The Namasudra Movement

The Namasudra Movement PDF Author: Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Namasudras
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
On Namasudra, an untouchable caste in West Bengal, India.

The Namasudra Movement

The Namasudra Movement PDF Author: Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Namasudras
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
On Namasudra, an untouchable caste in West Bengal, India.

Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India

Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India PDF Author: Śekhara Bandyopādhyāẏa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780700706266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Movement by low-caste Hindu groups and their struggles for social and political recognition have been the subject of a number of academic studies in recent years - in anthropology and religious and political studies as well as history. The Namasudras of Bengal, however, represent a particularly interesting and important case, given their standing as the largest Hindu caste in eastern Bengal before Partition and their apparent lack of a single, shared identity before the late 19th century. Bandyopadhyay provides an intelligent and well-researched study of the Namasudras from their emergence as a census-defined community in 1872 to their disintegration with the Partition of 1947. The author makes very extensive use of Bengali tracts, pamphlets and newspapers as well as English materials (including official and archival materials). Bandyopadhyay gives an in-depth narrative and provides an analysis of the Namasudras that is both sensitive to their internal differentiation and their place in the wider political and social context of Bengal and India.

The Decline of the Caste Question

The Decline of the Caste Question PDF Author: Dwaipayan Sen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108287085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This revisionist history of caste politics in twentieth-century Bengal argues that the decline of caste-based politics in the region was as much the result of coercion as of consent. It traces this process through the political career of Jogendranath Mandal, the leader of the Dalit movement in eastern India and a prominent figure in the history of India and Pakistan, over the transition of Partition and Independence. Utilising Mandal's private papers, this study reveals both the strength and achievements of his movement for Dalit recognition, as well as the major challenges and constraints he encountered. Departing from analyses that have stressed the role of integration, Dwaipayan Sen demonstrates how a wide range of coercions shaped the eventual defeat of Dalit politics in Bengal. The region's acclaimed 'castelessness' was born of the historical refusal of Mandal's struggle to pose the caste question.

Blood Island

Blood Island PDF Author: Deep Halder
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9353025885
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
'When the house of history is on fire, journalists are often the first-responders, pulling victims away from the flames. Deep Halder is one of them.' - Amitava KumarIn 1978, around 1.5 lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, settled in Marichjhapi an island in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. By May 1979, the island was cleared of all refugees by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. Most of the refugees were sent back to the central India camps they came from, but there were many deaths: of diseases, malnutrition resulting from an economic blockade, as well as from violence unleashed by the police on the orders of the government. Some of the refugees who survived Marichjhapi say the number of those who lost their lives could be as high as 10,000, while the-then government officials maintain that there were less than ten victims.How does an entire island population disappear? How does one unearth the truth and the details of one of the worst atrocities of post-Independent India? Journalist Deep Halder reconstructs the buried history of the 1979 massacres through his interviews with survivors, erstwhile reporters, government officials and activists with a rare combination of courage, conscientiousness and empathy.

The Tribes and Castes of Bengal

The Tribes and Castes of Bengal PDF Author: Sir Herbert Hope Risley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropometry
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description


Citizen Refugee

Citizen Refugee PDF Author: Uditi Sen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Explores how refugees were used as agents of nation-building in India, leading to gendered and caste-ridden policies of rehabilitation.

Caste, Culture and Hegemony

Caste, Culture and Hegemony PDF Author: Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0761998497
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
It is widely believed that, because of its exceptional social development, the caste system in colonial Bengal differed considerably from the rest of India. Through a study of the complex interplay between caste, culture and power, this book convincingly demonstrates that Bengali Hindu society preserved the essentials of caste discrimination in colonial times, even while giving the outward appearance of having changed. Using empirical data combined with an impressive array of secondary sources, Dr Bandyopadhyay delineates the manner in which Hindu caste society maintained its cultural hegemony and structural cohesion. Starting with an examination of the relationship between caste and power, the book examines early cultural encounters between `high` Brahmanical tradition and the more egalitarian `popular` religious cults of the lower castes. It moves on to take a close look at the relationship between caste and gender showing the reasons why the reform movement for widow remarriage failed. It ends with an examination of the Hindu `partition` campaign, which appropriated dalit autonomous politics and made Hinduism the foundation of an emergent Indian national identity. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay breaks with many of the assumptions of two important schools of thoughte"the Dumontian and the subalterne"and takes instead a more nuanced approach to show how high caste hegemony has been able to perpetuate itself. He thus takes up issues which go to the heart of contemporary problems in India`s social and political fabric.

The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics

The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics PDF Author: Ayan Guha
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004514562
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics: Chronicling Continuity and Change critically engages with the political dynamics of caste in West Bengal and explores the reasons for the relative insignificance of caste as a political category in the state.

The Politics of Caste in West Bengal

The Politics of Caste in West Bengal PDF Author: Uday Chandra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317414772
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This volume offers for the first time a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the making and maintenance of a modern caste society in colonial and postcolonial West Bengal in India. Drawing on cutting-edge multidisciplinary scholarship, it explains why caste continues to be neglected in the politics of and scholarship on West Bengal, and how caste relations have permeated the politics of the region until today. The essays presented here dispel the myth that caste does not matter in Bengali society and politics, and make possible meaningful comparisons and contrasts with other regions in South Asia. The work will interest scholars and researchers in sociology, social anthropology, politics, modern Indian history and cultural studies.

Interrogating My Chandal Life

Interrogating My Chandal Life PDF Author: Manoranjan Byapari
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9789381345139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of The Hindu Prize 2018 (Non-fiction) Shortlisted for the 3rd JIO MAMI Word to Screen Award 2018 If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself … you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I’ve seen this man. With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want—an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Kolkata in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24—it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication. Today, as Sipra Mukherjee points out, ‘issues of poverty, hunger and violence have exploded the cautiously sewn boundaries of the more affluent world’, rendering archaic the comfortable distances between them. Despite ‘Chandal’ explicitly referring to a Dalit caste, this narrative weaves in and out of the margins.