the early and late 19th centuries was mired in the oppositional ideological battles between orthodox upper-caste Hindu bhadraloks and the liberal ones like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The latter were progressive but no serious attempts were made to dismantle the pre-colonial Brahminical Hindu social order. Distinguished historian Tapan Raychaudhuri, in his book, Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences (1999), writes, In Bengal the inheritance of the Brahminical high culture was manifest most powerfully in the cultivation of two disciplines, ‘Nyaya’ and ‘Smriti.’ Raychaudhuri further observes, Raja Ram Mohan Roy is by consensus regarded as the pioneer of modernisation in India. Arguments based on reason were among the most powerful instruments he used in the furtherance of cases—social, religious and political … and whatever his personal predilections, he was reluctant to repudiate the scriptural prescriptions beyond a point … His rationality conceded a space to beliefs which reason could not sustain. Raychaudhuri even calls the last decades of 19th-century Bengal as Hindu revivalism in its crudest form, also had its roots in an emotionally charged cultural self-assertion. The cultural and emotional divide between the bhadraloks and their ladies had many dimensions. The power of affects associated with the traditional october 1, 2022 the majority of Muslims of 19th century Bengal were concentrated in the eastern part. From all historical evidence, it appears that they were originally Buddhists and lower castes, who in order to escape the persecution of the Brahminical order, sought to refuge in Islam which arrived in Bengal around the 13th century. (p 148) The Muslim community in Bengal was therefore never homogeneous culturally. The strong difference existed between the Ashrafs (who claimed descent from the Arab, Turk, Pathan, and Mughal conquerors, preferred Urdu over Bengali) and other Muslims (who were converts to Islam from indigenous lower social orders and alien to orthodox Islam). “The Bengali Muslim intelligentsia like Abdul Latif and Amir Ali attempted to reform their society, especially from puritan Muslims who always raised the bogey of a Hindu threat to Islam” (p 156). The 19th century shaped the growth of what came to be known as “Muslim nationalism” in Bengal, in alliance with pan-Islamism at the international level. Leaders like Syed Amir Ali, Nawab Abdul Latif and the new generation of muslim bhadraloks, not only agitated for higher education, employment and positions in the administration for the Muslims, but also sought to revive Islam in its purity among the Bengali Muslims. (p 164) The concluding chapter of the book enunciates popular responses to the sociopolitical tensions in late 19th-century Bengal. The last half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century witnessed major rural upheavals in Bengal, agrarian unrest in Pabna, Santhal rebellion and Titumir’s resistance challenged zamindari system and the British overhauling of the rural economic structure. The oppressive zamindars who were targets of peasants were mostly rich upper caste Hindus like the Tagores, the Pakrasis, the Sanyals, The Banerjees and the Bhaduris, although the leaders of the peasant agitation were also petty Hindu landlords like Ishan Ray but the majority of participants in the agitations were Muslims. (pp 178–79) Faced with humiliating agitations from Muslims, Hindu zamindars started the anti-cow slaughter campaign to hit vol lVii no 40 EPW Economic & Political Weekly BOOK REVIEW back at the insensitivity of Muslims. The social life in the Bengals’ countryside, where predominant inhabitants were lower-order Hindus and Muslims remained unaffected amid the tensions between pan-Aryan nationalism of upper-caste Hindu bhadraloks and the pan-Islamism of their Bengali Muslim counterparts. Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 1, 2022 Lastly, the author of the book engages with the emergence of subnationalism from the eighth century through the 19th century but a specific discussion on the dominant castes’ identity building along the lines of subnational Bengali identity vis-à-vis oppressed low castes and Adivasis’ local dialectical vol lVii no 40 and language concerns could provide more nuance to the discussion in understanding the micro identity making and unmaking. Subhajit Naskar (subhajitjnu@gmail.com) teaches politics at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. 31