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CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion
Vol. 3 No. 1 pp. 11–30
April 2022
ISSN 2639-4928
brandeis.edu/j-caste
https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.367
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal
Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers
from Colonial Bengal, India
Mahitosh Mandal1
Abstract
This article debunks the myth that Bengal is a casteless land or that Bengalis have no
understanding of caste, by excavating, from within a Dalit historiographical framework,
the rich and heterogeneous anti-caste politico-intellectual tradition launched and
carried forward by the Dalits in colonial Bengal. Due to the paucity of space, it focuses
only on three among sixty Dalit communities residing in Bengal and demonstrates the
radical edge of ve diverse anti-caste thinkers, namely, Harichand Thakur, Guruchand
Thakur, Mahendranath Karan, Rajendranath Sarkar, and Mahendranath Mallabarman.
Through a critical rejection of nationalist, Marxist and subaltern historiographies
and interrogation of the Brahmanical appropriation of Bengal’s anti-caste tradition,
it foregrounds the independent and self-critical intellectual history of the Dalits of
colonial Bengal. It exposes the epistemic violence suffered by Dalit thinkers and
reformers in the textbook historical narratives that glorify a Brahmanical Bengal
Renaissance and highlights the neglected discourse of Dalit resistance and renaissance
that had taken place at the same time in the same province. It shows how these anti-
caste organic intellectuals fought the Brahmanical supremacists during the anti-British
movement led by the Brahmins and upper castes, and how their agendas of self-
respect and redistribution of wealth conicted with the Swadeshi movement. Finally,
the article demonstrates that while in the history of the anti-caste movement, Phule,
Ambedkar, and Periyar justiably occupy much of the discursive space, a signicant
and unacknowledged intellectual and political contribution was also made by their
contemporary Bengali counterparts.
Keywords
Dalit historiography, Dalit resistance, Dalit renaissance, anti-caste thought, Colonial
Bengal, Bengal Renaissance
1Assistant Professor of English, Presidency University, Kolkata, India
Email: mahitosh.eng@presiuniv.ac.in, mahitosh2020@gmail.com
12 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
Introduction: Conceptualizing Dalit Historiography of Bengal
Kancha Ilaiah, a leading anti-caste thinker of our time, noted in a 2018-lecture
held in Kolkata that, “In Bengal, there is a caste cancer without diagnosis” (C.S.
Bhattacharya, 2018, September 22). He emphasized that there is casteism in Bengal
but Bengalis have failed to make sense of and articulate its gravity. By extension, he
implied that Bengalis have been unable to launch any effective anti-caste movement. It
is undeniable that resistance against casteism is not as strong, scathing, and successful
as it is to be found in Indian states like Maharashtra—the land of the Phules (Jyotirao
Phule and Savitrivai Phule) and Babasaheb (B. R. Ambedkar), and Tamil Nadu—the
land of Periyar (E.V. Ramasamy). But it might be problematic if one takes Ilaiah’s
comment at a face value and imagines a total absence of anti-caste resistance in
Bengal. Instead, this article investigates the reason someone like Ilaiah might be
compelled to reach such a conclusion. It is now well-known among those researching
the caste question in Bengal that the discourse of caste had been completely sidelined
and repressed for thirty-four years in the Communist regime in postcolonial Bengal.
The state-sponsored massacres of Dalits in the Morichjhapi Island, the public denial
of the existence of “backward castes” by the chief minister Jyoti Basu in the context of
Mandal Commission agitations (Mandal, 2021, May 17), and the murder of nine Dalits
in the Nandigram violence (Teltumbde, 2010, pp. 168–169) are some of the instances
of how the repressive state apparatus of the Communist regime had maltreated the
Dalits and sidelined the caste question in Bengal. This has been supplemented by
nationalist and Marxist historians who, under the garb of writing the history of Bengal’s
anti-colonial resistance and excavating its subaltern history, reinforced a Brahmanical
and class-centric interpretation of history, thereby suppressing and ignoring the
caste question. None of the history textbooks for school students in Bengal mention
anything about anti-caste movement in colonial Bengal although these are replete
with references to the so-called Bengal Renaissance. The nationalist historiography
was developed to glorify the so-called powerful resistance the caste Hindu Bengalis
had put forth against the British Raj, be it politically, or in terms of revivalism and
reformation. The Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) of historians, on the other hand,
reduced the Gramscian notion of the “subaltern” to the proletariat or the class-
subaltern and substantially ignored the multiple other forms of subalternity including
those related to caste, religion, race, and territory, the last three being proposed by
Gramsci himself (Green, 2011, p. 394). It is the class-centric dimension of subaltern
historiography informed by Marxian political philosophy that completely prevented
the possibility of the emergence of an anti-caste or Dalit historiography in Bengal. It
may not be completely out of place to note that the bulk of the members of the SSG
group are Brahmins and that their assumptions remain deeply Brahmanical. Gayatri
Chakravorty, for instance, argued that the subaltern cannot speak because either she
cannot be found in the elite and colonial documents or she is embedded within the
dominant discourse only as an “Other” (Green, 2002, p. 16 & Spivak, 1995, pp. 27–
28). Nevertheless, while looking for non-elite archives, the SSG historians did not
necessarily explore the archives produced by the Dalits or even the tribals. The caste-
subalterns of Bengal made use of the print culture brought to India by the British and
from the later nineteenth century onwards they started documenting their struggles and
creative output, largely in the vernacular Bengali but also occasionally in English. Rup
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 13
Kumar Barman’s (2016) aptly titled article “Yes! The Scheduled Castes Can Write,”
therefore, produces a strong rebuttal against the Brahmanical assumptions of the SSG.
Historians, not officially affiliated to the SSG, particularly Sekhar Bandyopadhyay,
have also been writing on the caste question in Bengal. Bandyopadhyay though an
ubiquitous presence in caste scholarship on Bengal has nevertheless neglected to look
into the vast range and heterogeneity of Dalit archives of colonial and postcolonial
Bengal. Therefore, almost condescendingly and sweepingly, he claims that the Dalits
of colonial Bengal could not transcend Brahmanical “imagination” and launch any
substantially subversive protest (Bandyopadhyay, 2004, p. 38). If one reads his works
one is forced to feel that Bengal did not witness any radical anti-caste movement. But
nothing could be far from the truth. On the other hand, a recent book by Dwaipayan
Sen (2018) elaborately analyses the historical importance of Jogendranath Mandal
(1904–1968) as a Dalit leader during and in the aftermath of India’s independence
from the British colonial rule and the decline of Dalit politics following his mysterious
demise. While Mandal had been a towering Dalit leader and perhaps the most
significant Ambedkarite from Bengal, he was certainly not the only anti-caste thinker
either in colonial or postcolonial Bengal. Nor was the Namasudra sub-caste, to which
he belonged, the only Dalit caste from Bengal to have launched and been launching
anti-Brahmanical resistance. Therefore, this article seeks to highlight the plurality and
diversity of anti-caste thought in colonial Bengal of which Jogendranath formed just a
part, however major, and thereby open up further possibilities of exploring the multi-
layered and multi-faceted anti-caste resistance in postcolonial Bengal as well.
This article argues that the long history of anti-caste movement in precolonial,
colonial, and postcolonial Bengal has not really been documented in English language
scholarship or translations. Whereas there are hundreds of pages written by the Dalits
in the vernacular Bengali language that document Dalit history, hardly any professional
historian has referred to these. One example could be the eight volumes of Poundra-
Monisha reprinted by Poundra Mahasangha in recent times. These volumes comprise
autobiographies, literary writings, political pamphlets, manifestoes and news reports
produced by the Poundras, a Dalit community, in colonial Bengal. A reading of these
volumes—almost none of which has been translated into English nor referred to in any
of the scholarly works including those of Sekhar Bandyopadhyay—will give one a fair
idea of the history of anti-caste struggle of this particular Dalit community. And, this
is the output of just one Dalit community from a specific historical period and if their
contemporary publications are considered then their output would be much larger than
eight volumes. Bengal is home to sixty different scheduled caste communities. If one
reads the literature and pamphlets produced by all these Dalit communities and studies
the scores of anti-caste organizations based in Bengal, some of whom are explicitly
named after Buddha or Ambedkar, then one might have to rethink the proposition that
Bengalis have failed to diagnose the cancer of caste or that they have no understanding
of caste. But there is a barrier between a knowledge transmissible nationally and
internationally and the knowledge produced locally, confined to vernacular language,
and completely ignored by the class-centric and Brahmanical scholarship. It is this
barrier that justifies Ilaiah’s statement.
This article is an attempt to demonstrate the radical edge of anti-caste thought
in five Dalit thinkers from colonial Bengal. Positioned within Dalit historiography—
something totally absent in the bulk of the historians mentioned above—it intends to
14 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
be a critique of the Marxist and nationalist historiographies that have monopolized
Bengal’s intellectual history. The article proposes that such historiographies are silent
about a Dalit renaissance and resistance that had taken place in Bengal at exactly the
same time when the so-called Bengal Renaissance happened. To emphasize the range
of anti-caste thought and avoid homogenization (as found in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay,
for instance, as mentioned earlier), it chooses four thinkers from two numerically large
Dalit communities (Namasudra and Poundra) and one thinker from a numerically small
Dalit community (Malo). The thinkers discussed are—Harichand Thakur (Namasudra),
Guruchand Thakur (Namasudra), Mahendranath Karan (Poundra), Rajendranath
Sarkar (Poundra), and Mahendranath Mallabarman (Malo). It may be mentioned
that all these thinkers were also at the same time reformers from the untouchable
communities and were committed to anti-caste and self-respect movements through
political resistance and social organizations. That is why they might be described better
as “thinker-reformers,” implying their intellectual output was intricately linked to their
social commitment, and they were thus organic intellectuals. Of course, a focus on just
three communities does not do justice to fifty-seven other Dalit communities residing
in Bengal. Nevertheless, within the permissible word-length, this is the most one can
do in an article that proposes to be one of the initiators of anti-caste discourse on
Bengal’s Dalit history written by Bengali Dalits from a Dalit point of view.
This article uses the term “anti-caste” in the sense in which Gail Omvedt uses it
in Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals. For her, anti-caste
movement is to be understood as “nonbrahman movement” and “dalit movement”
(Omvedt, 2016, p. 24). In a similar vein, Dalit historiography is defined in this article
as alternative histories written by Dalit, non-brahman and Ambedkarite intellectuals
from within an anti-Brahmanical, anti-Hindu, anti-caste and Buddhist perspective. This
article argues that Dalit historiography should be exclusively based on and inspired by
an unequivocally anti-caste framework of thinking. A radical Dalit historiography of
Bengal, this article contends, can emerge only through a critical rejection of nationalist
and Marxist (SSG being predominantly a class-centric enterprise) historiographies
which have symptomatically glossed over Dalit history in constructing Bengal’s
intellectual history.
Harichand Thakur (1812–1878)
Harichand Thakur is the earliest Dalit thinker of colonial Bengal. He was born in 1812
into a family of Chandals, eventually renamed as Namasudras,1 residing in the village
of Safaldanga in East Bengal. Harichand’s radicalism manifested in multiple areas
including politics, religion, economy and education. He was critical of Buddhism,
Vaishnavism, and Vedantism, but arguably molded his religion, Matuaism, through
a combination of Vaishnavism and Shaktism. (His wife was Shakta and the poet,
Tarak Chandra Sarkar, who documented his words in verse was a Malo by caste and a
Shakta by religion). For Harichand, Buddhism, admittedly a philosophy that appealed
1The census reports demonstrate the trajectory of naming of the community: Chandal (1872),
Namasudra or Chandal (1891), Namasudra (Chandal) (1901), Namasudra (1911). The struggle
to replace “Chandal” with “Namasudra” was a part of the identity formation movement led by
Harichand’s son Guruchand Thakur along with assistance from many including the Christian
Missionary C. S. Mead.
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 15
to the masses because of its anti-caste commitment (Horilīlamrito quoted in Mohanta,
2015, p. 170), degenerated due to its emphasis on ascetic life away from the family or
grihodhôrmo (literally, family-centric religion). According to him, garhosthyo ashrom
dhôri nôrôkul bnache/ grihike koriya bhôr sôkolei royeche/ tai dekhi grihodhôrmo
sôkoler mul/ eikhane buddhodeb korilen bhul. This translates to: the humans are
familial beings/ everyone depends on the family persons/ hence, girhodhôrmo is the
root of all/ and Buddha’s mistake was to ignore it. Such ideas insisting on the family
life are replete in Horilīlamrito. Another instance could be: Grihete thakiya jar hôy
vadhodôy/ sei se pôrom sadhu janibe nischôy (He who realizes divinity while living a
family life is the greatest monk) (Sarkar, 2016, p. 24).
On the other hand, Vaishnavism had turned the devotees of the early nineteenth
century Bengal into irresponsible religious beggars of alms and practitioners of
unrestrained sexual acts. Harichand observed how a clear caste division emerged
among the Vaishnavites themselves—the ‘lower caste’ and untouchable devotees were
looked down upon by their upper caste and Brahmin counterparts (Sarkar, 2016, pp. 54–
55). Furthermore, as noted by many including Bandyopadhyay, Harichand’s religion
was critical of the Vedantism of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the prevalent notion
of renunciation involving giving up of desire for sexuality and wealth. Instead, he
wanted to foreground material desire over spiritual bhakti, dismissing the abstract and
metaphysical idea of a Brahman, the ultimate reality, as being of no use to the toiling
masses (Bandyopadhyay, 2014, n.p.). Furthermore, he opposed the Vedic religion and
the Brahmins on several occasions (ved-vidhi nahi mane na mane brahmôn and ved-
vidhi shoucacar nahi mani tai.) (Sarkar, 2016, pp. 94, 138). The point is, Harichand
was not “influenced” by these religious traditions as Sekhar Bandyopadhyay would
have us believe but radically opposed them to mold the distinctness of his political
theology (Bandyopadhyay, 2014, n.p.).
Harichand’s theology was a spiritual discourse structured in terms of material
requirements of the poor Dalits. His famous dictum hate kam, mukhe nam (work with
hands, sing god’s praise with mouth) is therefore to be considered as an aphorism
against metaphysical, non-materialistic, abstract theologies (Sarkar, 2016, pp. 23, 55,
73). This is how the Matua religion of Harichand Thakur avoided being an “opium of
the people” to borrow a phrase from Karl Marx. Marx argued that “The abolition of
religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness”
(Marx, 1982, p. 131). Harichand’s religion, unlike Brahmanical religions, did not
promise illusory happiness. It did not ask the devotees to concentrate on the happiness
in the there and then while suffering in the here and now. Instead, it inspired them to
achieve material success in this world and that alone could be the source of spiritual
happiness, according to him. This is uncannily similar to how Protestantism gave
moral sanction to the economic prosperity of the Christian (prosperity being a sign of
divine “grace”), a fact elaborated by Max Weber (2001) in his classic work. One could
in fact talk about a Matua religion that supported the spirit and pursuit of capitalism.
Harichand was a Dalit among the Dalits. He faced overlapping forms of
discrimination due to being a) a Dalit and b) a poor peasant. Several revolutionary
moments from his life attest to his experience and resistance to casteism. He was invited
16 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
to a funeral ceremony which the Brahmins refused to attend because they did not want
to be at the same place as the Chandals. Harichand could not take this lying down and
subsequently launched his anti-Brahmanical agenda. Harichand found that the Dalits
had been suffering from dire poverty lacking lands for cultivation. He asked them to till
the waste lands (potit jomi) and harvest rice (Sarkar, 2016, pp. 71–73). He emphasized
that Dalits needed to be economically empowered to eventually overcome the state
of being downtrodden. Hence, he foregrounded the economic pursuit: Grihosther
mulbhitti ôrthôniti bôte/ banijye bôsoti lokkhi ei bani rôte (money is the familial base/
the goddess of wealth blesses the man of commerce); or ôrthoke ônortho bôla kôtobôro
vul (it is a grave mistake to consider money as worthless) (Horilīlamrito quoted in
Biswas, 2015, p. 30). Furthermore, he realized that the key to the community’s success
is to make it free of superstition and bring education to them. To this end, he inspired
his son to set up the first school for Dalits in the village of Orakandi (Biswas, 2015, p.
31). He dealt a blow at Brahmanical patriarchy by promoting equality between men
and women, prohibiting polygamy (ek nari, brohmochari), and empowering women
through education and job prospects (Sarkar, 2016, p. 192).
In addition, Harichand motivated the Dalits to organize, participate, and lead in
politics because political and administrative power was considered crucial for their
liberation. He wanted them to become “raj-shokti.” The religion of the Matuas,
Harichand emphasized, was not meant for the Namasudras alone. It was open to
all Dalits, embraced even Muslims, and preached inter-dining for all. In this way, it
aimed at developing into a Bahujan religion (Horilīlamrito quoted in Thakur, 2015,
pp. 18–19).
Harichand, himself uneducated, gave twelve commandments which offer a
glimpse into his philosophy, although, one should mention, these do not encompass
everything he said or asked his followers to do: “1. Always speak the truth. 2. Look
at women other than your wife as mothers. 3. Love everybody in the world. 4. Never
practice casteism. 5. Respect your parents. 6. Beware of the temptations of the six
senses. 7. Do not condemn other religions. 8. Give up outward monkhood and desire
for ascetic life away from family. 9. Sing Hari’s praise but toil with the hands. 10.
Establish temples of Sri Hari. 11. Pray daily with heads bowed down. 12. Give yourself
to Sri Hari” (quoted in Sarkar 2015, p. 188, translation mine).
When the theoretical and practical contributions of Harichand and of Guruchand
(discussed in the next section) to the Dalits and minorities are considered, one cannot
help describing them as agents leading to concrete social change and reawakening of
the ‘lower castes’. One critic has rightly described them in Bangla as banglar ôbohelito
lokayoto sômajer nôbojagôroner jôtharthoi dut or the harbinger of the renaissance for
the neglected masses (Tushar Chattopadhyay quoted in Baidya, 2015, p. 57). In fact,
following Dilip Gayen, a Poundra thinker, one could state that if Ram Mohan Roy is
the Father of Bengal Renaissance (which, according to Gayen was basically a Brahmin
Renaissance) then Harichand was the Father of the Mulnivasi, Dalit and Bahujan
Renaissance (Gayen, 2021, p. 28). Harichand’s work would be carried forward by his
son Guruchand Thakur and his great-grandson Pramatha Ranjan Thakur.
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 17
Guruchand Thakur (1846–1937)
Arguably it was Guruchand, Harichand’s son, who extensively applied the philosophy
of Matuaism to the cause of Dalit liberation. Guruchand valued the education of
the Dalits as a topmost priority because education was a means of liberation and
empowerment (Sarkar, 2016, p. 144 & Sarkar, 2015, pp. 191, 198). Following his
father’s instruction regarding the importance of education for the Dalits, he founded
the first ever school for the Dalits in 1880 (approximately 30 years after the Phules
did so in Maharashtra) in his own house in Orakandi, eastern Bengal. However,
no teacher was available immediately because the Brahmins refused to teach the
‘lower castes,’ until a Dalit, Raghunath Sarkar of Dhaka, came over and volunteered
to do so. To ensure that such schools run smoothly, Guruchand convened the first
educational conference of the Matuas in 1881 in Dattadanga. Approximately, 5000
representatives attended the conference. In the same year, under Guruchand’s
guidance, the Namasudra Welfare Association was set up and representatives from
twenty-two districts joined the Association. In 1908, the first school for English
education was founded by Guruchand with assistance from the Australian missionary
C.S. Mead. In 1932, the Hari-Guruchand Mission was established in Orakandi and the
Mission assisted in the establishment of a school for girls. By one account, Guruchand
established around 1882 schools in Bengal, out of which 1067 schools were founded
in the Dhaka division alone (Sarkar, 2015, pp. 191, 195; Roy, 2019, p. 60). This pales
the educational contribution of Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, the much-glorified
face of the Bengal Renaissance, who established, by one account, around thirty-six
schools (Sarkar, 2015, p. 195). And yet, it is Ishwar Chandra who is remembered as the
archetypal educational reformer of Bengal and Guruchand’s revolution in educational
field remains undocumented in the official intellectual history of Bengal.
Apart from establishing schools, Guruchand was instrumental in the dissemination
of anti-caste thought through magazines and newspapers. He was the founder of the
monthly journal Nômosudro suhrid (Friend of the Namasudras, started in 1907)
which was dedicated to excavating the history of the Namasudras and discussing
their empowerment and advancement. Guruchand is described as the first Namasudra
journalist (Roy, 2019, p. 55). He was the inspiration behind the setting up of at least
three more magazines and journals during this time, namely, Nômosudro potrika
(1908), Nômosudro hitoishi (1916), and Pôtaka (1916).
Guruchand mobilized the Dalit peasants, following his father’s footsteps. The
Chandals had a long history of resistance including their general strike of 1873 in
which, as noted by W.W. Hunter, they resolved “not to serve anybody of the upper
caste in whatever capacity, unless a better position among the Hindu caste than what
they at present occupy was given to them” (Hunter quoted in Roy, 2019, p. 51).
Positioned within such a context, as early as 1900, Guruchand advocated for tebhaga
or the agenda that the peasants must be given two-third of the crops’ share and the
landlords must have only one third. He organized them against the exploitative system
of Indigo plantation and destroyed the Indigo farm of a British sahib in 1909 (Das,
2015, pp. 216–218). He was the president in the peasant convention that took place
in Barishal in June 1922 and a key speaker in the 1933 provincial peasant convention
18 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
held in Midnapore. Unlike the upper-caste Marxist historians and reformers, he was
fully aware that the bulk of the poor peasants belonged to the ‘lower castes’ or outcaste
communities; therefore, it was as much a struggle to overcome casteism as it was
overcoming classism.
Perhaps, the most defining moment in Guruchand’s movement was his refusal
to participate in the nationalist movement launched by the Congress Party under the
leadership of M.K. Gandhi and Chittaranjan Das. Gandhi wanted to rope in the Dalits
in his anti-British struggle. However, Guruchand flatly told Chittaranjan who had
written a letter to Guruchand for support on Gandhi’s instruction, that their struggles
were different. For Guruchand, a freedom struggle that was focused on gaining
independence from a foreign enemy by those who kept intact their enmity and injustice
towards the downtrodden in the native land was a form of hypocrisy. Dalits needed,
first and foremost, an emancipation from casteism and poverty caused by the caste
Hindus and they did not have the luxury to participate in the Swadeshi movement and
Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement (Haldar, 2021, pp. 412–416). For Guruchand,
the so-called freedom struggle was concerned with the freedom of the few while he
was concerned with the freedom of all the oppressed communities. In fact, Guruchand
developed close association with the British and fully utilized the provisions for the
‘lower castes’ prepared by the British government. His 1906-meeting with Sir Lancelot
Hare, the then Lieutenant of East Bengal and Assam, was historic in the sense that he
acquainted Lancelot with the plight of the Namasudras. Afterwards Lancelot ensured
that thirty-one communities from Bengal were included in the list of the Scheduled
Castes from Bengal and they could thereby avail various opportunities provided by the
government (Roy, 2019, p. 59). Furthermore, under Guruchand’s leadership, fourteen
Dalits held deputation to the British government in 1907 and consequently, from 1907,
Dalits earned the right to government jobs under the Proportional Representation
of the Community in Public Employment Act passed the same year (Sarkar,
2015, p. 194).
Guruchand’s was a total movement. Like his father, he was ready to embrace
everybody within his fold—all Dalit and ‘lower caste’ groups from Kumbhokar,
Kopali, Mahishya, to Das, Chamar, Poundra, Tnaati, Malakar, and even minority
groups like Muslims. This was truly a resistance of the subaltern, and more specifically,
the caste-subaltern (Haldar, 2021, p. 144). His contribution, though ignored by the
caste Hindus who launched Bengal Renaissance, did not go unnoticed by the British.
He was awarded the title of peasant leader, won the Gold Medal, and came to be
known as nômosudro-kulopoti (an undisputed leader of the Namasudras).
Mahendranath Karan (1886–1928)
Many leaders, thinkers, and reformers emerged among the Poundras in colonial
Bengal. Mention may be made of Srimanta Naskar, Hemchandra Naskar, Raicharan
Sardar, and Benimadhav Haldar all of whom fought for the cultural recognition of the
Poundras, derogatorily called “Pod,” as Kshatriyas. They criticized the use of the word
“Pod” in the early census report in the preparation of which many Brahmin and caste
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 19
Hindu officers were involved, and launched an organized resistance to change their
name to “Poundra Kshatriya.” This was another major identity movement in colonial
Bengal since it involved hundreds of members of a single Dalit community. It was
not simply an attempt to replace a derogatory word (Pod) with a sophisticated term
(Poundra). But it was supplemented by research into the history of the community and
revival of their past glory. In this sense, Poundra movements in colonial Bengal too
contributed to Dalit Renaissance. Their intellectual output was huge, and in many cases,
was published in several dailies and monthly magazines and journals. It is possible
to enlist at least eight such magazines published by the Poundras at various points
in colonial times: Bratya Kshatriya Bandhov (started in 1910) edited by Raicharan
Sardar and Gopalchandra Dutta, Protigna (1918) edited by Mahendranath Karan and
Bhavasindhu Laskar, Kshatriya (1920) edited by Jogendranath Roy and Prasannakumar
Barma, Poundra Kshatriya Sômachar (1924) edited by Kshirodchandra Das and
Mahendranath Karan, Sotyojug (1927) edited by Sureshchandra Koyal, Dipti (1927)
edited by Digambar Sahityaratna, Sôngho (1935) edited by Rajendranath Sarkar, and
Poundra Kshatriya (1938) edited by Rajendranath Sarkar, Patiram Roy, Kunjobihari
Roy, and Digambar Sahityaratna.
It was Mahendranath Karan, a Poundra from Midnapore, who wrote the first ever
English treatise on the history of the Poundras, titled A History and Ethnology of the
Cultivating Pods (1919), arguably the earliest anti-Brahmanical text written in English
by a Bengali Dalit. It was published by Raicharan Haldar on behalf of All Bengal
Bratya Kshatriya Samiti. It may be mentioned that the term “Bratya Kshatriya” was
rejected by Karan later and the arguments provided for the same are discussed at the
end of this section. The title of the 1919 work is precise, particularly the expression
“cultivating Pods” who are distinguished by him from “fishing Pods.” The so-called
Pods were of different kinds—the Aryan Pods and the non-Aryan Pods. The Pods
described as Mlechhas, beef-eaters or fishing Pods were allegedly of non-Aryan
origin from the Deccan areas. However, the cultivating Pods to whom Mahendranath
himself belonged were, according to him, of Aryan origin. According to Karan, even
though they were derogatorily called chasha (“an abusive and contemptible word”
for farmers), agriculture as a profession had been synonymous with them and was
not historically looked down upon (Karan, 1919, p. 14). The Brohmoboibôrto Puran
mentions a few characteristics of an Aryan Poundra (“charitable, physically strong,
benevolent, worshipping the Devas and living by cultivation”) and according to Karan
all these are present in the present-day cultivating Pods (Karan, 1919, p. 30). In the
book which he wrote in English so that the British administrators and ethnologists
could take a note of it, he argues why the cultivating Pods are to be called “Poundra
Kshatriyas” and must not be confused with the mixed castes (Varna sônkor) nor be
categorized as “Depressed Class” (Karan, 1919, pp. 17, i).
Karan offers a detailed history of the Poundras based on references to the scriptures.
He associates the term to Sri Krishna himself who was known as “Pundôrikaksho” or
the eye of Pundar or Poundra. As argued by Karan, in the Hôribônsho Puran (Chapter
35), it is mentioned that Basudeb, the father of Sri Krishna, had a son called Pundra,
from the mother Sutanu, who eventually became a king (Karan, 1919, p. 36). Thus
20 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
Poundras were the descendants of King Pundra, and, therefore, were Kshatriyas. The
term Pod was a corruption of Poundra, Poundarika, Padmaja, or Padma. The land
where the Poundras lived or settled in came to be known as Poundradesh. That the
Poundras were of high status, according to Karan, is proved by the fact that they
were not prohibited from temple entry and that they enjoyed high social dignity
in the sixteenth century. Karan refers to a list of twelve castes, grouped as Bratya
Kshatriyas by Manu who mentions that three (Poundras, Udras, and Dravidas) of these
twelve castes were exempted from being Mlechhaised, i.e. being “excluded from all
religions” (Karan, 1919, p. 64). In other words, the Poundras in reference to Manu
had had their religious rights intact. According to Karan, that the Poundras are not
Mlechhas is indicated by the similarity of their language, manners, and customs to
those of the Hindus or Brahmins (Karan, 1919, pp. 4, 6).
If Poundras enjoyed the status of the Kshatriyas how did they lose it and
degenerate to the level of the Shudras? The reason given by Karan is similar to the
one furnished by Ambedkar in Who Were the Shudras? Poundras were deprived of
Upanayana. Indeed, as Karan observes, Poundras fell from their status due to living
“unministered” by the Brahmins or being deprived of sacred rites (Karan, 1919, p.
18). This happened due to the wrath of Parashuram, as per the scriptures, who was on
a mission to annihilate the Kshatriyas. Kshatriyas hence took “refuge in the hills and
forests lying beyond the range of the Brahmin’s formidable axe. Some Kshattriyas
[sic] fled to other countries where they began to live in disguise of Sudras [sic], having
given up sacred threads” (Karan, 1919, p. 39).
Perhaps, a major effect on the Poundras was that of Buddhism to which they
converted and which distanced them further from Brahmanical rites. Bengal remained
an area where Brahmanical civilization was yet to extend to for a long period of time
and, according to Karan, it was considered “a prohibited area for the Hindus on account
of its Buddhist connection” (Karan, 1919, p. 45). In fact, Bengal or Banga was held
in low esteem and “mere trampling over its soil required re-sanctification” (Karan,
1919, p. 46). This is indicated, according to Karan, in a few possibly interpolated
verses of Anusasôn Pôrbo of the Mahabharata where Brahmins are found cursing the
Poundras to a Shudra state of life because they converted to Buddhism and refused
to accept Brahmanical supremacy. However, from the eleventh century onwards, the
Buddhist converts started embracing Brahmanism, the Kayastha group of Kshatriyas
being the first (Karan, 1919, p. 48). Poundras were condemned as jôl-ôbyaboharyo
(not as ôsprishyo/ untouchable) or that group of the Shudras “whose water is not
accepted by Brahmins” (Karan, 1919, p. 55). In fact, those Brahmins who performed
sacred ceremonies for the Poundras were excommunicated. Karan ends with the
suggestion that the only way for the cultivating Pods to get back their glory is to
perform ceremonies “in obedience to the directions prescribed by the Sastras [sic]”
and thereby restore their “former prestige” and re-install their “original status” (Karan,
1919, p. 74).
Although Karan refuses to group the Poundras as Depressed Class (this will be
challenged by other Poundras), his text contains common motifs of Dalit texts like
pro-British, anti-independence (against immediate independence from the British
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 21
rule), and anti-Brahmanical stances. Even though he, like many others, ascribed a
high social status and past glory to the Poundras, their maltreatment by caste Hindus
was a fact and Karan knew it. Nor is his text silent about such maltreatment. One could
argue that by desiring to reinstall an original Kshatriya status and by distinguishing
themselves from the Mlechhas or those considered untouchables in some scriptural
terms, Karan was not ready to annihilate caste but to simply reinstate an original
Varna system. But one needs to be empathetic here. Karan’s text was thoroughly anti-
Brahmanical. In fact, the reclamation of Kshatriyahood in itself was subversive vis-à-
vis Brahmanism. But the most important point was to reclaim human personality. It was
a matter of self-respect of the community and to reawaken confidence in themselves,
such historical and scriptural excavation was required. The need to do so arose also
from the experience of being maltreated by Brahmin and upper caste officers in the
Census department who used every opportunity to project the Poundras derogatorily
as Pods (the word ‘Pod’ sounds similar to the Bengali word ‘pnod’ which is a slang for
anus and is still used to abuse the Poundras). Karan’s text, therefore, needs to be seen
in the context of a series of self-respect movements launched by the Dalits in colonial
Bengal. It might not have opposed casteism as scathingly as Periyar’s Self-Respect
Movement had proposed to do but the attack on Brahmanical hegemony, particularly
the scriptural sanction of Brahmanical supremacy through corrupt interpolations, by
non-Brahmins and Dalits must be taken note of.2
Apart from the English text, Karan wrote few others in Bengali and one of these
needs to be mentioned here, namely, Poundra Kshatriya bônam Bratya Kshatriya
(Poundra Kshatriya versus Bratya Kshatriya, 1927). Herein he strongly argues that
the name “Bratya Kshatriya” should be dropped and “Poundra Kshatriya” should be
used instead. Quoting the Manusmriti, he argues that twelve castes fell from Kshatriya
status due to not being ministered by Brahmins, and Poundra is one of them (Karan,
2013, p. 126). Poundras, unlike Jhal, Malo and five other castes, were historically
designated as actual Bratya Kshatriyas (this is discussed further later on). Even though
they fell from their Kshatriya status, Poundras, for Karan, are not Bratya Kshatriyas.
Although this logic seems problematic, and also inconsistent with his theorization in
the English text, what Karan seems to be indicating is that Poundras did not lose their
status altogether and that they were not designated as untouchables. This is a text
written seven years after the English text and by this time the Poundra movement had
undergone many upheavals. Therefore, it was considered confusing to categorize the
Poundras as Bratya Kshatriyas and identify them with untouchables or even Jhal-Malo
communities. Falling from grace but not being bratya (literally meaning “outsider”)—
this is a tricky logic. Karan’s conviction, however, is infectious here, and he is
completely in opposition to the likes of Raicharan and Benimadhav both of whom
pushed for their community’s designation as Bratya Kshatriyas. Karan reiterates that
Pundra was one of five sons of King Boli and Bratya means one who is fallen from the
rites, without being ministered by Brahmins. An additional argument is included: even
if the Poundras fell from grace and were considered “Bratyas,” to continue the term
2Periyar, for instance, stated that “Amongst dogs you don’t have a brahmin dog and pariah
(untouchable) dog. Among donkeys and monkeys we do not find. But amongst men you have.
Why?” (Periyar, 2016, n.p.).
22 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
to designate the community is antithetical to their movement for self-respect (Karan,
2013, p. 132). He, therefore, puts his foot down: one must not use this term! He quotes
Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay in his support because Sharat Chandra opposed the
use of the term “Bratya” (Karan, 2013, p. 134). Poundras were not fallen: they were
descendants of Kshatriyas who were source of the name, Poundradesh (the land of the
Poundras), unlike the Malos who derived their name from their place of residence,
i.e. the Malabar part of the country. What is fascinating about these arguments is
that they constitute an intra-community (within a specific Dalit community or across
Dalit communities) debate, thereby developing an anti-caste intellectual tradition not
controlled/ regulated/ overshadowed by a Brahmanical Big Other. This is where my
reading of Dalit history of colonial Bengal differs from that of Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
who argues, as mentioned already, that Dalits of colonial Bengal were subsumed by
Brahmanical imagination.
Rajendranath Sarkar (1903–1979)
Important Poundra organizations were arguably concentrated at three key places
in colonial Bengal: South 24 Parganas and Calcutta (important representatives
included Raicharan Sardar, Benimadhav Haldar, Srimanta Naskar, and Hemchandra
Naskar), Midnapore (Mahendranath Karan), and Khulna (Rajendranath Sarkar and
Suniti Sarkar, among others). Whereas key spokespersons of Calcutta, South 24
Parganas, and Midnapore were focused on reviving their past glory through redefining
themselves as Poundra Kshatriyas instead of Pod, those from Khulna, though they
supported such movement, were more concerned about the then-prevailing poverty
and backwardness of the larger Poundra community. When in the early twentieth
century, the British government created the provision for reservation of jobs for a
list of backward communities, and included the Poundras in it, Raicharan Sardar as
the secretary of Poundra Kshatriya Samiti and others including Hemchandra Naskar
violently protested the move. Allegedly, Hemchandra Naskar stated that he refused
to be in the same list which included Dom, among other ‘lower castes.’ There was a
strong split among the Poundras, and Raicharan Sardar, with support from colleagues
from South 24 Parganas, wrote to the concerned authority to remove the Poundras
from the list. This was resisted by Rajendranath Sarkar and others from Khulna who
wrote a letter asking for inclusion. Following this tussle, all leaders and supporters
of the Poundra movement agreed to meet in a conference on this subject held on 20
April 1935 in Ballygunj (Calcutta). In this conference, the Khulna representatives,
fearing organizational split, momentarily gave in to the demands of Raicharan
and Hemchandra who then wrote another letter confirming their collective stance
to not include Poundra in the list. However, once Rajendranath and his team were
back to Khulna they immediately wrote yet another letter confirming their position
and demanding the inclusion of the Poundras in the list of scheduled castes (Sarkar,
2013, pp. 72–76).
What makes Rajendranath one of the uncompromising, radical, and prudent
thinkers among the Poundras is his pragmatism to reflect on the present condition
of the Poundras rather than dwelling on a once-upon-a-time glorious identity of the
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 23
past. He certainly had difficulty in opposing as towering a figure as Raicharan who
had been a personal mentor to him and whom he, like scores of others, looked up to as
their leader. However, he did not let his personal weakness or emotional vulnerability
get in the way of a movement that was meant for the liberation and advancement of
the collective. He was strongly convinced of the need to accept the opportunity of
governmental protection for the Poundras because, without this, they would never be
able to come at par with the caste Hindus, let alone compete with them. He believed
that the governmental provisions would help the Poundras get electoral representation,
educational advantages, and job opportunities. Unlike others, for him, the fight for
recognition of the Kshatriya background of the Poundras was not in conflict with
their inclusion in the list of protected castes. We should note that many backward
caste communities, celebrating their past glory and high caste status, refused the
government’s proposal and were eventually excluded from the list. Their condition in
postcolonial Bengal is pathetic and as Rajendranath as a practicing lawyer witnessed,
many from these communities approached him later on to procure them false scheduled
caste certificates for availing jobs, which he refused to grant (Sarkar, 2013, p. 76). The
advancement of the Poundras today, whatever be the scale, owes much to the fight for
reservation led by Rajendranath.
Such a radical move made by Rajendranath was deeply rooted, one could argue,
in the dire poverty in the midst of which he, like many other Poundras, lived. His
educational pursuit was repeatedly affected due to his inability to pay for school
and college fees. He moved from Khulna to South 24 Parganas for schooling but
eventually returned because the promise of fees being waived was not kept. Later
on, he could study at a college only because the fees were reduced for him thanks
to the intervention of Mahendranath Karan. In addition, he experienced caste-based
discrimination and was maltreated as an untouchable on multiple occasions. In his
autobiography Jibankatha—which is the second Poundra autobiography, the first one
being Raicharan Sardar’s Deener atmakahini ba satya-pariksha—he documents many
such instances. First, when as a child he went to see a Durga idol and stood on the
stairs of the temple, he and his companions were rebuked and were threatened to be
beaten up had they stayed or returned there. While leaving, they saw that the stairs
were being washed with cow urine (considered holy by the caste Hindus). Their touch
was considered to have polluted the sacred Hindu space (Sarkar, 2013, p. 39). Second,
in a school near Tala, Khulna, where he had been enrolled, the teacher told him in
front of his classmates that he could not become anybody in life and that education
was of no use to him due to his ‘lower caste’ peasant background (Sarkar, 2013, p. 38).
Third, in his college days, he and his classmates participated in the Non-Cooperation
Movement of Gandhi and all his classmates were admired by the principal of the
college. However, when the principal came to know that Rajendranath was from a
‘lower caste,’ he immediately changed his behavior and an offended Rajendranath left
the place and eventually distanced himself from the movement (Sarkar, 2013, p. 49).
Many more instances of this kind, including how he was discriminated by his upper
caste colleagues because he was a Dalit lawyer (Sarkar, 2013, pp. 65–66, 109–110)
are grouped as jater name bôjjati (humiliating the ‘lower castes’ in the name of caste
purity) in Rajendranath’s autobiography.
24 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
The point here is that Rajendranath was one of the few Poundras who were not only
very sensitive to casteism but also fully sensitized about how casteism functions and
how it could be resisted. In the face of being maltreated as untouchables, it was not
enough to make a counter-claim that Poundras were not untouchables or outcastes
because historically they had been Kshatriyas. Such a claim for recognition of their
glorious past would not, according to him, bring an end to discrimination. What was
required was to empower the Poundras with financial capital and cultural capital—
both of which were guaranteed by the protective measures of the British Raj—and
thereby overcome their backwardness which was a socio-historical reality. In other
words, Rajendranath’s singular contribution to the Dalit resistance in Bengal was to
ensure that the Poundras were on the receiving end of the redistribution of wealth, a
possibility opened up by the new policies of the British Raj. For him, it is redistribution
of wealth that was as important as the struggle for cultural recognition. Echoing critics
Radha Sarkar and Amar Sarkar (2016, pp. 14–16) who, among others, developing
on Nancy Fraser’s theorization of recognition, argue that the question of material
redistribution must necessarily be combined with that of cultural recognition in the
context of Dalit politics, one could say that it is Rajendranath who, through demanding
redistribution through reservation, completed the Poundra resistance and renaissance
initiated through the politics of recognition by Mahendranath Karan, Raicharan Sardar,
and others.
Rajendranath’s contribution to anti-caste movement was much greater in scope
than the above account. He contributed to the Poundra community in various capacities
including as the founder of the Khulna Poundra Kshatriya Chhatrasangha (1922),
President of Poundra Kshatriya Chhatra Parisad (1927), editor of the journals Sangha
(1935) and Poundra Kshatriya (1938), first Poundra lawyer of the Khulna district,
Poundra chairman of Khulna Local Board (1936), elected People’s Representative
(1931-1942 and 1946-1958) and Dalit candidate for the Congress Party (eventually
becoming a minister in 1958). However, Rajendranath remained loyal to Congress for
long and refused to join the Scheduled Castes Federation even after the insistence of
Jogendranath Mandal who became a minister in the central cabinet of Pakistan after
1947 (Sarkar, 2013, p. 97).
Mahendranath Mallabarman (dates not available)
Mahendranath Mallabarman was a Malo thinker and not a Rajbanshi as has wrongly
been claimed by Swaraj Basu (Barman & Sarkar, 2020, p. 33). Having the surname
“Barman” does not necessarily mean one belongs to the Rajbanshi caste. Mahendranath
was arguably the sharpest Malo thinker—a theorist even—of colonial Bengal and this
is demonstrated in his masterpiece Dwitiyo Varna Kshatriya O Jhal Mal Tôtvo (1914).
The term “tôtvo” here means “theory” and true to it, he theorizes the history and
identity of the Malos as having Kshatriya roots. The challenge for him, of course, is to
explain how an original Kshatriya group transformed into Malos, a fishing community.
To accomplish this, he comes up with an extremely insightful critique of the
Hindu scriptures.
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 25
His first critique is an interrogation of the Purusha-Sukta verse of the Rig Veda which
mentions that four Varnas were born from four body parts of the Purusha or Brahma.
Drawing on Vishnupuran which mentions that Brahma was born after the entire world
was created, Mahendranath argues that Brahma, therefore, could not have been the
creator of the world or of the Varnas (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 63). He questions the
authenticity of the myth of Chaturvarna further by also mentioning, as in Vishnupuran,
that Kshatriyas are said to have been born from the chest and not the arms of Brahma
(Mallabarman, 2020, p. 61). As a matter of fact, he evokes the Vedic texts wherein
even the peasant wives (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 49) are said to have composed hymns
and wherein no birth-based caste division is mentioned except for Guna and Karma-
based grouping (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 64). Thus, if the Vedas have to be considered
as the most authentic texts or if Manusanhita has to be considered to be authoritative
Sanhita then one has to also explain the inconsistencies and interpolations that
might have corrupted these and other Hindu scriptures. He thereby concludes that
the scriptures are to be taken with a pinch of salt and one needs to be careful while
drawing any conclusion from them. Such interrogation of the scriptures reveals the
potential resistance to the so-called “Sanskritization”—or emulating “the customs,
rites, and beliefs of the Brahmins, and the adoption of the Brahminic [sic] way of life
by a low caste”—as formulated by the sociologist M.N. Srinivas (1952, p. 30). It is in
this context that Mahendranath launched scathing criticism against Brohmoboibôrto
Puran. A few verses in this text describe the Mal (Malo) community as a mixed caste
(anuloma/ pratiloma) being born from a woman of fishing community. He argues that
these verses are interpolations (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 82) and that this Puranic text
comprises 3000 such interpolated verses which could never have been written by
Vedvyasa (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 82). The truth is to be found in Manu, he argues,
who mentions the Mals (Malos) as having Kshatriya roots. He further adds that the
Malos were Aryans by blood. In fact, Mahendranath Mallabarman engages in a critical
hermeneutic approach to the scriptures and reaches the conclusion that the Malos
certainly belonged to the high social status and had been Kshatriyas in ancient times.
He quotes passages from Manu to argue that Jhals/Mals were actually the children
of Bratya Kshatriyas and Savarna women. Malos were not anuloma or pratiloma or
mixed caste. Rather, they belonged to dwitya or second Varna, that is, the Kshatriyas.
However, according to him, they were a special category of the Kshatriyas, i.e.
Bratya Kshatriyas.
How are the Kshatriyas and Bratya Kshatriyas different from each other? For
Mallabarman, Bratya Kshatriyas were those Kshatriyas who could not, for whatever
reason, undergo Upanayana or the sacred thread ceremony at the right age. Different
Varnas (except the Shudras) had different ages for Upanayana (Brahmins: 16 years,
Kshatriyas: 22, Vaishyas: 24), and those who passed a particular age limit without
Upanayana became Bratya Kshatriyas. Similarly, there were Bratya Brahmins and
Bratya Vaishyas. Bratyas were not Shudras, Mallabarman emphasizes; they were
potential dwijas (twice-born). It is just that they did not undergo the ceremony of being
born a second time. Unlike the Shudras, he argues, Bratya Kshatriyas were entitled to
religious rites. He even refers to the fifteenth Kanda of Atharba Veda which praises
the Bratyas as those who are worshipped by the dwijas; as having rights to learn the
26 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
Vedic wisdom again; as possessing positive attributes like generosity; and as being
a harbinger of divine blessing to their hosts (Mallabarman, 2020, p. 91). All these
indicate that being a Bratya Kshatriya was not a matter of shame or disrespect but
it was a matter of pride. Calling oneself Bratya Kshatriya also meant that one was
much above the Shudras in the Varna ladder. Thus, the Malos were not Shudras but
respectable Bratya Kshatriyas.
One is struck by how Mahendranath Mallabarman’s interpretation of Bratya
Kshatriya is opposed to that of Mahendranath Karan. For the former, the term Bratya is
not an attribute of disrespect while for the latter it is. But Mallabarman gives a proper
scriptural justification for his claim whereas Karan, somewhat under the influence
of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, gives a literal reading of the term and dismisses
it as derogatory. The history of being Bratya, for Mallabarman, is not a history of
shame; for Karan, it is. One should mention that the Poundras had originally started
calling themselves Bratya Kshatriyas before Karan opposed it. Karan had furthermore
demonstrated that the Poundras, unlike the Malos, are not included in the list of Bratya
Kshatriyas mentioned by Manu, which is true. Nevertheless, the rejection of the
term Bratya, for Karan, is not just based on its absence vis-à-vis the Poundras in the
scriptures but also, as mentioned, because it is a pejorative term. For Mallabarman, it is
clearly not a pejorative term. It is these internal debates and disagreements surrounding
naming in the process of identity-formation that make the Dalit intellectual tradition
so critical and independent of the Brahmanical discourse which could not, unlike what
Sekhar Bandhyopadhyay thinks, subsume the imagination of the Dalits.
The final argument provided by Mallabarman about Malos being Kshatriyas is
very innovative. If Malos were Kshatriyas then how come their profession is fishing?
His primary argument is that a change of profession is allowed in the scriptures and
unlike byabhichar (sexual promiscuity or lack of chastity), swôkôrmotyag (leaving
one’s assigned profession) does not cause a fall from one’s Varna status. If the karma
or occupation fixed by the Shashtras is not enough for a living then a Brahmin, for
instance, can engage in the karma of three other Varnas. Sri Krishna likewise engaged
in gochôron (looking after cows) or worked as sarothi (charioteer). It is only when
sexual and marital relation happens outside the specific Varna, or sexual immoralities
are engaged in, that one loses the Varna status. Accordingly, fishing is a profession that
anyone from any of the Varnas can undertake. Fishing is also nothing to be condemned
because Vyasdev himself was the son of a dhivor (fisher) woman, according to
Mallabarman, and still was worshipped by the entire Hindu society. Arjun, a Brahmin,
is shown in the Mahabharata, as aiming his arrow at a golden fish which, according
to Mallabarman, symbolically implies that fishing was permissible to the Brahmins as
well. Given that fish is a common food, all Varnas have engaged in fishing. However,
it is the logic of the Kshatriyas being predominantly in charge of fishing as developed
by Mallabarman that adds to his intellectual innovation. Fishing involves killing or
catching the fishes with weapons. Weapons are for the use by the Kshatriyas. Hence,
fishing suits as a Kshatriya profession—it is their Swadharma (Mallabarman, 2020,
pp. 99, 103–105). Therefore, there is no contradiction in being a Malo fisher and being
a Kshatriya at the same time.
It is the innovativeness, logicality, and sharpness of his argument that makes
Mahendranath Mallabarman an important Dalit thinker of colonial Bengal. However,
Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial 27
from his interpretation, it is not clear whether Bratya Kshatriyas became who they
became, in course of time or due to some societal injustice. The exact difference
between the Shudras and the Bratya Kshatriyas is also uncertain because, as Babasaheb
Ambedkar argues, Shudras too were Kshatriyas, the descendants of King Sudas, who
were deprived of Upanayana by the Brahmins (Ambedkar, 2014, pp. 118–130, 150–
151, 206–209). Nevertheless, what one finds in this analysis for sure is the desire
on the part of Malos, similar to the Poundras, to highlight that they are not Shudras,
nor are they untouchables. Their resistance to being treated as untouchables took
them in search of their history and revival of scriptural references and socio-cultural
reformation. How much it helped them to deal with the material backwardness is a
different question and had perhaps been addressed by only a few (like Rajendranath,
Harichand and Guruchand). But the revivalism and reformation engaged in by them
is indicative of a vibrant but forgotten anti-Brahmanical renaissance that took place at
the same time as the Brahmanical Bengal Renaissance.
Conclusion
Multiple Bengali Dalit communities organized and mobilized themselves, convened
scores of conferences and meetings, opened independent journals, magazines, and
newspapers, and published innumerable texts in the colonial period under the British
rule. Thanks to colonial modernity, capitalism, use of the printing press, and intervention
of the British in social matters (albeit in their own interests), Dalit communities like
the Poundras, Namasudras, Malos, Rajbanshis (a major community represented by the
well-known figure Panchanan Barma, among others, whose contribution to anti-caste
movement in colonial Bengal could not be discussed in this article due to the paucity
of space) and others plunged into self-respect movements. From closely analyzing and
criticizing the scriptures to launching independent socially transformative religious
movement and then debating and eventually accepting the colonizers’ provisions for
protective measures including redistribution of wealth and proportional representation,
the colonial period was a series of politically, socially, and culturally vibrant moments
for the Dalits. The reformation measures undertaken by the Dalit groups were
nothing short of revolutionary and the theoretical debates produced by them were
unprecedented. Thus colonial Bengal witnessed a Dalit or caste-subaltern or rural
renaissance-cum-resistance that the official history of Bengal, dominated by Marxist,
Brahmin/ Brahmanical, nationalist, and urban historians, has failed to adequately
and sufficiently take a note of. The history of Bengal Renaissance—which reserved
no place for the emancipation of the ‘lower castes’, outcastes, and Dalits—is still
celebrated from school textbooks to university discourses as the greatest moment of
Indian freedom movement. But whose Renaissance was Bengal Renaissance? Whose
interest did it serve? From 1858 to 1900 not a single Dalit student was admitted in
the University of Calcutta (Haldar, 2015, p. 90). The Brahmin teachers of Sanskrit
College resigned en masse when Kayastha students (not even the Shudras and Dalits)
took admissions there. Vidyasagar resigned from a mainstream theatre committee
of Calcutta when Girish Ghosh proposed that women actors from ‘lower caste’ and
prostitute quarters will be recruited as actors (R. Bhattacharya, 1998, p. 9). Almost all
28 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Vol. 3, No. 1
the reformers and revivalists were ultimately in favor for retaining the caste system
and Brahmanical supremacy, and no effective resistance was built against the evils of
casteism. Almost the entire landscape of Bengal Renaissance was populated, with a
few exceptions, by Brahmin men (Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay,
Keshub Chandra Sen, Debendranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and
others) serving the interests of Brahmin patriarchy. Bengal Renaissance, therefore,
was predominantly a Brahmanical Renaissance of, by, and for Brahmin men. An
overemphasis on its glory would be tantamount to committing an epistemic violence
to the Dalit renaissance and resistance that had taken place at the same time in the
same province.
The above analysis has hopefully made it clear that, unlike what Sekhar
Bandyopadhyay and others think, Dalit resistance and renaissance in colonial Bengal
was not overshadowed by Brahmanical consciousness or controlled by Brahmanical
imagination. The wide range and heterogeneity of Dalit thought and the long period
of time across which the relevant debates evolved demand that we talk about an
independent Dalit intellectual tradition and history that developed in colonial Bengal.
In fact, the writings of Mahendranath Mallabarman and Mahendranath Karan, the
latter being explicitly called a historian who wrote multiple treatises, go to the extent of
developing anti-Brahmanical, sometimes even anti-scriptural methodology of history-
writing and, therefore, an alternative Dalit historiography. But scholarship on colonial
Bengal is largely silent about it. If caste Hindu historians from Bengal, who have been
dominating academia for decades, are silent about the Dalit history and historiography
of colonial Bengal, almost exclusively written in the vernacular language, then one
cannot blame Kancha Ilaiah and others who have no access to the vernacular literature,
for claiming that Bengalis have failed to diagnose the cancer of caste.
Acknowledgement
An early version of this article was presented on 30 October 2021 at the online
international conference on ‘Anti-Caste Thought: Theory, Politics and Culture’
organized by the University of Wolverhampton. Dag Erik Berg who chaired my session
and the two anonymous reviewers gave valuable feedback. Meena Dhanda provided
me constant guidance and encouragement. I benefited from my conversations with
Manohar Mouli Biswas, Dilip Gayen, and Rup Kumar Barman. I purchased primary
materials using the Global Engagements Fund 2020–21 (University College London)
and remain indebted to Laila Kadiwal and Lotika Singha. I express my gratitude to
all of them.
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