Namasudra Literature and the Politics of Caste in West Bengal

• Published in: Sanglap : journal of literary and cultural inquiry Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 78 - 87
• Main Author: Roy, Rajat
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Leamington Spa Ratnabali Publishers 01-10-2019; Boibhashik
• Subjects: 19th century; bengal politics; Bengali; Caste; Cultural identity; Culture; Hindus; Idioms; Imagery; namasudra literature; Oppression; Political activism; Politics; Religion; Social identity; utopia; Utopias; West Bengal; India
• ISSN: 2349-8064

While party politics seemed impenetrable to assert social identity, it is through literature, the low castes of West Bengal expressed their resistance. [...]Bengali Dalit literature has become the medium to create a vision for social equality for the socially and politically marginalized caste population. [...]the partition of Bengal led to the silencing of caste idiom through the appropriation of other identities- nation, religion, etc. [...]the dominance of party structure hardly gave any scope for social idioms like caste or gender to emerge as a significant force to influence party structure and play role in political mobilization (Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal). (Risley 184) However, it is with the colonial ethnographic homogenization of several jatis like- Namasudra, Nama, Chandal into one group that the caste category Namasudra comes into existence.In Sekhar Bandyopadhyay's famous work on Namasudra caste and their culture of protests, we find that before early nineteenth century (especially before the first census), the name Namasudra did not exist in public imagery as they were usually known as Chandal (Bandyopadhyay 11-15). Since its inception, this group of population started forming a sense of collective.