On a sultry April day, Thakurnagar, the holy site of Matuas in the Bongaon sub-division of West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district bordering Bangladesh, sizzles with banners of rival political parties asking for votes. As if indifferent to the ongoing political tension and the pandemic threat, a boisterous religious rally makes its way through the town, with men jumping as high as they can and women rolling on the roads. The sound of drums gets deafening. Every participant seems to be in ecstasy.
The procession is part of the Baruni fair or Thakurnagar Matua mela, the week-long annual festival observing the birth anniversary of Harichand Thakur (1812-1878), the founder of the Matua sect. Religious ecstasy is essential to the Matuas. The word Matua probably comes from the term, matta (drunken) — to be Matua is to be drunk on faith, absolute faith, uninhibited by caste considerations.
While the fair takes place in different parts of Bengal on a smaller scale, its centre is Thakurnagar, where lakhs of Matuas come over to pay their respects to their leader at Thakurbari (House of the Thakurs). There they recite and listen to words from Hari Lilamrita, a collection of Harichand’s sayings. In the stalls selling sweets and samosas, images of Harichand and his son Guruchand are sold alongside those of Hindu deities. Some Matuas consider Harichand to be an incarnation of Vishnu.
The Harichand-Guruchand temple in Thakurnagar.
The Matua sect is the result of a reformist, anti-caste movement started by Harichand in Bangladesh in the late 19th century. “The core ideology of this movement was freedom from the hierarchy of Brahminical caste practices,” says Rajat Roy, assistant professor of political science at Presidency University, Kolkata. Roy adds that while social reform movements, headed by the likes of Vidyasagar, Ramakrishna or Swami Vivekananda, were widespread in Bengal at the time, they rarely breached caste boundaries. This is where the appeal of Harichand’s teachings, with their anti-discriminatory message, lay.
Equality for all
Born into a family of peasants in Orakandi village, in present-day Bangladesh, Harichand founded the Matua sect to bring emancipation to the Namasudras, who were pejoratively called Chandals and considered untouchable. After Harichand’s death in 1878, his son Guruchand Thakur (1846-1937) expanded the scope of the movement to include people from other downtrodden communities and religions. The book, The Politics of Caste in West Bengal (edited By Uday Chandra, Geir Heierstad and Kenneth Bo Nielsen), quotes Dalit author Manoranjan Byapari as saying that the Matua movement “needs to be recognised as the first organised Dalit movement in Bengal.”
Guruchand campaigned successfully to have the Chandal people recategorised as Namasudra in the 1891 census. He also managed to ensure reservation for the community in 1907. Emancipation through education was the cornerstone of the movement as shaped by Guruchand, who established a number of schools in undivided Bengal for the Dalit community. Even today, Thakurnagar, created post-Partition in the image of Orakandi, is remarkable for the number of schools it has — there are at least 16 in this small town.
Soma Thakur, leader of Matri Sena, the women’s wing of the Matua Mahasangha.
Women’s education also came early. Binapani Devi Thakur (1920-2019), wife of Pramatha Ranjan Thakur (Guruchand’s grandson), worked alongside her husband to establish Thakurnagar. Still revered as the matriarch, Binapani Devi spread the teachings of Harichand across the country and campaigned for the Matuas’ right to permanent citizenship. “Equality for all — whether in terms of gender, caste or religion — is one of our primary tenets,” says Soma Thakur, leader of Matri Sena, the women’s wing of the Matua Mahasangha, the central Matua organisation.
The zeal for education has differentiated the Namasudras from other lower castes of Bengal. As Roy says, “While the Namasudras are aware of reservations and are ambitious about their career, many other Scheduled Caste (SC) communities like the Rajbongshis are more intent on political representation, specifically territorial autonomy.”
However, as the Matuas became economically successful, they sometimes ended up replicating the very caste practices they had rebelled against. The view that Harichand is a Vishnu incarnation can be cited as an instance of this tendency. Matua activists have countered this trend through literature connecting Matua tenets to the teachings of Ambedkar and secular organisations meant to create caste consciousness. But even now, Ambedkar is not a big presence in their daily lives. Namasudra author Manindranath Biswas’s book, Harichand Tattwamrita , seeks to reinterpret Harichand’s teachings by separating it from Hindu beliefs.
The Matuas, who began migrating from Bangladesh in 1947 and continued to arrive until the 1970s, are now settled as far as Uttarakhand, the Dandakaranya area, and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. In West Bengal, they have a considerable presence in border districts such as the 24 Parganas, Nadia, Howrah, Cooch Behar and Malda, and are the State’s second largest SC community.
While always an articulate community with a sizeable body of literary works to its credit, the Matuas became a significant political entity after the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, and the introduction of the term “illegal migrant,” which cast their credentials into doubt. In 2019, the NRC furthered this anxiety, which the CAA 2019 sought to assuage.
Dilution of tradition
Kamalkanti Biswas, the present in-charge of the Matua Mahasangha of North Bengal.
Thakurnagar resident Kamalkanti Biswas, 73, the present in-charge of the Matua Mahasangha of North Bengal, traces his origins to Orakandi. He came to India in 1975. “I quit my job in the agriculture department of Bangladesh to come here. For years, I worked in other people’s homes and farms. I sat for the Madhyamik (West Bengal Board) exams, and eventually got a job in the State education department. I retired as a lower-division clerk this year,” he says.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Orakandi on March 27 and its significance have been enthusiastically discussed in the media, but Biswas downplays it. He would rather emphasise the importance of his faith, divorced from electoral politics: “It is our road to liberation. It allowed us to pray, to live with dignity and to educate ourselves. I have worked all my life to spread the ideals of Harichand and Guruchand Thakur. My grandchildren are also working with the Matua Mahasangha,” he says. These sentiments are echoed by a local shopkeeper, who refuses to be named. He looks up to the Thakurbari for instructions on life and living, but doesn’t like the way family members have politicised themselves.
But the Matuas have a long tradition of political involvement. Pramatha Ranjan was a member of the Congress party. Another Namasudra leader, Jogendranath Mandal (1904-1968), established the Bengal branch of the Scheduled Castes Federation with Ambedkar in the 1940s to fight for Dalit rights.
The dilution of the rationalistic, reformist traditions of the Matua movement is one of the reasons why some Namasudras of Bengal are unwilling to see themselves as Matua today. Byapari, who wrote Matua Ek Mukti Senar Naam (‘Matua, the Name of a Liberation Army’), and is Trinamool Congress’s candidate from Balagarh in Hooghly district this year, says that he sees no hope in the movement any more.
“What is the science behind rolling on the ground? Why should a leader from a community in which people don’t get two square meals be bathed in milk? The movement has fallen into the trap of faith, moving away from science and rational questioning. Every time that happens, people will exploit you, whether they represent political powers or the caste powers that you freed yourself from,” he says.
The writer is an independent journalist based in Kolkata.
