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Poetics of Village Politics

T he M aking o f W est B e n g al's Rural C o m m u n ism
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 POETICS OF VILLAGE POLITICS

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 Poetics of Village Politics
The M aking o f
West Bengal’s Rural Communism

ARILD ENGELSEN RUUD

OXJORD
U N IV ER S IT Y PRESS

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H- S
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n Q£> OXTORD
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 To the best kids in the world:
Sandra, Marius and Mathea.

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Contents

L ist o f TabUs ix
AcknowUdgements xi

1. Anthropology and H istory of V illage Politics 1

Village and the State 1
The Village Politics Studies 4
Views from Below 7
W hat is this Thing called Culture? 9
2. Small C ommunities in L andscape and H istory 13
The Village Setting 13
Gradual Political Radicalization 18
Agrarian Relations and Increasing Poverty 24
The Spark: A New Line o f Thinking 28
But Does It Ail Fit? 30
3 . Tw o Stories about P ower and I nfluence 33
‘We were all in it Together?* 33
Gopinathpur: The Story of an Enduring Alliance 35
Udaynala: The Story of a Britde Alliance 42
Sources of Individual ‘Power* in Village History 47
Money-lenders as Political Leaders? 55
Interested Patron-Client Relationships 59
‘Power*—As in ‘Influence’? 63
4 . R oad, P oetry, and Some C rafty Young M en 70
O n Commensality and O ther Changes 70
The bhadralok and His Making 72
Selimmasters Notebook and a Critique o f Village Society 75
Implementing the Modern Tradition in Udaynala 78
Family Ties, Education, and New-found Reading Material 84
From the Epics to 20th Century Novels 88

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V tll Contents

Modern Tradition in Village Drama 95

Language and Status 99
5. C aste Stereotypes and C ommunist M obiuzation 105
Excesses and Typical Village Politics 105
Udaynala and Gopinathpur and the United 109
Front Period
Caste and Class, ca. I960 115
Dacoity 118
‘We are bagdisP: The Bagdi Stereotype 122
Bagdis in Udaynala Village Affairs 128
The Shifting Alliances of the 1970s 130
The Bagdi, and Assertion as Identity and 134
Source of Influence
‘We Made Ourselves Low*: An Untouchable Identity 137
Muchis in Village Public Affairs 142
Hierarchy and Mobilization 146
6. F ormal P olitics and I nformal P olitics 152
From the Discussion-House to the Office 152
New Formal Institutions: 1960s 154
Ohabsahebs Exit 157
How Important Were the Reformed Panchayats? 160
Bichar—an Informal Institution 164
Informal Politics and Middle-Men 168
‘Symbolic Capital* and Len-dcn 175
Formal and Informal Politics: Two Interlocked Games 178
7. G ossip and R eputation: T he M aking of V illage L eaders 183
The Importance of Gossip 183
The Making and Unmaking of Individual Reputations 188
Towards Manikbhais Bichar 190
Gossip and The Village Agenda 198
Manipulation 200
8. C onclusion 205
A Space for Change? 209

References 212
Index 221

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List of Tables

C hapter 2
Table 2.1. Population and landownership by jati, 15
Udaynala 1993
Table 2.2. Population and landownership by jati, 17
Gopinathpur 1993
Table 2.3. Percentage of votes polled by major political 20
parties and ‘Independents* in central and eastern
Burdwan, 1952-1982
Table 2.4. ‘Mobilized vote* for major political parties and 20
‘Independents’ in Central and Eastern Burdwan,
1952-1982
Table 2.5. Percentage of votes polled: Raina constituency, 21
1952-1982
Table 2.6. Percentage of mobilized vote; Raina 21
constituency, 1952-1982
C hapter 3
Table 3.1. Main village political configurations, Udaynala 49
Table 3.2. Main village political configurations, Gopinathpur 49
Table 3.3. Details o f main village leaders, Udaynala, 51
early 1960s
Table 3.4. Households by class of landownership, sekh vs 51
other jatis, Udaynala 1957
Table 3.5. Details of main village leaders, Gopinathpur 52
early 1960s
Table 3.6. Households (in numbers) by class of 53
landownership, all jatis, Gopinathpur, ca. I960

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X L ist o f TabUs

C hapter 4
Tabic 4.1. Development initiatives in Udaynala in 81
the 1960s
Table 4.2. Some innovative bichar decisions in Udaynala 82
in the 1960s
Table 4.3. Education and age-groups, men above 86
16 years of age, of sekh jati, Udaynala 1993
Table 4.4. Education and age-groups, men above 86
16 years of age, of bamun> kayastha and
aguri jatis, Gopinathpur 1993
C hapter 5
Table 5.1. Landownership per household, by size group 116
and jati, in percentage o f total, Udaynala, 1957
Table 5.2. Landownership per household, by size group 116
and jati, in percentage of total, Gopinathpur,
ca. I960

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Acknowledgements

People living in cities tend to regard villagers as dour, slow-witted

and reactionary—as ‘peasants’. Scholars of political or agrarian change
do not of course share this stereotype. Instead, there is a tendency to
represent the rural population as the repositories and enactors of
structures that are beyond their knowledge or consciousness. The
present volume is an investigation of thirty years of local history in
two adjacent villages in Bengal, and it seeks to break out o f simple
representations. W hat I have specifically sought to do is to combine
a study o f village politics w ith the larger question o f peasant
mobilization and o f socio-cultural changes. In other words, to
understand the villager as an independent subject-actor and at the
same time investigate developments in the larger polity, where the
individual villager was not a relevant category.
This ambition has led to a number of problems, primarily in finding
relevant and useful information in order to construct a detailed and
informed narrative. To shed light on such issues would require much
material of an intimate nature. Oral history is problematic at the
best o f times. It gets even worse when it is strongly inspired by
anthropological desires to see the nuances o f perceptions and find
the inarticulated ideas.
At this point of potential despair I was salvaged by a great stroke
of luck. A Bengali friend led me to his home village, where I found
not just one but several knowledgeable and forthcoming informants
along with a number of other sources of material. I lived in this
village for 11 months in 1992-93. I also spent much time in the
adjacent village for reasons of comparison, but never lived there.
The villages have been fictitiously named Udaynala and Gopinathpur
respectively. The information gathered while staying there forms the

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X ll Acknowledgem ents

basis of this study. Hence, a presentation of the material and the

manner in which it was collected will at the same time acknowledge
my debt to my informants.
My main informant for contemporary material and for interpret­
ing current events was Rizia Begum. Her extensive and intimate
knowledge of both villages, of births and deaths*, of liasons, o f land
and loans and above all of the latest gossip proved an invaluable
source of insight into the village community. She also allowed me
access to a survey that had been carried out in connection with a
government programme. This survey forms the basis for the contem­
porary statistical material in this study.
Extensive historical material could be collected thanks to two other
lucky strikes. It turned out that the late ‘Waselmaster of Udaynala had
written an extensive notebook on the village in 1961. It had been
written in connection with a teacher training seminar that he attended
that year, and events over a few subsequent years had been filled in at
the back. In addition, he had maintained diaries over nearly thirty
years, from 1956 till his death in 1985. His son, Fazlul Hak, made
both documents available to me. These two provided huge amounts of
detailed information and allowed me to date events and developments
that would otherwise have been impossible.
The other lucky strike was Nazir Hosen— poet, party member,
and village historian. His innumerable hand-written notebooks and
records filled seven sacks and covered every thinkable aspect of the
villages history and that of the region: peasant movement, religious
practices, proverbs, records of every marriage and every death since
1958, a survey of landownership in 1958, near-forgotten agricultural
practices, a village diary, his own life-history, tales and childrens sto­
ries, village and caste myths, etc., etc. I later discovered that in other
villages too I would have found diaries or similar sort of material. But
nowhere else would I have found such riches as I did in Nazirchachas
house. It was the historians gold mine. Nazirchacha made most of
his material available to me besides other kinds of information. He
helped put events in perspective and context. He also filled in on
some of the more oblique entries in Waselmasters diaries.
I am particularly grateful to Rizia Begum and Nazir Hosen for
their friendship, time, and effort, and for their willingness to spend

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 Acknowledgem ents x iii

long hours discussing, chatting, and assisting in what is known as

‘information gathering.
My gratitude also extends to pratically all villagers o f Udaynala
and Gopinathpur (and a few other places) for the huge amount of
information given and for the kindness shown. In particular I wish
to mention Alok Mandal, Kesto Sarkar, Shyamsundar Malik, Sakti
Dhara and Rabiel Hak— all of whom generously assisted and guided
me.
Much of the material and most o f the insights were gained,
however, when I was not enacting the role of a visiting historian-
cum-anthropologist, but when I was relaxing, enjoying myself in the
company of others, chatting and gossiping and exchanging stories
and views. In accordance with this I also wish to mention Chayna,
Chandan, Akram, Ajam, Badam, Saiful, Taleb-bhai, Bulu-bhai, and
Mukul— who were all informants, guides, research assistants, and
friends. I also wish to acknowledge my debt and gratitude to a number
o f people who made my stay possible and interesting: Haksaheb and
kakima in Udaynala, D r Girindranath Chattopadhayay, kakima and
Mainak in Burdwan town, and Arup and Paramita Maharatna.
My debt has also accrued in other corners o f the world. John
Harriss, James Putzel, and Chris Fuller of the London School of
Economics acted as my supervisors while writing my PhD thesis—
o f which this book is an outcome. Their lucid readings on my drafts
were a constant source of both frustration and motivation. Sudipta
Kaviraj and Jonathan Spencer have contributed valuable insight,
information, and much needed encouragement to a confused soul.
Lasdy, I would have failed my duties as a client had I not acknowledged
the debt to my guru and patron, Pamela Price, for unfailing support.
‘W ife/ Elisabet spent much time helping me with statistics and
relentlessly hounded me with theoretical questions far beyond my
comprehension. I bow in admiration.
All errors, needless to say, are mine.

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 1

Anthropology and
History of Village Politics

VILLAGE AND T H E STATE

M
ost decisions and deliberations regulating life in Indian village
communities, whether it is distribution o f scarce resources such
as irrigation water, or the normative regulation o f society, are taken
within the villages themselves. These decisions—as village life in
general— are affected by the supralocal state o f which they are part
and by developments there. Yet, village society is distinct from the
state o f which it is part. Village society is constituted by multiple
face-to-face relationships, and functions along lines that are specific
to such societies. Hence they cannot be understood by deducting
from developments in the supralocal state.
Moreover, the state is affected by the village and by how village
society functions as a polity. The village scene is the first and
main arena for public participation o f the rural population. It
conditions their participation and fundamentally influences their
outlook. Villagers* participation in the larger polity, whether by
foot or vote, is formed at a level which is, in many ways, different
from and even alien to the world o f civil society, elected office
and independent judiciary. The village polity is strongly influenced
by the larger world, but it is still very much a polity that functions
by itself, for itself, by its own rules, and following its own concerns.
Consider for instance Ashutosh Varshneys point about how rural
power in the Indian polity is ‘self-limiting*. Peasants may have common
economic interests but they are split along a num ber o f divisions
that prevent cooperation. As the peasant leader Sharad Joshi points
out, if one village participates in the peasant movement, the next

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village may not because o f local animosity and rivalry (Varshney

1995: 196).
Joshi contrasts ‘India to ‘Bharat’ to underline the difference in
outlook, goals, and means of how politics is conducted and what the
aims are. The contrast is evocative and reflects a wider debate on the
nature of the Indian polity. The innocence o f the post-Independence
period is felt to have been lost to an increase in unrest, communal
divisions, and unconstitutional means of achieving political aims.
There is a sense of a division between the culture and ideology of the
modernizing Indian elite, on the one hand, and those of village
society, on the other; a division which the modernizing elite was not
able to bridge. Sudipta Kaviraj argues that there seems to be ‘some
incompatibility between the institutional logic o f democratic forms
and the logic of popular mobilisation’ (Kaviraj 1991). The inability
to bridge the cultural gap while at the same time extending rights of
participation to the villages, created a situation in which the funda­
mental building blocs o f secular democracy were undermined. The
paradox formulated by T. N. Madan holds that the more democratic
India became, in terms o f participation, the less democratic it
became, in terms of conforming to secular and democratic principles
(Madan 1987). The points in this debate, to which many scholars
have contributed, constitute a dramatic view o f the modern Indian
polity and its contemporary health. Sharp divisions are drawn
between the political cultures of the villages and those o f the state to
explain a lack o f adherence to an ideal performance. It is a very
pessimistic view.
We need to ask whether or not the dichotomy is too sharply drawn,
whether or not it allows for an understanding of political mobilization
in the Indian countryside. A fundam ental problem w ith the
dichotom y is that it does not allow for any gradual change, any piece-
by-picce development by which values and norms are altered, by which
the outside influences the inside and not just vice versa. The
dichotom y tends to obscure that village society has an ability to change.
The present study seeks to investigate the relationship o f village to
state and vice versa, to investigate a case of mutual adaptation.
This is a story of the meeting of political cultures from both sides
of the dichotomy. It is the story of influences, opposition, and reaction;

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 Anthropology a n d H istory o f Village Politics 3

and of meetings, adaptations, and adjustments. Thirty years o f his­

tory o f two adjoining villages in Burdwan district in West Bengal
and these villages place in the history of communist mobilization,
will be used to investigate the mechanisms and tools o f village
politics, and how village politics affected and was affected by political
or ideological changes in the larger society. I will, in particular, focus
on the circumstances— social, political, and cultural— of communist
mobilization, institutional change and changes in political culture
and on the broader context in which political change took place. The
aim is to put the contemporaneous political issues, ideological
values, and other inventions into the time and society they were
received or rejected, where old ways were challenged, and compro­
mises and conflicts took place. The emergence of rural communism
was perhaps the most striking development in West Bengal in this
period, but it was not the only change. Together with it came changes
in the position of women and in caste practices, efforts towards economic
improvements and ‘development*, and, interestingly, an increase in
the incidence of village poetry recitals.
Were these changes connected? I shall argue that they were, if not
in any other way than by coming at the same time and being associ­
ated with one another. The changes were also associated with a par­
ticular social group; but one that was urban and distant from even
the village ‘elite*. O r were they? Perhaps social distance is not the
relevant issue. As w* shall see, social distances may be bridged by
other means, such as cultural adoption or ideological affinity. The
issue is how values reached the village and what changes they brought
about there, and how they, in turn, were changed and reinterpreted
in the process.
Poetry recitals may seem peripheral to the theme o f peasant
mobilization, but both to villagers themselves and to this researcher,
the appropriation of symbols through poetry recitals formed part of a
drawn-out history of struggle over status and power and ultimately
over the criteria for leadership and the moral basis o f society. Poetry
recitals became an arena for the portrayal of individuals as adherents to
a particular and increasingly prominent ideology and implicidy as erect
moral beings and holders of the right values. This potent role of
poetry to leadership draws from the fact that village leadership is not

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only based on power and the ability to enforce, but also in the ability
to appear (or be) legitimate, to possess authority. In these villages, as
in probably most Indian villages, there is rivalry over leadership posi­
tions. Rivals of similar economic and ritual status have to fight in
the world of values, morality, and symbols in order to gain an upper
hand. But even rivals of very different socio-economic status find
themselves locked in combat over issues o f morality, mainly in order
to attract support from the many who are not tied by strong bonds of
reciprocity with one or the other rival.
These considerations make for a much more fluid picture of vil­
lage politics and allow us to pose questions about the usefulness
of the elite-subaltern dichotomy. Most researchers would agree that vil­
lage politics is crucial to the developments o f the Indian state. How­
ever, it is a little understood field, understudied, and often quite
misunderstood. A simplistic dichotomy-based model does not allow
an understanding of the interplay of local to supralocal society, or
the ability of the local to change and adapt. But more importantly, it
does not allow us an informed understanding o f how village society
in turn influences the larger polity. In a country where the majority
of people still live in villages and where the countryside is one of the
crucial premises for political life, little is understood of the hows and
whys of changes in political culture. A long-term study o f political
change or reactions will allow us to see villagers as subjects, and not
just objects, of change. Cultural change takes place as much in local
society as elsewhere, and values are appropriated, fought over, forwarded,
or disclaimed. This study is an effort in that direction.

T H E VILLAGE POLITICS STUDIES

As the reader will have understood, I employ a fairly broad

understanding of politics, of what it is about. I regard all activities
related to struggles over material, social, or symbolic resources to fall
within politics. This is because all such struggles affect the relationship
between individuals or groups and their influence in village society.
A different and more common, although somewhat restricted
understanding, would be to regard village politics as merely a set of
social mechanisms for the daily regulation of community affairs and

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distribution of scarce resources. This is the approach we meet in

‘traditional’ village politics studies of the 1950s and 1960s,1 where
concepts such as ‘dom inant caste’, ‘faction’ and ‘patron-client
relationship’ were developed. These concepts as well as much of the
literature that gave them to us, have been much criticized and in
many cases rightfully so. They do easily land us in an anthropological
never-never land where the normative system within which conflicts
arise and are solved is seen as largely unchanging and unaffected by
external political developments. Nonetheless, we need to investigate
the usefulness o f these concepts and also consider some o f the
very interesting ethnographical material and observations they
contain.
‘Dominant caste’ is perhaps the least controversial of the concepts.
It refers to the phenomenon that in many villages or regions certain
castes are economically and politically dominant. These castes also
often have a reasonably high ritual status in the local hierarchy and
enjoy social pre-eminence in their localities. How to precisely define
and identify a dominant caste is debated, but that it refers to an
observable phenomenon seems accepted. The question is whether or
not it is interesting. As many have noted, most ‘dominant castes’ are
torn by internal rivalry and factionalism. According to Oommen, it
is ‘a matter of common knowledge [that] there exists a high degree of
factionalism in Indian villages...’ (Oommen 1970: 76-77). It is not
the caste that is dominant, but a group of individuals within that
caste— or even from several castes (Miller 1975, cf. Mandelbaum
1970b: 358ff). The notion o f a dominant caste cannot be main­
tained unless one assumes the unity of that caste. This we can do, at
least in some cases and with some modifications. But mostly the unity
is not political. It is beyond doubt that political cleavages in Indian
villages cut through the dominant caste. The unity of the caste is
cultural, a matter of a strong identity and an ethos. As Mayer ob­
served, a particular codex deemed appropriate to a historically elevated
position was shared by the whole caste, not just a few powerful indi­
viduals, and was an element in the perpetuation of their dominance.2
The dominant caste in many and perhaps most regions of India,
ideally fill a role in society and vis-i-vis its subjects, which is akin to
the role of a king. Dominant castes, as kings, have a right to rule, to

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deliberate, to take pre-eminence (in rituals, for instance). They also

have an obligation to protect subjects, to nourish and sustain. Kings
have an elevated position because they are protectors o f society. This
position is particularly well represented in the kings special relation­
ship with the Brahmin-priest, where the king represents society and
where, at least in one interpretation, the priest removes pollutants
from the whole of society by taking gifts from the king (Raheja 1988a
and 1988b). The king as protector is also the king as benevolent
provider, the distributor of boons, engaging in magnanimous acts of
largesse. He generously gives paddy to the needy and land to his
subjects. He is annapurna (in Bengal at least), the ‘destined provider
of subsistence (Greenough 1982: 19). Given the importance o f this
construct in Indian thought (replicated in the God-devotee relation­
ship for instance, or that of father-son), it is not surprising that we
find it in common usage in villages where big landlords are referred
to as ‘king* and smaller ones as ‘father. These forms o f address evoke
the construct where the superiors obligation to protect and nourish
is as prominent as the subordinates obligation to show respect and
to obey.
Two considerations make it imperative to rethink the importance
of this construct. One is that the position o f dominant castes all over
India is reported to be fast waning. As far back as the 1960s, it was
suggested that although certain castes had enjoyed social, economic,
and political positions of privilege, this was changing with the emer­
gence of electoral democracy. Numerically large, lower castes have
had much to gain from political engagement, and have in many
places introduced party politics.3 This development may not be uni­
versal though, and in many places the former dominant castes have
preserved their clout by engaging in new activities— from business to
electoral politics (Frankel 1993).
Another consideration has to do with the village faction, and the
individual followers loyalty to his group. Factions are held together
precisely by patron-client relationships, by the glue o f kinship or
caste, credit or labour, or the mere expectancy of future patronage.
Although some writers see the village-level faction as a stable and
enduring formation,4 others have regarded them as circumstantial
and shifting alliances, occasionally appearing to be permanent, but

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ultimately ‘transactional', i.e. where membership in a (action ‘de­

pends on a return for support given'.5 In reality the client may not
always have much choice even where patronage is not forthcoming.
Still, it is often the case that there are rival leaders and many potential
clients who are not immediately in dire need o f patronage. Patron-
client relationships are thus not necessarily the reality they are made
out to be, but are more in the nature o f cultural constructs evoked,
applied, used and manipulated in different contexts and by different
actors. This makes the possibility o f ‘investing' in subordination a
political reality. Subsequently, the construct of the king-subject has
much potential bearing on the subordinate's perception o f what the
patron should be like. This is a line of thinking that has recently en­
joyed renewed support from unexpected quarters, namely what has
been termed the Subaltern Studies school.

VIEWS FROM BELOW

Initially the Subaltern Studies school6 focused on the not-so-

everyday—although related questions about culture were taken up
and hody debated. But in the 1990s the everyday was drawn in, as
part of the larger history-from-below project (e.g. Haynes and Prakash
eds. 1991). An important source of inspiration and premise for the
later development was James Scott's study Weapons o f the Weak. Here
Scott argued that in local societies values are not shared even where
they appear on the surface to be so. Poor people cannot afford to
express open opposition to the moral claims o f the powerful, but
they still do so at home and amongst themselves. Contrary to Antonio
Gramsci, Scott argues that the poor are able ‘to penetrate and demystify
the prevailing ideology’ by which the powerful legitimize their
favoured position and exploitation (1985: 317). Here Scott sees
‘culture' not as shared but as an arena for contest, where the poor
appropriate paternalistic claims in order to extract concessions with
contesting interpretations over what is correct and justified.
We find the same topic raised in several works belonging to the
Subaltern Studies school. ‘Subaltern ity— the state of being subaltern,
that is in the receiving end of a power relationship (poor, low caste,
worker, woman)— is in Dipesh Chakrabarty's interpretation understood

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as ‘the composite culture o f resistance to and acceptance of domi­

nance and hierarchy (Chakrabarty 1985: 376). This is well visual­
ized in Chakrabarty’s own later study, Rethinking Working-Class His­
tory, in the relationship between jute-mill workers and both their
shop-floor superiors and the trade-union leaders. Even as an emerg­
ing industrial proletariat, the jute-mill workers attitudes to and ex­
pectations of superiors were moulded by the village culture whence
they came, a culture of inequality, dominance, and violence, a cul­
ture where ‘only masters could represent* (Chakrabarty 1989: 141).
But this representation— that is, by the masters— was subjected to
notions of what was just, fair, or customary, to notions that the
subordinates themselves had about superiority and the obligations
of the superiors. By exercising their own understanding of the condi­
tions of their subordination, the jute-mill workers themselves cre­
ated the environment within which ‘the masters’ had to act. Workers
could act within the accepted rules of domination, showing respect,
but had strong notions about what to expect, and could abstain from
lending support, by mere non-compliance. On a more active note,
Sumit Sarkar has in a separate study coined the term ‘assertion-within-
deference’ to denote the ability of the subaltern to use the terms of
subordination to his or her own advantage (Sarkar 1989). This is
echoed in the term rajdharma in Gautam Bhadra’s contribution on
‘The mentality of subalternity’, a term that describes the evocation
of norms for superiority and rule, norms that include the obligation
to protect and rule justly (Bhadra 1989).
The Subaltern Studies school has contributed substantially to the
debate on the role of culture in defining the possibilities of action for
subordinates in hierarchical societies. It is not existing cultural
categories— dominance and subordination— that are challenged, but
perceived non-conformity to ideals. Since ideals by necessity are vague
and fluid, they are open to circumstantial interpretation and to
manipulation, even by those subordinated. Unlike Scott who sees
culture as an arena for contest, the subalternists presented here do
not see culture as the arena of contest, but as the setting within which
contest takes place. Expectations, demands, obligations, complaints,
are all culturally constituted and formed. It is in this manner that
subordination can be understood; not as a separate field of thought

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and values, but as a real-life experience nonetheless mediated in

culture, a culture which is persuasive yet m an ip u late. Cultural
categories are contested, their application even challenged, but they
are not evaded.

WHAT IS THIS TH IN G CALLED CULTURE?

%

Whether subalterns (or whatever term we may choose) are part of

culture or indeed do escape it, is a question framed in such a manner
that we cannot solve but only adhere to one or the other position.
The question is whether or not it helps us explain situations other
than those in which one side wins’ over the other. Can it help explain
situations where values are confused, where norms are conflicting,
and change is imperfect? Probably not, and in order to do so we need
a more differentiated understanding o f culture. The society under
study hfcre— rural West Bengal— has undergone extensive socio­
cultural change over the last three to four decades, with a high level
of awareness of normative variations and changes. There were efforts
at reform, and there was resistance, and there was indifference. There
was alignment between village leaders and followers, both among
reformers and among the resisters. Conflicting values thrived side by
side, adhered to by unexpected individuals and groups. When the
reform line eventually prevailed, it was under middle-class leadership,
a leadership that was partly shedding its middle-classness in order to
remain leaders. The dichotomy between elite and subaltern, however
analytically understood, can be applied only with difficulty to complex
situations where questions like ‘Who is really in power?’ can be
impossible to answer. Gayatri Spivak pointed out that the subalternists
‘perceive their task as making a theory of consciousness or culture
rather than specifically a theory of change’.7 It is to this consciousness
we must turn.
A refreshing insight can be gained from Jean and John Comaroff’s
study on African identities under emerging colonialism. They argue
that culture cannot be seen as a given whole: ‘...far from being re­
ducible to a closed system of signs and relations, the meaningful
world always presents itself as fluid, often contested, and only
partially integrated mosaic’ (Comaroff and Com aroff 1991: 27).

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Hegemony is seldom total, and resistance is not necessarily very clear. A

very good example of the kind of ambivalence vis-k-vis hegemonic
values that the Comaroffs discuss, is found in American labour studies.
Interviewed labourers express views that in one sentence blame them­
selves and in the next the system. The term ‘contradictory consciousness’
gains a whole new meaning in the fluctuations that graphically describe
the inability to express systematically the relationship between an
experienced reality and the largely but not fully internalized dominant
values.8 A hegemonic ideology may preclude the articulation o f
connected sets of alternative values, but not prevent dissatisfaction.
Alternative values, where they appear, often appear as unconnected,
fragmented, and incohesive. And ‘resistance’ is similarly fragmented and
incohesive, as in what Michel de Certeau calls ‘poaching*, small uncon­
nected attacks that result in nuisance rather than cohesive opposition
that could alter the system (de Certeau 1984, cf. Mbembe 1992).
De Certeau has been criticized for entertaining a simplistic
notion of power, one where there is no mutuality between the rulers
and the ruled (Frow 1991). There may be many worlds where culture
is not as hegemonic as individualism in today’s America. ‘Hegemony
itself then is to be questioned. ‘Dominance’ easily becomes too rigid
a concept and ‘culture’ needs to be broken up in order to escape the
win-lose equation. To achieve this, we need first o f all to distinguish
what Gellner calls ‘the really big thing’ (Gellner 1979: 130), the to­
tality of our signifiers, from more conscious bodies o f norms and val­
ues. There is a difference between values and norms that are so basic
as to permeate our total thinking— the quality that Chakrabarty gives
to hierarchy in the case of Indian villagers would be one example—
and the explicit, conscious, values and beliefs that we can think, talk,
and argue about. The difference, pace Comaroff and Comaroff, is
not a dichotomy but appears as two ends o f a continuum, as ‘a
chain of consciousness’, in between which lies the most fascinating
realm, namely,
[T]he realm of partial recognition, of inchoate awareness, of ambiguous
perception, and, sometimes, o f creative tension: that liminal space of
hum an experience in which people discern acts and facts but cannot or do
not order them into narrative descriptions or even articulate conceptions
about the world (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: 29).

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 Anthropology a n d H istory o f Village Politics 11

This is a dynamic field, where seeds of alternative interpretations

may slowly be born into awareness or where signs and symbols may
recede into the unremarked taken-for-granted.
Here the Comaroffs refer the graduation of protest to its practice
and to the response of the dominant, which can in the end lead to the
making of consciousness, a recognition of a different interpretation of
reality. Thus hegemony is never entirely dominant. It is made and
remade, it will seek to dominate conflicting norms, to press them away.
There will, however, always be a field where alternative values hiber­
nate and where dissatisfaction caused by an experienced reality creates
a fertile ground for potential reinterpretations. Reinterpretations, like
protest and resistance, do not always take place, but remain as a back­
drop for an unarticulated sense of obligation and reciprocity, even in
societies characterized by inequality and hierarchy.
However, group cohesion and the intrinsic nature o f identity may
also effectively dampen deviation or rethinking, even among subor­
dinate groups. Think only of ‘the lads’ in P. Willis’ study o f school
boys in an English industrial society (1977). These ‘lads’ took great
pride in refusing to identify with the values of thrift of mainstream
society, frowned upon those who did, and created for themselves an
alternative set of values that were complex and satisfying. In effect they
condemned themselves to a life as unskilled labourers. What is inter­
esting for us here is not that they ‘learned to labour’ but that they
actively chose labour-class values as a lifestyle, proudly identifying
with it, knowing it as good.9 The relative permanence of identity mark­
ers derives from their embeddedness in broader patterns o f signifiers,
concerned with social roles, interests, humiliation, or pride.
Using an understanding of the ‘cultural field’ as a minefield of
signs and norms, some not immediately available as justification for
action, we can handle the striking and tangible differences in the
appropriation of new ideologies and political opportunities displayed
by groups of villagers, including the differences in response to a chang­
ing political environment by groups of poor. Recognizing ‘rajdharma
as suggestive of the dominant but complex theme of rank and m utu­
ality in Indian culture should not mean ignoring alternative norm
systems or the possibility of alternative interpretations o f any one
situation, even if these interpretations do not appear to contradict

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the theme of hierarchy and dominance. Although I have relied much

on both the village politics studies tradition and the Scott/subaltemist
school for understanding socio-cultural changes in rural West Bengal,
only the aid of a flexible conception of culture has made it possible to
break through the monolithic views of hierarchical cultures to grasp
the dynamics of change.

NOTES
1 Village politics studies have unfortunately been out of fashion since the late
1970s, early 1980s. C f Fuller and Spencer 1990.
2 Mayer 1958, see also Cohn 1990: 554-557, Dumont 1980: 160-163,
Mandelbaum 1970b, Ch. 20.
3 B^teille 1965, cf. Bailey 1963, Gough 1989, Kothari 1970.
4 Carter 1974, for instance, in spite of his more nuanced view of factions at
higher levels.
5 Except for kin relations; Davis 1983:163, c f Pocock 1957.
6 The Subaltern Studies school is wide and varied but comprises above all the
Subaltern Studies series edited by Ranajit Guha (Vols I to VI), Chatterjee
and Pandey (Vol. VII), and Arnold and Hardiman (Vol. VIII). A number
of monographs by the same editors plus the contributing authors would
also be included.
7 Spivak 1985:331; cf. Rosalind O ’Hanlon (1988:211) who criticises the
school for essentialist interpretations.
8 Lears’ 1985 survey of American labour historiography has much interesting
and evocative material on this. See in particular the paragraph (pages 577-
578) quoted from Sennctt and Cobb The Hidden Injuries o f Class, New
York 1972.
9 It is from Knights and Willmott (1977 [1985]) that I have taken the
suggestion that Willis’s study can be made even more interesting by
considering how ‘the lads’ are not only reacting to mainstream society’s values
but actually creating their own oppositional but complex and satisfying
identity.

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2
Small Communities in
Landscape and History

TH E VILLAGE SETTING
his chapter introduces and situates the villages under study,
T fictitiously nam ed Udaynala and G opinathpur. Both are
seemingly peaceful villages in a placid and uneventful landscape. They
are, however, like thousands of other villages in West Bengal, locations
for the emergence and sustained support for the Communist Party
o f India (Marxist)— CPM — which has governed the state as the
dominant party of the ruling Left Front Government since 1977.
This is the longest running Government in any state in India, and it
is among the few popularly elected communist governments anywhere
in the world. As far as I know it is also the only communist government
re-elected several times over. The state and its government have
attracted much scholarly attention over the years, some o f which also
deals— for the most part indirectly— with the issues o f peasant
com m unist m obilization and w hat has been called Bengal’s
exceptionalism’, its radical middle class. After describing the villages
in some detail, the chapter will review the existing literature on West
Bengal’s agrarian relations and political change.
Udaynala and Gopinathpur are adjacent villages, at slighdy less
than one kilometre’s distance from each other. They both fall within
the Raina No I Development Block located in the Dakshin Damodar
region o f Burdwan district.1
The district stretches in an east-westerly fashion, starting an hour
or so by train west of Calcutta. Eastern Railways’ main line from
Calcutta to Delhi runs through the district in its full length, and so

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docs the parallel Grand Trunk Road. This is the Rarh Bangla region
of West Bengal, that is, a very Bengali region, predominantly agri­
cultural and home of many of Bengal’s best writers. In spite of the
presence of considerable heavy industry in the for western portion of
the district, in the Durgapur-Asansol subdivisions, the district of
Burdwan in its central and eastern portions lives almost entirely from
its agriculture or from supplying services to cultivators. As the saying
goes, T h e only culture in Burdwan is agriculture’. The towns are
few and small with the exception of Burdwan Town. However, al­
though Burdwan Town has a population of a quarter o f a million,
the proportion of employment not directly or indirccdy connected
to agriculture is negligible. It is a bazaar town overflowing with lively
markets, repair shops, medicine stores, and doctors’ reception rooms.
The town is also the focal point for innumerable bus lines that criss­
cross the flat landscape around.
In the rural parts of the district, villages are separated by vast
paddy fields and rarely anything else. The forests that once were are
gone, and only a few major rivers break up the monotonous land­
scape. These vast tracts of paddy land constitute a granary of great
importance to the state, particularly since the early 1980s, when the
output more than doubled.2
Gopinathpur and Udaynala are located in a field, an hour or so by
bus south of Burdwan Town.3 Frequent buses ply to and from
Burdwan Town along two south-going roads, one that passes about
one kilometre west of Gopinathpur and the other which passes about
one kilometre east of Udaynala. Buses have operated on these two
roads since the 1960s and have become the main means of transport
to the outside world for villagers. Another means of transport was a
narrow-gauge railway line, two kilometres to the north of these
villages. It ran from BankuraTown in the west, only to end up in the
middle of a field some kilometres northeast of Udaynala.4 It was long
underused and eventually closed down in 1995.
The bus line running east of Udaynala passes through the village
Hatpur, which has a twice-weekly market (hat), while the line run­
ning west of Gopinathpur passes Bajarpur, which has a permanent
market. These two market villages are at a few kilometres’ distance
from one another, and a small unmetalled road runs between them.

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This road is mainly a mud road (although ‘mud’ does not fully
convey its condition during the rainy season), while small portions
have been or are in the process o f being upgraded with sand (moram).
It is along this road that one finds the two villages Udaynala and
Gopinathpur, at about one kilometres distance from one another.
The villages can be reached by this road— on foot, by bicycle, or by
ox-cart.
Both Gopinathpur and Udaynala look like any other medium­
sized village in Burdwan. There is nothing distinctive or remarkable
about either s appearance: Mud-tracks wind along between the houses,
the ponds and the tall trees. Most houses are made of mud and straw
with only a few in brick. Male villagers— almost all cultivators or
agricultural labourers— mostly wear the (originally Muslim) ‘sarong*
or lungiy while the women invariably wear saris. From a distance the
large number of trees clearly mark the villages from surrounding fields,
but on closer scrutiny, plots of cultivated land in between the houses
blur the distinction between cultivated and inhabited land.
Although the two villages look quite similar, a number o f differ­
ences need to be noted. Udaynala is a Muslim-majority village,
although the majority is slim and 45 percent of the population is
Hindu. Population and land-owning statistics are given in Table 2.1.5

T able 2.1. Population and landowrtership by jati, Udaynala 1993

Jati Population Landownership

N % (in percent of total)
Bamun 41 2.0 1.2
Kayastha 4 0.2 0.3
Bene 43 2.2 4.4
Kalu 6 0.3 0.8
Sekh (Muslim) 935 46.6 62.0
Namasudra (SC) 299 14.9 8.3
Mallik (Muslim) 190 9.5 5.5
Bagdi (SC) 304 15.2 14.2
Muchi (SC) 91 4.5 2.8
Saotal (ST) 93 4.6 0.7
Total 2006 100.0 100.0

Source: field-data

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The Muslim population is divided into two groups— jatis (castes or

sub-castes) seems an appropriate term.6 One is the sekhs (who con­
stitute a ‘dominant caste’ in terms of land-owning and political clout),
and the other is the malliks, who are much poorer. The malliks live
in a separate para (neighbourhood, hamlet) in the northern end of
the village, while the sekhs dominate the central portions o f the vil­
lage as well as a number of other paras. The Hindus o f the village are
divided into several jatis: among the high and ‘clean’ castes we find
several bamun (or Brahmin) and bene (Baniya) households as well as
one kayastha and one kalu household.7 These four jatis live in close
proximity to one another, in the bene and bamun paras in the
central portion of the village. The rest of the Hindu population is
Scheduled Caste, the major groups being the namasudra, the bagdi
and the muchi, who all live in separate neighbourhoods, mainly in
the south part. The bagdis (also called Barga-Kshatriyas) live at a
distance from the main village, and so do, a bit further north, the
saotals (Santals), a Scheduled Tribe (ST) group settled in the village
since the 1950s. Although the saotals acknowledge certain distinctly
saotali customs, they consider themselves Hindu. Not all Hindus
accept this claim.
Gopinathpur borders on Udaynala in the west. Its population is
all Hindu, and numerically quite evenly divided between lower and
upper castes (table 2.2). The aguri jati (also known as Uggra-
Kshatriya) forms the village’s dominant caste, numerically large and
economically and (formerly) politically dom inant. T h e aguris
occupy the central portion of the village. O f other clean or high
castes, we find a few bamun families, and a fairly large number of
kayasthas, mainly living in three paras in the western end. The bamun
and kayastha jatis together have contributed a large number o f
im portant village leaders and landlords and could well be counted
among the ‘dominant castes’ of Gopinathpur. Among the lower castes,
we fin^ bagdis and muchis as in Udaynala, as well as the dules, a jati
closely related to the bagdis (S. Dasgupta 1986). The bagdis exceed
the aguris in terms of numbers and constitute the largest jati of the
village. They live in the densely populated Bagdi-para in the south of
the village. The ‘home’ paras o f the aguri and the bagdi communities
border on each other and together constitute the centre and the bulk

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T able 2.2. Population and landownership by jati, G opinathpur 1993

Jati Population Landownership

N % (in percent of total)
Bamun 15 1.4 4.7
Kayastha 96 8.6 8.5
Aguri 214 19.2 29.1
Napit 165 14.8 23.1
Bagdi (SC) 371 33.4 28.9
Dule (SC) 85 7.7 2.8
Muchi (SC) 165 14.8 2.9
Total m i 100.2 100.0

Sourer, field-data

of the physical village. The muchis contribute a larger proportion of

the total village population than their Udaynala counterparts but
live in a small para to the south of the village. A few muchi families
also live in the recently formed North-para. The dule neighbourhood
constitute the western end of the village, while further away from the
main village, to the cast and along the road towards Udaynala, is the
large and nowadays quite prosperous napit community (Barbers).
Paddy cultivation is the main source of income and livelihood in
both villages. The late summer/autumn crop (aman) is irrigated by
rainwater from the monsoon and the flooded rivers and ponds.
Increasingly mini deep-tubewells and various other diesel or electricity-
run pumps are used to irrigate the smaller but crucial boro crop
(winter). This crop was nearly non-existent until some 20 years back,
when a few individuals first invested in pumping equipment. In the
1980s and 1990s, mainly with the help of subsidized government
loans to village cooperative societies, the number o f mini deep-
tubewells has increased fantastically (and the water-level sunk com­
paratively), so that for the boro season of 1994-95, Udaynala planned
to pump-irrigate about one half of its total acreage, while Gopinathpur
planned for about one third. For the period under study, this is the
single most im portant economic change. To the north o f both
villages runs an irrigation canal. It was dug in the early 1960s as part
o f the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) scheme to provide
irrigation for the adjoining areas, but it turned out that the plans

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were grander than the water supply, and so this canal has been dry
for the last 20 years— except during the rainy season. The main crop
for both the aman and the boro seasons is paddy, although we find
crops such as potato and sunflowers (for cooking oil) for the commer­
cialized and intensive boro season. But paddy remains the main crop
for the region, and the Dakshin Damodar has as many as 15 private,
government, and co-operative rice mills, mostly located around
Bajarpur and another village somewhat closer to Burdwan Town.
Burdwan Town has a university and a large university hospital
and is the commercial and political centre o f the district. It is to
Burdwan that people of Udaynala and Gopinathpur turn for what
they cannot get locally, in particular medical expertise and college or
university education but also finer goods. In the main, however, daily
needs are satisfied in the immediate vicinity. Both villages have
prim ary schools; Udaynala even has a secondary school. Both
villages have a number of doctors, Gopinathpur has a ‘health centre’
with a resident health worker, and both villages have several small
shops selling— occasionally even for barter— a wide range o f items
for daily consumption (cooking oil, chillies, bins or country cigarettes,
flour, cheap plastic toys, soap, detergents, etc.). For the not-so-everyday
items or services, villagers can also turn to the twice-weekly market
in H atpur or the permanent market in Bajarpur. There are higher
secondary schools both in Hatpur and Bajarpur, and even a small
college in Bajarpur. To the north o f Hatpur, easily accessible on
bicycle from Udaynala and Gopinathpur, is another larger college.
Close to this college are the new buildings o f a full-fledged country
hospital’, which has, however, not opened due to lack o f funds.

GRADUAL POLITICAL RADICALIZATION

The above description, which has sought however inadequately to

situate these two villages in their landscape, gives an impression of a
placid, unremarkable, sleepy village society. And in many ways it is.
But it is also an area of broad support for a communist party, the
CPM , which has ruled West Bengal for over two decades now.
Burdwan district is jocularly but not inaccurately known as the CPM ’s
fortress (durga). People in G o p in ath p u r and Udaynala have

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consistently supported the party. The Panchayat Samiti8 under which

Udaynala and Gopinathpur fall did not elect even one non-CPM
Panchayat member between 1978 and 1998, although there have
been opposition candidates.
But it was not always so. The Indian National Congress dominated
West Bengal’s political life after Independence, invariably winning a
majority of seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in Calcutta.
It lost this majority only in the fourth general election, in 1967. The
years following that water-shed are commonly referred to as the United
Front period after the two non-Congress coalitions that ruled the
state for short intervals. That period saw a turning o f the electoral
tide for the communist parties (Ruud 1994). We turn our attention
to the years preceding the events of the United Front period, and to
the period itself.
The first impetus towards radical political change seems, at first
glance anyway, to have taken place in Calcutta. After a split in the
Congress in 1966, that party lost its majority in the state Legislative
Assembly in the 1967 election, and the two opposition fronts that
had been running for election merged to form the United Front
(including the Congress splinter group and both communist parties).
This front formed the states first non-Congress government that
year but was ousted later the same year. The Front ran for re-election
in the 1969 mid-term elections, won, and again formed government.
The second UF Government was ousted in 1970, and the Front
broke apart following inner squabbles before the 1971 elections. In
the 1971 mid-term elections, the CPM emerged as the single largest
party in the Assembly but was prevented from attaining power by a
combination of foes and former allies. A little later the same year,
repression started to be unleashed on communists, and police and
para-military troops were stationed in rural localities and reversed
many land occupations. The 1972 elections were rigged in favour of
the Congress in many constituencies, including some in Burdwan.9
Table 2.3 gives the election results from the central and eastern
portions of Burdwan district (that is, the subdivisions Sadar, Kalna
and Katwa).10 Table 2.4 reports figures o f ‘mobilized vote’ for the
same area, i.e. the percentage of all those with a right to vote actually
mobilized into voting for the various parties.11 These figures are

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relevant because of the remarkable decrease in the percentage of non­

voters. It was during the UF period that the vote for the CPM grew
substantially. The growth followed an increase in voter turnout, a
near doubling of the total mobilized vote from 1967 to 1971.

T able 2.3. Percentage o f votes polled by major political parties and

. ‘Independents* in central and eastern Burdwan, 1952-1982

Political 1952 1957 1962 1967 1969 1971 1972 1977 1982
party

Congress 43.0 48.7 48.2 46.5 30.3 26.6 68.6 22.7 39.3
Janata Dal 16.4 -
Bangla Congress 3.9 9.2
CPI 11.3 21.7 31.1 2.7 4.3 2.2 2.7 — —

CPM (since 1964) 34.7 42.4 52.6 26.2 51.7 51.9

Forward Bloc 3.1 4.8 4.2 2.0 - — 8.2 3.4
Socialists41 11.3 8.0 4.5 6.3 - —

Independents 20.1 14.2 9.4 7.9 4.4 2.5- 4.7

For asterisk and sources, see table 2.4

T ab le2.4. ‘Mobilized vote* for major political parties and ‘Independents*

in central and eastern Burdwan, 1952-1982

Political party 1952 1957 1962 19671969 1971 1972 1977 1982

Congress 17.7 23.0 24.0 28.1 25.4 19.6 44.3 13.0 30.6
Janata Dal 9.4 -
Bangla Congress - 2.5 6.8
CPI 4.6 10.2 15.5 1.6 2.8 1.6 1.7 —

CPM (since 1964) 20.9 27.4 38.8 17.0 29.6 40.4

Forward Bloc 1.3 2.3 2.1 1.2 4.7 2.7
Socialists* 4.6 3.8 2.2 3.8 - —

Independents 8.3 6.7 4.7 4.8 2.2 — 1.6 3.6

Voters 41.1 47.2 49.8 60.4 64.6 73.7 64.6 57.2 77.9

* Figures for ‘Socialists’ combine the results for the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party
(KMPP), the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), and
the Socialist Party.
Results of less than one per cent are indicated by a dash.
Compiled and calculated from Baxter 1969, Field and Franda 1974, and Singh
and Bose 1987.

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Tables 2.5 and 2.6 give the comparable figures for Raina constitu­
ency (which comprises Udaynala and Gopinathpur). It may appear
that in Raina the CPM did not achieve much in terms o f mobiliza­
tion during the UF years, and that its increase from 1967 to 1969
merely reflected the demise of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), the old
party o f the opposition. However, the increase in mobilized vote for
the Congress probably came mainly from former PSP voters, following
the lead of the main PSP figure at the time, Dasarathi Tah. Tah had
been Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and elected on a
PSP ticket from Raina since 1952 but switched to the Congress in
1969. A number of ex-PSP voters also voted for the INDF, a party of
dissatisfied ex-PSP organizers. There is reason to believe that most of

T able 2.5. Percentage of votes polled: Raina constituency, 1952-1982

Political party 1952 1957 1962 1967 1969 1971 1972 1977 1982

Congress 40.5 45.8 66.0 36.0 37.4 36.6 56.4 22.3 32.7
KMPP/PSP* 41.6 54.3 30.5 37.9 1.7
CPM 23.4 52.2 60.3 43.6 63.4 65.4
Other** 18.0 3.5 2.7 8.7 3.2 14.3 1.9

For asterix and sources, see table 2.6

T able2.6. Percentage of ‘mobilized vote’s; Raina constituency, 1952-

1982

Political party 1952 1957 1962 1967 1969 1971 1972 1977 1982

Congress 14.6 23.6 37.5 20.5 24.6 23.5 35.9 12.9 26.2
KMPP/PSP* 15.0 28.0 17.3 21.6 1.1
CPM 13.3 34.3 38.8 27.7 36.7 52.3
Other** 6.5 2.0 1.5 5.7 2.1 8.3 1.5
Voters 36.0 51.6 56.8 57.0 65.7 64.3 63.6 57.9 80.0

*The Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) merged in 1952 with the Socialist Party
to form the Praja Socialist Party (PSP).
** ‘Other’ includes independent candidates plus the Jana Sangh and Bolshevik
Party (both ran in 1952), the Indian National Democratic Front (1969), the Con­
gress (O) (1971), and the Janata Dal (1977 and 1982).
Compiled and calculated from Singh and Bose 1987

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the increase in mobilized vote went in the direction o f the CPM, as

it did in most o f Burdwan.
The tables give only the figures up to the 1982 election. The sub­
sequent elections (in 1987 and 1992) have not yielded very different
figures, although the support for the governing parties are slowly
declining while still keeping them comfortably in power. But despite
this slow decline, the largely sustained support for the Left Front
Government (LFG) and the CPM constitutes a remarkable feat and
a remarkable feature in West Bengal's modern history. The literature
on p o st-1977 West Bengal mostly attributes this ftct to the series of
reforms implemented by the LFG. These reforms, to which I will
return in a later chapter in the context o f Udaynala and Gopinathpur,
included: implementation of already existing legislation on land ques­
tions (maximum ceiling for household ownership, restrictions on
exceptions) and redistribution of land; the famous Operation Barga
which registered most sharecroppers (bargadars) to ensure them their
legal share of the crop and other rights; and a substantial raising of
minimum wages to agricultural labourers. There was also a much-
discussed reform of the Panchayat system, which was simplified and
given more relevance and means.12
As we can see from the tables, the main shift in political allegiance
in West Bengal came during the unrest o f the late 1960s and not
after the 1977 reforms. The reforms may have been important in
generating sustained support for the CPM and the LFG, but the
foundations were laid during a period of massive political mobilization
efforts, forceful land occupations, incidents of looting, killing, or
burning, and short-lived governments, interspersed with spells of
Presidents Rule.13 The CPM increased its voter-turnout from 21
percent of electors to 39 percent between 1967 and 1971, and the
membership tally of the party more than doubled from about ten
thousand to about twenty-three thousand in a year (1968-69). When
the All India Kisan Sabha (CPM-affiliated) held its 1969 annual
conference in Burdwan district, five hundred thousand were reported
to have attended. It was common for people to join in thousands,
often tens of thousands, in the CPM-led activities such as demon­
strations or land occupations (Ruud 1994). The CPM, its affiliated
organizations, and the number of volunteers that the party commanded,

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grew immensely during this short but volatile period. For these reasons
the remainder of this chapter will focus on the pre-1977 history o f
West Bengal, and on the explanations or sets o f explanations that
have been offered to understand the emergence— and sustenance—
o f rural communism. I will return to the post-1977 situation in
Chapters Six and Seven.
W hat were the reasons for this relatively sudden shift o f political
allegiance among broad sections of the rural population? Why at this
juncture? Why should such an unusual thing as rural communism
suddenly bloom? What is it about the soil in West Bengal that has proved
so fertile to political radicalism? During the period itself, according to
one line o f analysis, inner squabbles in the UF and struggles over
positions made the various constituents of the Front use their government
posts and whatever other means at their disposal to strengthen and widen
their strongholds. This was probably true, particularly during the
second UF Government in 1969-70.14 But this in itself can hardly be
seen as much of a deviation from previous practice. The patronage
system was extensive and elaborate under the Congress,15 but patronage
itself had not been sufficient to keep the Congress in power.
Decades later, this period has mosdy been mentioned in passing
or analysed from stereotypical assumptions about mass political,
behaviour, particularly as we turn away from the urban scene,
towards the question of peasant mobilization and o f the emergence
o f communism in villages. In the existing literature there are a number
o f hypotheses, focusing in general on two broad historical themes.
O ne has to do with the history o f economic development and
increasing economic pressure on the lower classes during the course
o f the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The other theme starts
with the emergence of a radical ‘elite*— or middle class, as one may
choose to see it— and goes on to suggest that an incipient unrest in
the countryside and/or political compulsions brought about by events
elsewhere, opened* the eyes of political parties to the potential available
in rural mobilization. These two themes will be presented over the
following pages, and the arguments that go with them briefly
addressed. More space will be given to the theme of agrarian relations
since that is of interest not only to the scholarly arguments, but also
forms a background for the history of the village societies under study.

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AGRARIAN RELATIONS AND INCREASING POVERTY

The first and major impact of British colonial rule on Bengali society
and economy came with the so-called Permanent Settlement in 1793.
This Settlement was to facilitate tax collection and governance in
general. Having tried other models first, the East India Company
carved up the province into a fixed number o f estates’ over which
designated individuals— already existing rajas, maharajas, etc.— were
given ownership rights and the title zamindar.16 Failure to pay the
full tax could mean, and in some cases did, that the estate was
auctioned away to the highest bidder.
In the British scheme the zamindars were expected to develop into
English-type landlords, closely managing the estate, posing as the
patron of their subjects, and reinvesting surplus in improvements.
Most estates, however, were large and unmanageable. The Burdwan
raja was the first, soon followed by others, to carve his estate into
smaller units in order to ease rent collection.17 Each holder of a lease
under the zamindar, known as apatnidar, was to give the zamindar a
fixed annual amount. Soon, the patnidars subdivided their areas,
leased out to darpatnidars, who again subdivided further. By the 1930s
the number of holders of intermediary rights was over 5,000 under
the Burdwan raj (Chatterjee 1982a: 129). Most were quite small, a
kind o f superior raiyat (cultivator). It is obvious that the zamindar
was not the controlling man he was supposed to be.
The British anyhow restricted zamindari rights. Even in the mid
nineteenth century the zamindars were criticized for mismanagement
and maltreatment from various corners. Broad dissatisfaction among
tenants as well as a series of revolts in the 1870s and 1880s in eastern
Bengal (K. Sen Gupta 1970), led colonial authorities to pass pro­
tenant legislation. The Bengal Tenancy Act o f 1885 inter alia gave
established tenants some protection against eviction. Historical studies,
in particular by Rajat and Ratna Ray,18 have suggested that the real
masters— exploiters— of the peasantry were the stratum below
zamindars or holders of zamindari rights, namely a stratum of village
dominating landlords— calledjotedar or jotdars. They held large tracts
of land cultivated by sharecroppers or similar types of tied labourers.
With intimate local knowledge, using local networks of caste and

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family and superior economic clout, the jotedars were well-positioned

to extract the optimum from suppressed tillers.
Sugata Bose challenges this ‘jotedar-thesis* in his Agrarian Bengal
study (Bose 1986). Here he shows that in the case o f turn-of-the-
century western Bengal (and eastern Bengal, which I do not consider
here) the image of the village- and credit-controlling landlord with
superior tenancy rights does not fit. Instead he finds a three-tier system,
in what he calls ‘the peasant smallholding-demesne labour complex*.
This complex consisted of, at the top, a small segment o f landlords
who had their lands tilled by hired-in hands; then a fairly broad but
so far ignored segment of peasant smallholders, owner-cultivators
who employed hired-in labour for peak seasons; and lastly, a broad
and more or less landless segment that supplied the tilling labour.
There were of course no sharp lines between these three segments,
with some intergenerational mobility, and with caste and other social
ties often reaching across economic divisions. But the situation was
fast changing, Bose suggests. Already by the late nineteenth century
a differentiation was taking place. Population growth and shifting
rivers contracted the acreage, and caused increased pressure on land.
A section of the richer owner-cultivators was able to take advantage
o f a credit-market, an expanding market in grain and possession of
surplus land, to financially rise above others, approaching ‘the
gentry* in riches and life-style. This slow development continued
into the first decades of the twentieth century and sent many poor
peasant households who relied on credit for seeds into poverty and
debt. The financial depression of the 1930s adversely affected an
already squeezed credit-dependent and increasingly market-producing
peasantry, forcing many into selling land and becoming part- or full­
time sharecroppers.
The situation after Independence, as several studies have shown,
was one of a continued pressure on land, swelling the ranks o f the
poor and landless. Estimates vary considerably, but it is clear that
there was massive poverty in rural West Bengal in the 1950s and
1960s. The percentage of households holding 2.5 acres of land or
less increased from 73 in 1954/55 to 77 in 1971/72.19 The official
poverty line was five acres for a family of five. Most land-poor or
landless families would supplement their income by hiring out their

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labour force, that of women or children as domestic servants, cow

herders, or similar work, and that of adult males normally as agricul­
tural labourers. A few of the latter were on long-term contracts, lasting
perhaps as much as a year at a time, while most were on short-term
contracts, for the season, for a week, for a particular job, or mostly
just for the day. Their dependency and vulnerability are obvious.
A feature that further enhanced their dependency but possibly
mitigated their poverty, was the high incidence o f sharecropping. In
these parts of Bengal sharecropping mostly consisted of a sharing of
output, commonly fifty-fifty between landowner and tiller. Fixed crop
tenancy was quite unusual. Although there is evidence to suggest
that sharecroppers increasingly came to form their own class, with
people being born into such a status and earning a living mainly as
sharecroppers throughout their lives, it is clear that it was also in
many instances a temporary arrangement that people moved in and
out of with some frequency. Surplus labour in a family would make
it agreeable to take up sharecropping. Or, from the owners angle,
inconveniendy placed land could be hired out until it could be sold
or exchanged for a plot closer to ones main land. Then o f course
there were also the big landowners, who had all or most of their
lands sharecroppcd. Also in this case, sharecropping came to be more
of a temporary arrangement than it had earlier been, in the sense
that the sharecroppers would be exchanged for others with more
frequency and at shorter intervals.
The reason for this trend is to be found in pro-sharecropper legis­
lation. This legislation was passed but not rigorously implemented.
The Bargadar Act of 1953, later incorporated into the West Bengal
Estates Abolition Act of 1955, gave the sharecropper security against
eviction, a stipulated share of the crop, and rights o f inheritance.
The negative effect of this legislation and a source for the political
pressure for land reform was that it did not secure the sharecroppers
their rights but rather made landlords unwilling to retain sharecroppers
for long periods.20 Landowners instead made sure that the sharecrop­
ping arrangement alternated between different individuals.
Independent India abolished the zamindari system. Most states
passed legislation aimed at redistributing the huge demesne lands
held by ex-zamindar landlords. The class of rural rich survived for

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some time due to lax implementation of the legislation, a corrupt

bureaucracy and political system, and by ‘hiding* excess land under
false names (benami) or false charities. However, the sustained
political pressure for land reforms dampened further investment in
land. Instead resources were diverted into business or education. As
a result the number of landlords and the size o f land held by them,
decreased substantially over the period. The percentage of landholders
in the 10 acres or more category, was almost halved over the 1954/-55—
1971/-72 period, from 5.35 to 2.44. The proportion o f all owned
land held in this class declined from 40 percent to slightly below 20
percent over the same period.21 Although figures are not entirely re­
liable— landlords did have good reason to hide the size of their hold­
ings— the figures suggest a real decline in the number of landlords and
in their capacity to extend patronage. This development came in
addition to the dampened interest in extending patronage. It is sig­
nificant that agricultural labourers had become surplus labour in the
village economy, and many were unemployed for much o f the year.
Their precarious financial situation made them vulnerable and probably
all the more willing to submit to patron-client relationships. But
while the demand for employment and patronage grew among the
landless, the capacity to extend it diminished among the land-owning
sections.
It is commonly accepted that tied labourers such as sharecroppers
or long-term labourers were more loyal to the landowners and also
received larger amounts of patronage than untied labourers. Hence
tied labourers were more willing to follow the landowner even politi­
cally, by abstaining from voting or by voting for the party that he
favoured.22 Untied labourers, on the other hand, were more volatile,
and could be found supporting different landlords in their intra-
village rivalries.
These developments have interesting implications for interpretations
of this period in Bengali history. Bhabani Sen Gupta, a prominent
student of Indian communism, points precisely to theses develop­
ments in agrarian relations, a ‘disintegration o f the peasantry*, in
seeking to understand communist peasant mobilisation in West Bengal
(B. Sen Gupta 1979: 151). Atul Kohli, another prominent scholar of
Indian politics, also finds that economic inequalities and ‘massive

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poverty had caused a deep cleavage in rural society, a ‘hostility of the

lower classes to their superiors (Kohli 1990: 377). Absentee land­
lordism had caused, according to Kohli, a lack of landlord political
control over the village population, and subsequently the country­
side lay open to radical mobilization which reactionary forces no
longer had sufficient local clout to suppress.

TH E SPARK: A NEW LINE OF TH IN K IN G

It was at this juncture that the urban elitist radical parties and an
impoverished peasantry could link with one another, according to
the literature. All that was needed, was the ignition. The poor did
not automatically surge forward because o f increased incidence of
poverty, but tended to depend on leadership from other social groups
before acting. Increased poverty had only prepared the ground, and
radical politicians in the urban centres were about to discover this
fertile ground. This understanding is shared by Bhabani Sen Gupta,
who believes that what specifically made peasant mobilization possible
was ‘a new tactical thinking’ on the part o f communist parties. After
their involvement in the food movement of 1965-66, the CPM
leadership had ‘discovered— to the surprise of their own leaders’, that
rural support bases tended to be more stable than urban ones (B. Sen
Gupta 1979: 53). After coming to power in 1967, and in reality only
after being ousted from power later the same year, the party leadership
gave a ‘call’ for mobilisation. Much along the same lines, Marcus
Franda asserts that by the time of the UF period, the CPM ‘showed
a new flexibility’ which allowed for different strategies in localities
with different socio-economic structures (Franda 1971a: 184). In
some localities they focused on agricultural labourers, in others on a
collaboration between landless and middle-class peasants.
A crucial development was the emergence in this period o f the
so-called Naxalites, an insurgence in north Bengal by a break-away
group of China-supported CPM activists mobilizing the rural pro­
letariat. The CPI had split in 1964, and the splinter group, the
CPM, emerged the stronger in West Bengal, with a heavier bag­
gage of activism and dislike for collaboration with established powers.23
When despite this heritage, the CPM joined the United Front to

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form a government, it caused disappointment to many o f the party’s

activists. The insurgence in north Bengal, which happened at this
time, proved to be a very attractive alternative to many activists.
This caused severe rethinking within the CPM (Franda 1971a, Ch.
3). This point is also raised by Atul Kohli, who asserts that the
CPM s ideological reorientation, under pressure from Naxalite-in-
spired wings of its own organization, made it turn towards the rural
masses and in 1969 give a call for occupation o f illegally held land.
By these events, forces were ‘let loose [. . .] that the CPM itself
could not control’ (Kohli 1987: 101).
Evidently, both Atul Kohli and Bhabani Sen Gupta hold quite
simple views about the peasantry. W hat they seem to say is that
given the right socio-economic circumstances, the peasantry can be
mobilized by a suitably inclined middle class. These two otherwise
eminent scholars’ views are shared by many observers, and also by
many leading political activists in West Bengal. There is nothing
ostensibly wrong in these observations: There was economic pressure
on large sections, and when there finally was mobilization, then it
was under a middle-class leadership.
We need to ask however, why economic pressure led to support
for organized forms of party politics and not other forms, such as
disorganized acts of looting or robbery, or just passivity. And why
would the village middle classes let themselves be involved in a
radical movement? How did they perceive their own position in
the batde of ideologies that was going on? Also not explained in the
existing literature is how the urban-rural divide became bridged.
Most former party activists were educated and self-conscious urban­
ites. From a village perspective, in particular, these activists would
be bhadralok, men o f refinement and high status, whether they
wanted that status or not. How then did the mobilized poor and
low-caste population perceive their own participation under the
leadership of the educated middle classes? These types o f questions
become particularly interesting in light of the recent contributions
by the Subaltern Studies school and other practitioners o f what we
with a somewhat old-fashioned concept might term a history o f
mentality.

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BUT DOES IT ALL FIT?

W hat I wish to draw attention to in this book is the perceptions

involved in the different groups participation, both of the poor and
of the rural middle classes, so that we might come closer to an
understanding of the process of dissemination o f new ideas,, whole
ideologies, and their translation into practice. This was a dissemination
o f new ideas into villages and social groups that were initially alien to
the urban educated culture in which the ideas had first been formed
and gained prominence. We are concerned not only with the nature
of the emerging radical ideologies, but also with how they interacted
with those already prevalent in the countryside— group identities,
modes of political organization, formal and informal political
structure— and the process by which the two sets hinged upon one
another and came to form one another.
I shall try to fill out the picture by looking back, into the immediate
and not so immediate past of village society. I shall point to how a
heterogeneous cultural environment specific to Bengal formed its
history in interaction with political events and ideological currents,
constandy changing and interpreted through the process o f village
politics. As is the thesis of this study, such important political (and
in effect cultural) changes in an overwhelmingly agrarian polity cannot
be understood without close investigation of how the peasants them­
selves perceived the various political actors and their ideologies and
of how these perceptions came to influence the course o f events. We
need to be much more sensitive to the complex reality o f interaction,
even in seemingly placid villages, and steer away from easy stereo­
typed images of peasants willy-nilly following leaders or automati­
cally responding to economic changes in a particular fashion.

NOTES
1 When questioned, villagers will locate their village in ‘Raina, identical with
the old Raina thana (area of police jurisdiction, also a name for the station
itself) and which has been split into Raina I and Raina II development
blocks.
2 For a debate and references, see articles in Rogaly et al eds.
3 Both Udaynala and Gopinathpur were technically divided into two distinct

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mouzas (revenue villages) and panchayat seats. For the sake of simplicity, I
have merely called these Udaynala North and Udaynala South, and
Gopinathpur East and Gopinathpur Vest, respectively. Both villages appear
physically as one village, and arc commonly referred to as such. Udaynala
South is still often referred to as ‘the south para, and with historically only
one literate family, the Kajis, it could previously not be considered a proper
village. Also Gopinathpur West is quite small and was considered but a para
under Gopinathpur East. It got its own Panchayat seat as late as 1993.
4 The lines official name, Bankura Damodar River Railway, was abbreviated
to BDR and hence the local name bara duhkha rel (‘The railway of great
sorrow*). It ran infrequently and was of minimal commercial interest. It has
been closed since my visit.
5 I have placed the different jatis in an approximate socio-ritual ranking.
Though Muslims and Hindus do not rank on the same ritual scale, Muslim
‘jatis* still tend to be ranked where Hindu jatis of a comparable social status
would.
6 At least following the common understanding of jati, as an endogamous
group, see Kolenda 1978. For ‘caste* among Muslims, see Ahmad 1977.
7 I prefer the colloquial jati names since many of the ‘sanskritized’ names are
long (such as Barga-Kshatriya for bagdi) and little used. Lower case initial
letters will be used for the colloquialisms, upper case for sanskritized names.
8 The ‘Panchayat system’ of elected bodies of local government has in West
Bengal three ‘tiers*: Gram Panchayat (or village council, covering some 10-
15 villages), Panchayat Samiti (covering some 8-12 Gram Panchayats), and
the Jela (or district) Parishad.
9 For a discussion on the extent of rigging, see Field and Franda 1974.
Although they are lukewarm towards the CPM’s tall claims of rigging, they
acknowledge extensive rigging in some areas, including in Burdwan district.
10 Substantial industries are located in the western regions of the district. The
figures are taken from Ruud 1994.
11 For the concept o f ‘mobilized vote*, sec Vanderbok 1990.
12 For some contributions to the debate and literature, see Lieten 1988, 1990,
1992 and 1994; Webster 1992; Biplab Dasgupta 1984a and 1984b; Ross
Mallick 1990,1992; the articles in Rogaly e ta ltis ; Dwaipayan Bhattacharya
1993; Harihar Bhattacharya 1997; Gazdar and Sengupta 1997. More of
this in Chapter Six.
13 President’s Rule is when the Central Federal Government imposes its own
rule on a state— a constitutional provision for situations of political
breakdown in individual states.
14 This line of argument formed the tenor of newspaper reports and analysis

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during the UF period, as well as some books; see for instance Sajal Basu
1974, Anjali Ghosh 1981, or Sankar Ghosh 1971.
15 See in particular Franda 1970 and 1971: Chapter 7; and S. Chakrabarty
1978:304-46. For a large study o f‘the Congress-system’, see Weiner 1967.
16 The British thought they were building on the system as it existed under
the Mughal Nawabs of Bengal. However, the total ownership rights conferred
on the zamindars, as well as the notion of a permanent and non-negotiable
rent were novelties.
17 For a detailed study on the politics and economy of the Burdwan raj and
zamindari, the largest single unit in Bengal Presidency, see McLanc 1993.
18 In particular in their 1975 article, but see also Ratna Rays 1980 book.
19 Based on National Sample Survey figures, as compiled and presented in
Sanyal 1988:150.
20 As argued in for instance S. Sengupta 1979, Ch. 5; K. D utt 1977; B.
Dasgupta 1984b; and Frankel 1972:167.
21 Based on National Sample Survey figures, as compiled by S. K. Sanyal
1988:150; see also Nripen Bandyopadhyaya and Associates 1985:12.
22 For references specific to West Bengal, see Davis 1983:202-9, S. Sengupta
1979: 130-9.
23 Franda 1971b has a good analysis of the ideologies behind the split and
formation of the CPM.

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Two Stories about
Power and Influence

‘W E WERE ALL IN IT TO GETH ER’

*W Tc wcrc ^ *n lt togct^cr >uttcrcd in public, is a standard answer

W by village leaders to queries about who initiated or led one or
the other project. O ther villagers will, in private, be more explicit:
‘This road was built by Ohabsahcb’, or ‘Bhaskar Mandal organized
the building of this school’. Ohabsaheb and Bhaskar Mandal will
themselves understate their own role and instead emphasize the
community or the collectivity, ‘We were all in it together’.
In a society as preoccupied with rank and hierarchy as rural India,
would a village leader not seek to underline his own role and contri­
bution to enhance his status and prestige? Would there be anything
to gain from wooing supporters in this manner? Did wealth, politi­
cal contacts, and traditional status not yield sufficient clout? It does
not seem so. It is the intention of this chapter to disaggregate the
‘power’ or ‘power-base’ of Bengali village leaders. How did they be­
come leaders and how did they ‘recruit’ followers?
From village ethnographies it seems that the utterance ‘We were
all in it together is not an unusual statement. The same self-denial is
mentioned in several studies, the same humility on the part o f the
leaders. Oscar Lewis, for instance, wrote from a village in north India
that ‘A fundamental requisite for leadership in this village is humility,
self-abnegation, and hospitality, especially within the in-group. [...]
Leaders will never refer to themselves as such and will make a point
of attributing leadership qualities to the others who are present’ (Lewis
1958: 129). In F. G. Bailey’s description, the leader o f an Orissa

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village, seemed to me extremely self-effacing [and] rarely had any­

thing to say’ (Bailey 1988: 43).
Leaders publicly present themselves as just one among many, as
perhaps not important at all. On the decision-making process in the
‘traditional panchayat’, H. S. Dhillon wrote that ‘The Yajmans [here:
leaders] must make decisions in consultation with all concerned, and
the confidence in them must be constantly reaffirmed by the people’
(Dhillon 1955, cited in Mandelbaum 1970a: 292). This looks like
some sort of rudimentary democracy. The people ‘elect’ their leaders
through extending or withdrawing support. Dhillon may have over­
stated his case, but his basic argument is nonetheless sound; that
there is a substantial degree o f ‘consultation’ between leaders and the
led. This also seems a fitting description of Bengali village politics, as
we shall see in this chapter. But rather than commoners, electing
leaders by extending or withdrawing support, the process, I will
argue, is one by which leaders take great care to accommodate them­
selves to public opinion.
A question emerges here. Where does this leave the more hard­
core social science economic structures, political clout, or social status
in the making of village leaders? Village ethnographies and other
material readily show that village leaders are more often than not
‘clean’ or high caste or otherwise have high social status (as the high
status Muslims of Udaynala), they are owners of more than subsis­
tence land, very often possessing substantial lands, and they have
characteristically a wide network of contacts in the political parties,
the administration, or among powerful and wealthy men in other
villages. Should such factors, particularly in the hands of one indi­
vidual, not account for a dominant position in the village? The problem
is that these factors rarely form sufficient clout to ‘rule’ a village by
personal will, without cooperation from other villagers. And other
villagers too, as we shall see, have ‘powers’ of their own, ‘powers’ that
may rival the village leader, if not individually then in combination.
Some of the answers will have to wait for later chapters— in particular
the importance of the formal institutions and backing from political
parties. In this chapter I hope to come closer to what understanding
‘made’ the village leader at a time when formal institutions were not
as prominent as they later became, and why a particular person and

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not someone else emerged as a village leader. In the process, since the
material refers mainly to the 1960s, we should get a picture of how
village politics functioned before the CPM introduced party colours
to village council elections and to village politics in general.
Let us now move to the stories o f Udaynala and Gopinathpur and
their political history from the 1950s to the late 1960s. This is mainly
a story about internal events, quarrels over resources or symbols, ef­
forts at cooperation, and the conduct of village affairs. But it is also,
and I hope this will become clear as we move along, a story about
two village communities in close contact with the world around them.
And the world around is not just confined to other village communi­
ties but includes the larger world, of the urban intelligentsia, o f
ideological changes, and of international affairs. My objective in
narrating this story of political events in two tiny communities of no
consequence to others but themselves lies in what it can divulge to us
about the nature of village politics in rural India (at least in rural
West Bengal).

GOPINATHPUR: T H E STORY OF AN ENDURING

ALLIANCE

In the 1960s ‘groupism’— nowadays the English term is used— or

daladali (factionalism) or the affairs of the dais (factions, groups),
was rampant in both Udaynala and Gopinathpur. Daladali was a
well-known phenomenon with a long history, and villagers commonly
perceived village politics as having centred on dais led by powerful or
influential individuals. These dais and the subsequent daladali were
important enough to form the core of village history. ‘In the days of
Hekimsahebs dal* or ‘When the bagdis were in the Chaudhuri daT
were common shorthand for fixing historical periods.
The story of Gopinathpur from the late 1950s to the late 1970s
largely centres around one man, Bhaskar Mandal. H e looms large in
the village s history and even 15 years later was referred to— perhaps
jokingly, perhaps not— as Gopinathpur s morol. The term morol de­
rives from M andal, a tide for village leaders and hereditary village
leadership positions in particular. But Gopinathpur and the other
villages of the Dakshin Damodar usually did not have such hereditary

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positions, and those that did exist were confined to certain m inor
ritual functions. Moreover, nowadays, Mandal or the more collo­
quial morol designate not so much the prestige and prominence o f
village leadership but something negative, in the same manner as
politics can be negative (Ruud 2000). To do moroli (moroli kora), in
contemporary Bengali, is to be unnecessarily bossy, pompous, exclu­
sive and secretive as a prominent person, or to introduce ‘politics into
issues that were better left without it, or to put ones own prestige or
power considerations before the well-being of the community, or to
seek to portray oneself as a leader without being so. When it comes to
Bhaskar Mandal, the term morol also refers to something very
tangible, namely his dominant position in the village for some two
decades (ca. 1958-1977). We now turn to the making of this position,
keeping in mind the absence of any formal village leader institution in
the village. Village leadership was not an office one could run for. Both
the position and the selection process were entirely informal.
In the literature surveyed in the introductory chapter village leader­
ship has often been portrayed as a case o f dominance of the rich over
the poor. But Bhaskar was not a wealthy man. When he was elevated
to the position of village leadership he controlled some 32 bighas of
land. This amount was sufficient to designate him as a middle class
peasant, but not as a rich peasant in the style o f several other indi­
viduals in Gopinathpur, some of whom held 50 bighas, and two of
whom held around one hundred bighas. He was however a member
of the large and sprawling Mandal family. The Mandal family are
aguris, the dominant caste in the village (or the larger o f the three
dominant castes), contributing about a fourth o f the population and
being ritually clean Hindus; At the time the family spanned seven
quite large households (all related to one another). But being mem1
ber of the dominant caste was no guaranteed ticket to leadership. In
the early years of our story Bhaskar s main rival was his cousin Ranjan
Mandal, who had assumed village leadership in around 1953-54.
Ranjan was considered village leader because— among other reasons—
he was chairman of the village baroari (‘public’) fund, a fund which
at the time held not inconsiderable amounts o f land and which was
in charge of arranging all the main festivals of the village, as well as
village welfare in general. The position was the most prestigious in

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the village, and it conferred on its holder the right o f prominence in

the main festivals.
Two important events, and two fights, took place in about 1957-8
that were to have important consequences for village leadership in
Gopinathpur and that arc still remembered many years later as crucial
events, events no one wanted to see repeated.
Via the Union Boards1 and the local Block Development Officer
(BDO) money was allocated for a simple hand-driven water pump
to be installed in Gopinathpur. A socialist-minded administrator
decided that the pump should be located in the bagdi para (quarter,
hamlet) of the village, to replace the insufficient and unhygienic open
well. The argum ent was that a private pum p had already been
installed in one of the high caste paras, from which all clean caste
people (but no low caste individual) could draw drinking water. The
aguris vehemently opposed the suggestion. It was unthinkable that
their landless dependants should have a public pump before themselves.
Organized by Ranjan Mandal, deputations of aguris and other high
caste individuals were sent to the BDO to protest.
However, some bagdis thought otherwise. In particular the near
landless but very energetic and practical-minded Sakti Bag (a bagdi
leader) supported the BDO suggestion. He organized the bagdis,
and stealthily one night a group of them went to Bajarpur where the
material for the pump had arrived, took it to Gopinathpur where
they stored it, and started digging the well. The next morning, when
this became known, angry aguris went to confiscate the material and
bring it to their own paras. They were lead by Ranjan, who sought to
assert his authority over these dependants. A major fight broke out,
in which it is alleged that most male aguris and bagdis participated.
U nfortunately the aguris lost to their utter hum iliation. They
were chased away, running back to their own paras. As the tempers
cooled after a while, it appeared to many aguris and other landown­
ers o f the village that this threatened to be more than just a humiliat­
ing experience and was bad for Gopinathpurs reputation. There was
the approaching harvesting season to be thought of, and the mainte­
nance of reasonably good labour relations was imperative. A division
between the two major jatis was also a division between the land-
owners and the labourers. The dispute was not taken further, and in

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the months of harvesting that followed no untoward incident took

place.
The incident was not forgotten. Some time later, some say a month,
some say several months, another threatening incident and another
fight took place. The village was about to get its own school, and a
school board was to be elected, primarily to assist in the starting
phase. The board would obviously also be an important site for promi­
nence in the village. Ranjan, the still unchallenged head of the baroari
fund, forwarded and made known a list o f candidates that included
himself and a number of other clean caste villagers.
At this point, however, entered another person. He was Dasarathi
Porel, one of the two educated bagdis o f the village. He was born
into an ordinary, that is very poor, bagdi family in Gopinathpur, but
as a child was sent to his maternal uncle in the industrial town of
Dhanbad (Bihar) for education. He proved to be a very good student
and eventually secured a position as a schoolteacher in Dhanbad and
taught there for many years. Upon the death o f his father, about a
year before the event below, he decided to return to his native village,
where he bought some land and setded with his family. In Dhanbad
Dasarathi had become not only educated and moderately well off, he
had also become quite refined in his mannerisms (a ‘bhadralok*, more
of this in Chapter Four) and had been in touch with leftist ideas. He
came replete with notions of development and progress, o f equality
and rationality.
He was forwarded as a rival candidate to the school board chair­
manship. And he received the support o f Sakti Bag and other
bagdis who still savoured the victory of the earlier fight. The bagdis
contributed approximately one third o f the male population in
the village and— contrary to common procedure— they threat­
ened to appear at the election meeting. It was severely objectionable
to most aguris to have a bagdi heading anything as prestigious as
a school board, even if he was an educated schoolteacher, and the
only one in the village. Another fight broke out, this time at the
site o f the new school. This fight was not as big as the last one,
possibly more of a skirmish, involving mosdy younger males. However,
it was severe enough to evoke fear of still deeper divisions in the
village.

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Just before the school board election meeting, Bhaskar Mandal,

cousin o f Ranjan and not politically implicated so far, was in contact
with two bagdi leaders. One was Gobardhan Malik, the other edu­
cated bagdi of the village. He was the most prominent son o f the
eldest of the Malik family, which at the time comprised five or six
quite large households. All Maliks owned some land and they consti­
tuted the most advanced and well-off section o f the bagdis of
Gopinathpur. Gobardhan had augmented his family’s lands through
hard work and moderate money lending. He was also a devout Hindu
and member o f a Hindu reformist sect, the Satsangha, which is quite
a widespread sect that emphasizes thrift and hard work, cleanliness,
contributions to the community, and devotion also for the ordinary
householder. As a devout H indu, Gobardhan was no friend of
Dasarathi the leftist, and they did not see eye to eye on the matter of
concern to both of them i.e. the future betterment of their community
and o f society in general. T he other bagdi leader that Bhaskar
approached at this juncture was Sakti Bag, who on the surface
supported Dasarathi although the two were very different personalities.
Sakti was also a very practical-minded man who may well have been
seeking a way out of the path of confrontation.
Bhaskar approached both and secredy a deal was worked out. Only
a little before the election to the school board they announced a rival
list of candidates, including Bhaskar as candidate for the chairman­
ship, and Sakti and Gobardhan and three other clean caste individuals
for membership. This list raised the promise of bridging the gap that
had developed between the bagdi labourers and the aguri landown­
ers. It thus promised to end the humiliating and distressful division
that had entered into village affairs. The list was elected unanimously.
Some months later, at the election meeting for the village’s baroari
committee, Bhaskar was elected to replace his cousin Ranjan as chair­
man of the committee. Ranjan was given position as member but
played no political role in the village afterwards. Village leadership
was now in the hands of Bhaskar.
Over the following years Bhaskar maintained the alliance with
Gobardhan and Sakti. From this basis he drew support from other
groups and families in the village. He maintained the support of
Gobardhan and Sakti by making sure they found the alliance to their

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benefit. Whenever Gobardhan or Sakti sought to establish their au­

thority in their respective realms, everybody knew that by and large
they would be able to secure the support o f Bhaskar. Gobardhan
maintained his authority over the Malik family and their immediate
neighbours, who were all bagdis. Sakti appeared in general as the
leader of the rest of the bagdi community, which consisted o f small
and mainly very land-poor families to the west o f the Malik para.
Only the Porel family under Dasarathi was outside this arrangement.
The three also benefited from the fact that this was a period of
formal institution building in rural Bengal, including Gopinathpur.
Their alliance secured an inclusion o f all three into all the new insti­
tutions. The school board was the first, but then followed the board
of the cooperative society, the library committee, and finally but most
importantly the Panchayats. The alliance secured control over the
lowest levels of the newly introduced Panchayat system, the Gram
Panchayat, and the villages seats in the Anchal Panchayat. The latter
was particularly important because it was part o f the government
structure, receiving money through government channels and exer­
cising certain, albeit limited, powers. Equally crucial for Gobardhan
and Sakti was the fact of having been included into such bodies. Its
importance cannot be overstated for them or for bagdis in general.
These two were the first two bagdis in village history to obtain such
formal positions. Previously bagdis had not been recognized by the
village aguris as part of the village public, as having anything to do
with the running of village affairs. Although bagdis or other low
caste individuals had already been included in similar institutions in
a few select neighbouring villages, it was still a very recent phenom­
enon, starting in the mid to late 1950s.
In building his alliance with the lower castes of his village, Bhaskar
was also careful not to alienate the clean caste sections. Besides, there
were also other factions or groups o f importance in the village. The
alliance had to consider these as well. This was partly done by not
seeking a place for Gobardhan and Sakti in the village baroari com­
mittee. This committee remained the domain o f the clean castes and
secured them pre-eminence in the main village rituals. Occasionally,
clean caste individuals other than Bhaskar were elected as baroari
chairman. For instance, Santi Jos, a moderate landowner, and the

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rich Mohan Sarkar were elected on occasion. Both were aguris. Other
leaders also carried weight in village affairs. For the 1964 selection of
members to the Panchayat several persons were given positions as
they represented powerful interests and groups in the village. These
included people such as the unpopular but strong-willed and well-
off bamun moneylender Bijay Mukherji, the only Congress activist
in the village, the energetic but poor Anadi Sen, aguri by caste, and
the leader of the village kayasthas, landlord and ex-lawyer Paritas
Sen.
Moreover, both Gobardhan and Sakti were sensitive politicians.
Although they attended most meetings o f the boards and commit­
tees of which they were part, they normally refrained from making
any but predictable statements or votes. In particular the uneducated
Sakti made little direct impact. The educated and increasingly self-
aware Gobardhan was more vocal, in particular after some years, but
remained always the voice of reason and reconciliation.
O n the other hand, both Gobardhan and Sakti were largely left to
take their own decisions among the bagdis. Bagdis too quarrelled
and had disputes, and in those years it was primarily Gobardhan but
also Sakti who were called upon to settle disputes and pass sentence
in such cases. Bhaskar rarely intervened, and when he was called
upon to do so, it was normally to endorse the decision taken by
Gobardhan or Sakti.
Bhaskar had few long-term contacts in the political establishment
outside the village. Although he did entertain personal relations with
the local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), he never be­
came a member of any political party, in spite of invitations. As a
village leader, Bhaskar retained his clout in village affairs mainly from
the support he was able to muster from other important persons
within the village.
His alliance fell apart around 1970-71 when Gobardhan moved
over to Anadi Sen, a fellow Satsanghi and Bhaskars rival. Anadi is
interesting because in Gopinathpur he had represented the Congress,
the dominant political party in the state, since 1963-64 without
achieving a position of substantial influence. Following Ralph Nicho­
las (see Chapter One) one may have expected Anadi to have been
elevated to the position of village establishment* upon receipt of

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government patronage. One may also have expected Bhaskar to seek

such patronage much earlier, to secure his position. Since this hap­
pened only to a limited extent, we are forced to look for factors other
than political contacts to explain village leadership. But let us first
move across the field, to Udaynala.

UDAYNALA: TH E STORY OF A BRITTLE ALLIANCE

The story of the neighbouring village of Udaynala is entirely different.

It starts with two or three large and looming rich landowners, passes
over to their heirs, a group of youngsters with new ideas, and ends in
repression in the 1970s. It is a story of many more alliances, o f more
ambitions and more initiatives, and more abrupt change.
Jiku Chaudhuri headed a large and prestigious family. It was a
baniadi (aristocratic) family, descendants of zamindars. The family
originally held the lease (patta) to all of Udaynala South, given ac­
cording to legend by Nawab Alivardi Khan in the 1740s. Jiku
Chaudhuri owned some 120-130 bighas of land, on some o f which
were settled a large num ber o f bagdis who functioned as the
C haudhuris’ fighters and labour reservoir. O n the death o f
Hekimsaheb, the previous village leader, Jiku Chaudhuri rose to
prominence in the village as the senior most and wealthiest land­
holder. He enjoyed the immediate support o f ‘his’ bagdis, most of
the namasudra community, the whole muchi community and many
of the owner-cultivator sekh households (all setded in ‘his mouza,
Udaynala south). His bagdi support, however, was crucial, as they
functioned as both agricultural labourers and as fighters (lathials).
Jiku Chaudhuri eventually lost his sanity and his second eldest
son, H anu Chaudhuri, sought to retain their traditionally promi­
nent position in the village. Unfortunately he did not have Jiku
Chaudhuri s flair for leadership. He was also much poorer after the
land had been divided. Although he was to be active in village politics
for many years, he soon lost the bagdis support and thus the special
clout of the Chaudhuri family to other more energetic would-be
village leaders. At this particular juncture in Udaynala all the former
village leaders— the domineering personalities of Hekimsaheb, Jiku
Chaudhuri and Wasel Ali (Jiku Chaudhuris rival, whom we shall

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meet later)—were either dead or had withdrawn from active involve­

ment in village affairs. The stage was open for the next generation, a
group o f young men, mostly educated away from home, who were to
bring their new ideals and new perspectives to village politics. The
group was to call itself‘the young group (tarun dal).
It was not a well-defined group. It had a core but was equally
influenced and shaped by people on the sidelines. The two main
characters who led and to a large degree shaped village politics in the
decades of the 1960s and the 1970s were Kajisaheb, heir and nephew
o f Hekimsaheb, and Ohabsaheb, from quite a modest background.
In addition to his personal charisma and prestige Kajisaheb also re­
lied on the support of the village saotals who had been settled on his
family s lands by his aunt, widow of Hekimsaheb. Ohabsaheb s main
support derived from a large network and increasingly from bagdis
under the leadership of one Sankar Bag, a group that had previously
supported the Chaudhuri family.
Whereas Kajisaheb openly professed support to communism from
about I960, Ohabsaheb was an active Congress member from about
1963—1964. Like Anadi Sen in Gopinathpur, Ohabsaheb was the
first Congress activist of his village. Like Anadi he leaned towards
the left wing of the Congress.
In addition to Kajisaheb and Ohabsaheb there were a large num­
ber o f other politically active persons in the village. Some belonged
firmly to the young group, like the communist Najir Hak and the
schoolteachers Selimmaster and Fajlul Hosen, both of whom had
their own groups of supporters in their respective paras, and Hanu
Chaudhuri. They were all sekh Muslims. In addition there was Bhola
Sarkar, the most active of the village clean caste Hindus. Their oppo­
nents were Wasel Ali and his brother Manuar Ali, and Panchu Ali,
‘manager for the absentee landlord Manuar Munsi. In addition there
was the bagdi leader Manik Dhara, who initially supported the Ali
borthers and later Ohabsaheb, but effectively built his own support
base.
The young group engaged in a series of unprecedented activities
and initiatives (which are presented in detail in Chapter Four, where
I investigate the sources of inspiration). ‘The young group domi­
nated the various new institutions and positions that emerged in

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Udaynala as they had in Gopinathpur during this period.*These

included the school board, the cooperative society and the village
Panchayat. The group also collaborated on a number of initiatives,
such as the foundation of a village development society, a library,
and evening classes for illiterates. It was not a smooth or automatic
cooperation. The appointment of members o f the school board was
hotly contested, resulting in the call for outside intervention (which
eventually was not heeded). The two main factions at the time, headed
by Ohabsaheb and Kajisaheb respectively, finally agreed to accom­
modate one another, which resulted in a bloated school board
comprising practically everybody o f im portance in the village.
T hen followed a period of greater cooperation. In 1963 they all
agreed that Ohabsaheb should become member of the Congress in
order to obtain support for the village school from the Congress-
inclined administration. This unusual and calculating step was taken
after long discussions but finally with the support o f everyone in the
group.
Again, the following year, they fell apart. Ohabsaheb with his
increasingly broad contacts in ruling circles secured the support of
two people that he probably hoped would be largely ineffectual
puppets in his hands, namely Manik Dhara, the bagdi money lender,
and Manuar Ali, the sekh money lender and unpopular landlord.
These three were considered more Congress-minded than the rest.
Under the prevailing perception of the Panchayats as an extension of
the Congress, this formation was initially not opposed by anyone.
However, for some reason, Kajisaheb and Najir Hak decided to put
together a rival list for the election, one that also included Fajlul
Hosen and Selimmaster— core members o f ‘the young group. This
rival list won overwhelmingly, to their own surprise, causing deep
splits in the village. Ohabsahebs group refused to accept the re­
sult, and after heated, even furious discussion over the following
days, it was decided to adjust the election result so as to accom­
modate the losers. Ohabsaheb and Kajisaheb became members o f
the Anchal Panchayat, while the other members of ‘the young
group, as well as M anik Dhara and Manuar Ali, became mem­
bers of the Gram Panchayat. The election was ‘fixed’ so that all
would win.

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T he following years saw a continuation of the same pattern, with

instances of cooperation and mutual support, intertwined with ugly
incidents of confrontation. The most crucial time was the United
Front period. (1967-71) Initially the group as a whole, including the
leftists such as Kajisaheb and Najir Hak, were reluctant and hesitant
to heed the various ‘calls for mobilization and for land occupation.
Later on, when they finally did engage in land occupation, it was
again as a group, a group that included Ohabsaheb (although not
Manik Dhara or Manuar Ali). Only days after the fall o f the second
UF Government, in 1970, the group occupied the land o f Manuar
Munsi, their fellow villager and absentee landlord. W ith Kajisaheb
and others in Calcutta to demonstrate against the dismissal o f the
UF Government, Ohabsaheb, who was member o f the Congress, led
a delegation out into the field to occupy Manuar Munsi s lands, where
he raised the red flag.
H itu protested, and a little later made use of the state-supported
anti-communist reaction that was to come in 1971. A police party
was sent to the village to ensure that Hitu could harvest his lands.
Kajisaheb and Najir Hak fled, the two schoolteachers lay low, and
Ohabsaheb switched sides and emerged as a supporter of and sup­
ported by the new Congress Government. He was no close friend of
the landlord Hitu but with his Congress contacts he became the
main village leader for some years to come. The low caste and land-
poor bagdis constituted an interesting group during these events.
They had participated in the land occupations and been the force
behind the radical measures instigated by the group of young lead­
ers. But in face o f the repression they turned around to back
Ohabsaheb in his drive to reverse the land occupations and other
measures. In the years that followed, a group of bagdis could be
found outside Ohabsahebs house every day. At night they roamed
the village, shouting and drinking and in general intimidating other
villagers. They did so in collaboration with the brothers Baset and
Hitu, sons of Manuar Ali.
More of this later... For the moment this outline o f the two
villages history during the 1960s should suffice. The two stories
differ in many respects, in particular the story of Udaynala is consider­
ably more complex and confusing than that of Gopinathpur. Where

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one was a story of a solid alliance lasting for many years, the other
was one of infighting and a brittle alliance that only worked in good
weather. But both stories have at least two crucial elements in com­
mon. In spite o f the apparent calm of Gopinathpur there did exist a
number of alliances or groups (factions) beneath or in general aligned
to the dominant alliance. O n the other hand, Udaynala had the ru­
diments of a dominant alliance, although with rival leaders and never
as uncontrovcrsial as in Gopinathpur. Hence both villages did have a
high degree of rivalry among different leaders, the only difference
being the degree of cooptation.
Cooptation is taken to mean a relationship that is less secure than
an alliance, but this is only a matter of degree (particularly given that
the alliance was informal, not solemnized and only based on a m utu­
ality of interests). This explains the most striking aspect of village
politics, namely the vagaries, the fluidity, the uncertainty. The for­
tune of a village leader rarely lasted for very long, and where it did it
was due to constant vigilance and maintenance of broad alignments,
alignments that reached out to individuals and groups far beyond
those normally associated with village leadership. This leads us to the
other element that the two stories have in common: The great variation
in types of politically active individuals. Some were rich, most were
moderately well off, and some were poor. Most were of high status
(clean caste among Hindus, high status among Muslims), but not
all. Crucially, many were not active. A large number of heads of
landowning households were not active in village politics. They
wielded resources that were potentially influential but never or only
rarely employed.
W ith this picture of a profusion of would-be leaders and alliances,
o f personae from households small and medium-sized and large in
terms o f land, all interacting, often competing, o f the intriguing
openings for the seemingly non-dominant, we are led to investigate
the nature of the relationship between a village leader and the rest
of the population, that is, to review the concepts of dominant caste,
faction, and patron-client relationship. In the following section, I
will explore the ‘power’ behind the positions o f each o f the domi­
nant personalities of the 1960s. I will also investigate the depen­
dence o f village leaders on their followers, on common villagers

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and on the support they required to be what they were, namely

leaders.
Before doing so, it may be useful to think briefly about the con­
cept of power. So far I have used that term rather loosely, with the
intention only of conveying what we in normal everyday speech term
power. But the term has many applications, some quite confusing
and unyielding to any common definition.2 Besides, a differentiated
notion of power will help us come closer to understanding how vil­
lage politics works, how Udaynalas quite poor Ohabsaheb could
successfully rival Kajisaheb with his prestigious lineage and his lands,
or how the rich bamun money lender Bijay Mukherji in Gopinathpur
wielded no more ‘power than the low caste and landless Sakti Bag,
or why village leaders keep claiming ‘We were all in it together while
everybody else fixes events and periods in the past with reference to
the village leaders qua individuals.

SOURCES OF INDIVIDUAL ‘POWER’ IN VILLAGE

HISTORY

T he concept o f power is notoriously problematic.3 Sources o f

disagreement are found in disciplinary differences and in differences
over basic topics in social and political theory. Commonly the starting-
point for interpretations is found in Max Webers classic definition:
‘the chance of a man or of a number of men to realise their own will
in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are
participating in the action (quoted in Philip 1985: 637). David
Beetham uses a slightly different wording, understanding power as
agents’ ‘ability to produce the intended effects upon the world around
them, to realise their purposes within it’ (Beetham 1991: 43). This is
a vaguer definition, which allows for the silencing effect, that is, the
possibility that the less empowered choose not to voice or even consider
what would be their own preferred option because they know they
will be overruled.4
This ‘one-dimensional liberal’ model is problematic because it is
based on observable conflict, where one actor ‘wins’ over another in a
situation of conflict and where both parties have aired their interests.
The ‘two-dimensional reformist’ includes hidden conflicts but this is

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scarcely better for our purposes since neither definition is clearly useful
in dealing with bargaining processes, where there is a question o f
interaction rather than command and obedience (Lukes 1981 [1974]).
This would be the case of most politics, ranging from village politics to
international affairs.5Moreover neither model indicates what gives rise
to power, only that it exists and may be in the possession of some but
not others. As such the models are not useful in analysis of particu­
lar situations, for instance the situation of the servant’s clever manipu­
lation of a dumb master. To differentiate between different types of
power is quite crucial to social situations because it concerns what is
legitimate and what is not. Power is not like money; it does smell.
Some types of power are acceptable, others not, and some lie in a
borderland in-between: e.g. wealth, status, knowledge, charisma, force,
manipulation, conviction, persuasion, influence, threats, offers, even
strategic positioning in decision procedures’ and o f course authority,-
of which again there are different forms.6
One main reason for the many definitions of power and the problems
in agreeing to what it is, is precisely that power is so many things,
has so many facets and so many sources. W hat we end up with is
quite an inventory list, one that is confusing and suggestive at the
same time. It is confusing for obvious reasons; it becomes a list of
terms that one only with strain can define and separate rigorously.7 It
is not always clear what it is that makes one person adapt his actions
to the perceived wishes of another— expressed or not. Besides,
motives are not clearly distinguishable, even by the actors involved,
in muddled situations with many actors, interests, and conflicting
norms. However, precisely in the problems involved in defining the
concept lies the solution to our understanding (if not to any defini­
tion). The list of the many potential sources of power and/or authority
derives ultimately from the many different applications of the term
power in everyday usage, the many different reasons for why some­
one is understood to behave in a particular way in a relationship
with someone else. It suggests that many ‘things’ move us, that many
different types of capacities may be possessed and may have an impact
on social surroundings.
To make it clearer how this applies to village politics I will inves­
tigate the various sources of power’ held by the individual village

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leaders and by other important personae, faction leaders. I will take

as my starting point the three most common criteria used to explain
village dominance: Landownership, monopoly on external political
contacts, and a relatively high ritual status. I will then proceed to
investigate alternative sources o f ‘power’, that is, sources for mainte­
nance of village prominence. W hat is important here is to look closer
at the nature of the relationship between village leaders and their
followers as opposed to the relationship between landowners and their
labourers.
The two village histories give the following listing o f the main
divisions and main leaders in Udaynala.

T able 3 .1 . Main village political configurations, Udaynala

Primary village leaders Period of leadership

Jiku Chaudhuri vs. Wasel Ali most of the 1950s

Hanu Chaudhuri vs. Manuar Ali late 1950s
Ohabsaheb vs. Kajisaheb early 1960s to 1971
Ohabsaheb unrivalled 1971-1975

T able 3.2. M ain village political configurations, G opinathpur

Primary village leaders Period of leadership

Ranjan Mandal unrivalled 1953-54 to 1957-58

Bhaskar Mandal unrivalled 1957-58-early 1970s
Bhaskar Mandal vs. Anadi Sen early 1970s to 1977

In addition to these main leaders there were a wide number of

minor but allied leaders and minor but unaligned leaders. Most paras
featured their own group, some of the larger paras two or even three
groups. Most jatis were divided into several groups although the very
smaller ones, such as the muchis in both villages, normally appeared
as only one group.
A range of individuals were active in the village affairs of Udaynala.
They regularly attended the many meetings called, gained positions
in the increasing number of formal institutions, or were in other

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ways influential in determining the course o f village politics. They

are listed in table 3.3, together with information on jati, landowner-
ship, and the activities they were involved in. Under ‘Other* I have
listed some other distinguishing features. The land figures refer to
land held by families, some of whom were large and joint, others
small. The table thus does not give an accurate indication of wealth
per member of family, but an indication o f land controlled by each
head of family. A similar list of leaders in Gopinathpur and based on
oral information appears in Table 3.5.
Both Kajisaheb and Hanu Chaudhuri headed old ‘prestigious
(baniadi) families with large lands, lands they were losing rather than
gaining. Kajisaheb had been involved with the communists since the
late 1950s, while Hanu Chaudhuri sought to maintain the position
of an old-style village leader but never managed to fill the footsteps
of his more illustrious father Jiku Chaudhuri. The family’s historical
bagdi support was eventually lost to Kajisaheb and Ohabsaheb.
Manuar Ali was more of an ‘upstart’ who had gained land through
extensive money lending and hard work. Bhola Sarkar had inherited
land and maintained it well; he was also deeply engaged in money
lending. His position was based on his influence among the caste
Hindus. Fajlul Hosen headed a poor but prestigious family, and he
and a few others— Najir Hak, Selimmaster, Kajisaheb and H anu
Chaudhuri— were among the few educated in the village (i.e. with
6-8 years of schooling). Najir Hak, Selimmaster, and Ohabsaheb all
belonged to the dominant sekh jati but headed non-prestigious families.
Ohabsaheb originally held only 16 bighas, but became a prominent
village leader in the 1960s through incessant activity and broad
• alliances in the village. He represented the Congress in the village,
but this gave him little extra clout during the 1960s.
Table 3.3 shows that the sekh community was more prominent in
village affairs than other jatis. They were in general wealthier than
the other communities. Table 3.4 shows a larger percentage of sekhs
in the 10-19 bighas and the 20+ bighas groups than o f the other
jatis combined. However, whereas two non-sekh heads o f family were
actively engaged, many well-off sekh heads o f family were not active
in village affairs. There were ten sekh households holding 20 or more
bighas of land that did not have a member active in village affairs,

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T able 3.3. Details of main village leaders, Udaynala, early 1960s

Head of family Land Jati Activities* Other

(bighas)

Kajisaheb 65 Sekh ASCD Prestigious family; communist

Hanu Chaudhuri ** 60 Sekh PSCD Prestigious family; bagdi
support
Manuar Ali** 40 Sekh PS C Money-lender
Bhola Sarkar 30 Kayastha PC Money-lender
Najir Hak 25 Sekh PSCD Communist
Selimmaster** 16 Sekh SC D Educated
Ohabsaheb 14 Sekh AS C Congress contacts
Manik Dhara** 12 Bagdi PS c Money-lender
Fajlul Hosen 8 Sekh SD Educated; prestigious family
* ‘Activities’ refers to involvement in one of the following at one point or another
during the early 1960s: member of the 1964 Gram Panchayat (P) or Anchal Panchayat
(A); member of the village school board (S) or the village cooperative society board
(C); founding member of the Udaynala Village Development Society (D).
••Joint family
Sourer. field>data.

T able3.4. Households by class of landownership, sekh vs other jatis,

Udaynala 1957

Land held Sekh____ Others

(in bigha) (N) (%) (N) (%)

0-4.9 12 16.2 50 54.9

5-9.9 26 35.1 12 13.2
10-19.9 19 25.7 19 20.9
20+ 17 23.0 10 11.0
Total 74 100.0 91 100.0
Sourer, see table 3.3
and 8 non-active non-sekh households in that ownership class. O f
the two non-sekhs who were active, Bhola Sarkar and Manik Dhara,
only the first belonged to the village elite in terms o f landownership.
But in spite of not belonging to the dominant caste, both played
im portant roles in village affairs, were elected to positions, and
received repeated mention in Selimmaster s diaries for their initiatives
and activities.9

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Table 3.5 comprises all prominent villagers in Gopinathpur from

1957 to about 1965. They include those who initiated die 1957
establishment of the village school, the 1963 re-launch o f the coop­
erative society, baroari committee chairmen, and members o f the
1964 Gram or Anchal Panchayats. The clean and upper castes domi­
nate the list. Paritas Sen was a well-off landowner who for many
years had been an absentee landlord while practising law in Burdwan
Town. M ohan Sarkar was also well off, moderately involved in
village affairs but never one who carried great weight. Most prominent
of all was Bhaskar Man dal, who interestingly was not particularly
wealthy. The 32 bighas he held around 1960 were divided towards
the end of the 1960s when his younger brother established a separate
household. The next, very interesting person on the list was a cultur­
ally reforming bagdi whose family had gained land through hard
work, a moderate life-style, and moderate money lending. Gobardhan
himself was a local teacher of the reformist Satsangha to which Anadi

T able 3.5. Details of main village leaders, Gopinathpur early 1960s

Head of Land Jati Activity* Other

family (bighas)

Paritas Sen 47 Kayasth a CP Ex-lawyer

Mohan Sarkar 32 Aguri CB
Bhaskar Mandal** 32 Aguri S C B A Alliance, large old family
Gobardhan Malik*1* 27 Bagdi CP ‘Sanskritised’, religious leader,
alliance
Bijay Mukherji 22 Bamun P Money-lender; village priest
Dasarathi Porel** 20 Bagdi S Educated; service
Ranjan Mandal 17 Aguri B Large and old family
Santi Jos 16 Aguri B Devout
Anadi Sen 5 Kayastha A Political contacts
Sakti Bag 2 Bagdi SCP Alliance
Baul Dhaure 2 Bagdi s

* ‘Activity’ refers to involvement in one of the following: the 1957 establishment of

the school (S); the 1963 relaunch or position on the board of the cooperative
society (C); chairman of the baroari (public) committee between 1957-1965 (B);
selected to the 1964 Gram Panchayat (P) or Anchal Panchayat (A).
••Joint family
Sourer, field-data

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Sen also belonged. Gobardhan and Sakti Bag were the two major
bagdi leaders of the village, each with his own groups o f followers.
Bijay Mukherji was once a poor village priest who amassed land
through unscrupulous money lending (he took land as security). He
seems to have been particularly unpopular, but demanded and ob­
tained influence through the large number of people indebted to
him. Dasarathi Porel lived only for a short while in the village: he
was the most educated of the village bagdis and was once a school
teacher (in Bihar). Ranjan Mandal and Santi Jos were both relatively
poor owner-cultivators of the dominant caste, both moderately in­
volved in village affairs. Ranjan had a larger role cut out for himself
but was forced out by his cousin Bhaskar. Lasdy, there is the bagdi
Baul Dhaurc, who was involved only in the establishing o f the vil­
lage school— although towards the late 1960s he was the first CPM
supporter in the village.
Again, from table 3.6 it appears that several of the large landowning
heads o f family in Gopinathpur were not engaged in village affairs. O f
the twelve owners of 20 bighas or more, only six were actively involved
in village affairs. The wealthiest landowner, Jagatnath o f the napit jati,
an energetic and hard-working head of a huge family (his brother died
early but left five sons, Jagatnath himself had six sons), engaged him­
self in various committees such as the baroari a decade or so later but
was generally uninvolved. O f the rest, only one (Ram Mandal, aguri)
ever became involved.

T able 3.6. Households (in numbers) by class of landownership, all

jatis, Gopinathpur, ca I960

Land held Bamun Kayastha Aguri Napit Bagdi Dule Muchi

(bigha)

0-4 3 3 1 7 5 4
5-9 — — 1 2 4 — —

10-19 — 5 4 1 — —

20+ 1 1 8 1 1 — —

Total 4 9 14 3 15 5 4

Sourer, field-data

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Let me conclude this section with a few observations: First, rural

West Bengal, including Udaynala and Gopinathpur, was an area
characterized by stark economic, ritual, and political inequalities.
Members of the higher castes tended to have more land and more
political clout. Those rankings coincided broadly. Despite this village
leadership, which is an individually attained position, did not follow
automatically from the most favourable com bination o f ritual,
economic, and political factors. Occasionally but significantly
village leaders were not from among the village economic elite. Some,
such as Sakti Bag, were influential in spite o f being both low caste
and almost landless. Even if we were to ignore such special cases, we
still find that influential leaders such as Ohabsaheb and Anadi Sen,
although of the right jati(s), were outsiders in terms o f landholding.
Some leaders gained land while holding positions o f prominence,
such as Ohabsaheb who did increase his holdings, although never
reaching the size-class of certain other families. Moreover a few indi­
vidual leaders were consistendy poor, such as Anadi who never had
more than five bighas to his family’s name. T hey were both
supported by the Congress and the police during the years of repression
of CPM activists after 1971, but had been crucially influential long
before that. For instance both became Anchal Panchayat members in
1964.
One needs to look for other qualities instead. Second, it is often
ignored that personally held sources of powers’ (in particular, land)
were of limited importance to the individual village leader. Hence
also the number of dependants he controlled was also limited. More
to the point, he would normally find a large number of people equally
wealthy or wealthier. These were his cousins’ in both the literate
sense and in the sense of being of the same ritual and social status.
As such they were potential rivals, eligible for the same positions
of prominence. The group of people controlling land in the top class
would be limited, but other structural categories, for instance ritual
status, embraced often a very large group of peers. To recapitulate,
relatively well-off owner-cultivators (owners of 20 bighas or more)
formed respectively 16 percent of the population of Udaynala and 22
percent in Gopinathpur in I960. As for the 'dominant caste(s)’, the
sekhs of Udaynala constituted 44 percent of the total population,

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and the aguris, kayasthas and bamuns together formed one half of
Gopinathpur’s population. The ‘dominant caste’ may have been domi­
nant, but the individual village leader was but one individual in a
large pool of people who were not his subordinates. Instead they
were his peers with a status and possibly also ‘powers’ that matched
his. Many were also his rivals for the position o f village leader.
Third, it should also be noted (I will elaborate on this at a later
point) that a fiction was not a clear-cut or permanent entity. To give
but a small example, Fajlul Hosen of the middle-para in Udaynala
had for the most pan a hard time keeping his group together. As a
poor man he had few economic dependants and his group consisted
mainly of kin and neighbours, the neighbours being mainly o f his
own status. He also had a serious ‘character flaw’, involving the young
girls attending his classes. Although he was the seniormost in the
para, people found it increasingly difficult to associate with him. In
some instances most would support him, but in other instances many
would not, preferring instead to proceed individually, or to seek support
from more powerful fiction leaders.
From this follows that, fourth, the terms ‘fiction leader’ and ‘vil­
lage leader’ should be properly understood as the informal, vague
leadership they refer to. Among those who took an active interest in
village affairs, some were more prominent than others. There is no
way of making firm distinctions between para or jati leader and the
all-village leaders. Some kept their activities limited to para or jati
while others expanded their time and efforts (and ambitions) to in­
clude the entire village, though all-village leaders— baring a few
exceptions— also often enjoyed a core of support in their own more
limited group. Others were less committed and appeared only now
and then for meetings or village ‘courts’ {bichar). From this group,
again, some individuals could become prominent, with maturity,
interest, or opportunity.

MONEY LENDERS AS POLITICAL LEADERS?

We shall now proceed towards alternative ways of understanding the

bonds of political leaders and common villagers. By way o f introducing
the topic I will investigate the political importance of money lending.

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A number of individuals listed above were moneylenders, an activity

from which they gained land and/or political influence. Money
lending appears in some literature as the most blatant way in which
village landlords exploited their economic clout to become political
leaders. However, money lending is itself so peculiar that it does
reveal quite a lot about the normative environm ent in which
relationships between high and low were formed and worked out.
Although money lending or any other form o f economic clout was
occasionally used to create political bonds, money lending in itself
was regarded so negatively by most of the rural population that as a
means of assembling political support it was very limited and possibly
detrimental to political ambitions. The reason for this was that money
lending violated the very trust and apparent mutuality upon which
political relationships were built.
It was not landlords in the sense of owners o f massive lands, but
mosdy substantial owner-cultivators who functioned as moneylend­
ers. In Udaynala it was Raju Munsi, Mohammed Hak, Wasel, Manuar
Ali, Baulchacha, and others. All of them started off relatively poor or
only moderately well-off, only to work their way up through money
lending. One remarkable but not entirely unusual case was Manik
Dhara, who worked his way up from near-landlessness to rich peas­
ant status through money lending. In Udaynala there was also Panchu
Ali, the manager of the absentee landlord Manuar Munsi, who func­
tioned as a moneylender. But this he did with his own means, not
that of Manuar Munsi. And he never became rich.
In Gopinathpur, money lending was common practice. A large
number of landowners engaged in some form o f money or grain
lending. Both otherwise devout individuals such as Paritas Sen and
Gobardhan Malik, and more prosaic people could be found engag­
ing in money lending. However, only one person in the village, Bijay
Mukherji, made money lending a major source o f income. Most
other landowners, village leaders or not, extended credit or advances
for one of two reasons: the most common was advances in order to
secure labour, in particular what was known as bandha lok (‘bonded
people*)— labourers thus contracted for the peak season. These ad­
vances were not expected to be repaid, at least not in full. In addition
to the advances, ‘bonded people’ were paid at the current rate for

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their work. Another reason for lending money was pity, but at an
interest. People in less favourable circumstances would very often
approach individuals or families with a certain surplus for credit. If
they agreed, which was not too often, credit could be advanced at the
going rate. In cases of emergency such as illness (which often caused
major expenses that did not promise to translate into ready labotrr
input for the creditor) landowners were generally not willing to assist
(would-be) dependants. The alternative in such cases was to turn tp
the major moneylenders— Bijay Mukherji, Manik Dhara, and other
more professional lenders— who demanded land as sq^urity. The
common rate of interest was 3 percent per month. If not repaid within
three years, principal plus interest, the land deposited as security was
lost.
A strangely limited number o f people made money lending a chief
source o f income, in spite o f the good profit to be reaped from it.
When profits on such a large scale could be reaped, why did not
more people engage in this line of business? Most families engaged
in ‘money lending’ Only to a very limited degree, or at a very mar­
ginal profit (when advanced to ‘bonded people’). The reason seems
to have been that land-owning farmers wanted labourers not only tp
work but also to work as hard as possible. Few things are as im por­
tant as securing the harvest for a family living off the land they
cultivate themselves. For this they need reliable people* and they
need them when evetybody else needs them. They need people who
do not steal, who turn up in the morning, who work hard, and who
know the job and do it well There is an interesting social mecha­
nism in this, whereby the most unpopular landowner tends to get
d ie least interested or hard-working labourer. Conversely, landowners
could not afford to make themselves unpopular through money lending
lest they forfeit willing peak season labour. They needed the social
acceptance that translates into labour input. Money lending was
heavily stigmatized, an activity respectable people would not get
involved in, at least partly because it was detrimental to the all-
im portant cultivation process. >:
It would be interesting at this point to have an excursion into
landowner-labourer relations in general. This partly to contrast it with
money lending, but mainly to investigate the other strand o f the

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argument about political patron-client relationships being based in

economic relationships, namely that most dependants were labourers
and the patrons were village landowners. I will argue that this was
only partly the case. Most o f the time, most landless or land-poor
men in these villages would work as day-labourers (majur) for daily
wages (majuri). O ther types of arrangements, however, were known
and fairly common, but did not encompass a majority o f the landless
population at any one time. All larger landowning households em­
ployed one or several landless individuals as kirsen (or kisan)— on
yearlong contracts. A kirsen was an all-purpose labourer expected to
work for the employer from dawn to dusk and sometimes into late
night if required, with only an hour or so o f rest at midday. Another
form o f attached labour was the mas-maine who was hired for one
month at a time. The kirsen was paid in paddy, cash, and cloth. The
pay was less than daily wages, but all-year employment was secured.10
Among women, only saotals were regularly employed in the fields.
Out-working women of other poor jatis were most often domestic
servants (or they worked in their own fields). O f these there were two
kinds: the very few long-term domestic servants (even 40 years ago
possibly no more than six or seven in Udaynala and even less in
Gopinathpur), and the many who could be hired for special occasions.
The former were poorly paid, with meals only and some cloth and paddy
once a year or on special occasions. The latter were rewarded relatively
generously. The appropriate code of conduct for festive occasions such as
weddings demanded generous feeding, gifting of cloth, and some cash.
Some individual kirsens were employed in one household for years in
a row, some for 15-20 years. They, were however, exceptional cases, and
most were rarely employed for more than one year, at the most two or
three. For kirsens, assistance was occasionally extended in case of illness
or mishap. In most cases, however, the labourer was left to himself
although such behaviour reflected badly on the employer. ‘Bonded people
were mainly employed one season at a time. The same landowner employed
a few several yean in a row, but that was also rather exceptional.
The absence of multiple long-term relationships was particularly
evident in the case of sharecropping. Absentee landlords such as
G opinathpurs Banerjee family, Udaynalas Manuar Munsi, or the
Dawn family who owned land in both villages, had almost all their

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land sharecroppcd on a long-term basis. In the 1950s and 1960s (if

not before), the sharecroppers of these lands were mainly substantial
landowners in their own right, particularly Baulchacha and the Dhaure
family (sharecropping 55 and 40 bighas respectively). The absentee
owners of huge lands preferred long-term leasing out o f land in large
chunks instead of dealing with a large number o f sharecroppers—
which could be time-consuming, tying the otherwise absentee land­
lord to drawn-out struggles in the village.
Intra-village sharecropping, on the other hand, consisted mainly
o f short-term arrangements for small plots of land rarely exceeding a
few bighas. In general, sharecropping was not deemed profitable and
was often undertaken reluctantly. Today, the land-poor complain how
harsh such contracts were, whereas landowners relate how difficult it
was to find willing and reliable sharecroppers. The sharecroppers
scope for cheating seems to have been more prominent than the
landowner’s scope for demanding excessive deductions, particularly
when the sharecropped land was far from the owner’s main lands—
the kind of land most likely to be leased out and a very common
phenomenon. The sharing was commonly 50:50 and the sharecrop­
per normally put in all expenses. Sharecropping arrangements for
small plots of land rarely went beyond a few years and were under­
taken only when there was labour shortage in the owner’s family or
until the land could be sold or swapped with another plot.

INTERESTED PATRON-CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

It seems that patron-client relationships of the archetypal kind—

multiple bonds— were most pronounced in the case o f major village
leaders. Jiku Chaudhuri for instance maintained close and multiple
relationships with the bagdis of Udaynala. They were settled on land
owned by his family, and Jiku Chaudhuri used the bagdis to guard
and protect the family’s position and his own prestige in the village.
The bagdis were in his dal and his dal only. They were his lathials
(‘fighters’) who intimidated insubordinate ‘subjects’ or opponents.
The extent of credit relations between the Chaudhuris and the bagdis
is difficult to ascertain, but the story of rivalry over bagdi support
will give us some indication as to the nature o f the relationship.

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Jiku Chaudhuri was at some point the main village leader of

Udaynala. He was a large landowner, descendant o f zamindars, and
held an inherited position in the Burdwan court. He was a man of
aristocratic pretensions, of a cultivated lifestyle, and an ardent protector
of his own position. In general the Chaudhuris enjoyed the bagdis*
lathial support, at least in part because the bagdis were setded on
land belonging to the Chaudhuri family. Jiku Chaudhuris promi­
nence in the village, however, was challenged in the late 1950s. In
the para next to his house lived the two Ali brothers, Wasel, the
eldest, and Manuar, the younger. The Ali brothers had for some years
assembled quite considerable amounts o f land through extensive
money lending, particularly among the fairly numerous namasudra
community of the village but also among the sekhs. Owning per­
haps as much as 60 bighas at the time as well as having much money
in circulation, they launched a bid for political prominences. The
main thing to be conquered was the bagdis* support— a sine qua
non of village leadership.
In the mid 1950s, the Ali brothers extended inexpensive loans to
the bagdis, which often were not repaid, and donated more than
usual towards bagdi festivals. They also secured employment for bagdis
who were not employed by Jiku Chaudhuri or any o f his supporters.
Jiku Chaudhuri had to respond in order to retain the bagdis* sup­
port, and extended more loans, donations, and employment than
before, and more than the Ali brothers. He also gave away much of
the homestead land on which the bagdis lived. Jiku Chaudhuri was
a lavish man in other ways too, spending a lot on other festivals and
extending patronage and largesse to both bagdis and other groups.
After a few years o f intensive competition Jiku Chaudhuri in the end
managed to retain the bagdis* support and the Ali brothers gave up.
They retained the namasudra support and some from among their
own sekh community, and the younger Ali, Manuar, was to enjoy
importance in the village for many years to come. But Jiku Chaudhuri,
won and retained the babdis’ support but in the process he lost con­
siderable amounts of land— over the years as head o f the household
he reduced the family’s lands by almost half, from some 120-130
bighas to around 75 bighas. After the expenses o f marrying off two
sisters and on education, Jiku Chaudhuri’s three sons were left with

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only 60 bighas to share in the early 1960s. Hanu Chaudhuri was

Jiku Chaudhuri s second son and the one with political ambitions.
But he had none of his father’s political faculties and as the family’s
wealth and influence waned, bagdi support went to Ohabsaheb and
‘the young group*.
In addition to the credit advances that they could default on,
bagdis in the Chaudhuri group secured employment more easily
than non-aligned labourers. It is crucial to note that Jiku Chaudhuri
himself was not in a position to employ them all, but his supporters
among the landholding group, in order to assist Jiku Chaudhuri
an d ensure this pow erful m an’s patronage, em ployed ‘Jiku
Chaudhuri’s bagdis’. Hence Jiku Chaudhuri’s patronage o f the bagdis
depended both on his own economic assets and on those o f his landown­
ing supporters.
Another relationship of a similar kind was the one Bhaskar Mandal
maintained with Gobardhan and Sakti, or what Ohabsaheb came to
maintain with the Udaynala bagdis or Kajisaheb maintained with
the village saotals. In Jiku Chaudhuri’s case, the credit was often not
expected to be repaid; it was not a financial investment but a sym­
bolic one. It secured his debtors’ continued support. These were the
very opposite of the cases of Bijay Mukherji and Manik Dhara, who
extended their lands through money lending only.
Neither Bhaskar Mandal nor Ohabsaheb were substantial land-
owners in their own right. Their positions rested on several and dif­
ferent types of supporters: both land-poor and landowners. The land-
poor often worked for landholders who were not their main patrons.
They could expect the main patron to assist them in finding employ­
ment or credit, or other forms of patronage elsewhere, even when it
was beyond his private means or immediate interests. (It may need
mention that not all poor were as favourably placed in such a system
as the bagdis. However, some of them had other means at their dis­
posal, other bases from which to demand patronage. More of this in
Chapter Five.)
Credit and employment together with favourable arbitration and
support were basic elements in these relationships. But they were
also relationships of wider implications— of mutual support between
village leaders and groups of supporters. Credit tied the debtor to the

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creditor, which was the main motivation for people such as Jiku
Chaudhuri. W hen repaid, it ended the relationship; it only augmented
the cred ito rs m aterial assets, w hich for people w ith political
am bitions was not a major consideration. In short, the relation­
ship between village leaders and crucial groups of supporters (lathials)
was not built on economic dependency alone but on broader
relationships where credit was one element.
To sum up, the many village leaders of the early 1960s had a fairly
wide range of different ‘powers’ behind them, ranging from debtors
and employees to prestige and alliances with other influential. Few,
if any, of the prominent village leaders had enough private sources of
‘power to out-do rivals, or at least a combination o f them. Money
lending was a potential source of income but at the same time a
major political liability. The morally dubious quality of money lend­
ing and its potentially detrimental effect on cultivation processes made
such a path to wealth of little use to individuals who harboured am­
bitions of becoming all-village leaders. They depended much more
on multiple bonds and extensive patronage.
A final point is that by themselves even the main village leaders
encountered here would not have been able to extend patronage to
the required supporters. As main leaders they relied on the resources
o f allied m inor leaders. T he main village leaders, then, do not
appear as towering figures dominating the landscape around them,
but as hubs in a wheel o f relationships involving both land-poor
and landowners, ‘dependants’ and ‘allies’, relying on the resources
of others, dependent on keeping all satisfied according to importance
and status.
W hat has been lurking behind the scene in this section without
being properly addressed is the growth o f formal institutional bodies
and organized politics during the 1960s, and their impact on legiti­
macy and clout o f individual village leaders. Several village leaders
brought party politics to their villages, and then there were the govern­
mental bodies in which a number of villagers gained seats. However, it
can safely be assumed that these bodies were not o f crucial impor­
tance during the 1960s for the individual clout o f individual leaders
since almost all o f them became part of the representative bodies and
party loyalties were in most cases quite fickle. Although the symbolic

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effect should not be underrated, I will still leave that for the next
chapter.

‘P O W E R —AS IN ‘INFLUENCE’?

We have in the course of this chapter made two main observations

about village leaders in the 1960s. First there was a rather large number
of individuals engaged in village affairs, aligned to or rivalling the
main leader (or leaders). Second, the main man or men appeared as
hubs in a wheel where the spokes were all of different types. These
alliance-spokes could be w ith groups of dependants— low-caste
labourers who also functioned as fighters—or with families o f well-
off cultivators who did not have political ambitions themselves for
the time being. The glue that held the spokes to the hub— to continue
with the wheel analogy—was of different kinds too. To garner the
support of more or less equal landholders, a leader would require a
special prestige, but more often personal qualities, and terms such as
charisma, intelligence, personality come to mind. It is noteworthy
that the many different sorts o f ‘power could be ‘matched’ in several
ways. Where one individual enjoyed ‘power’ derived from superior
knowledge, others might have enjoyed other bases for ‘power’, for
instance with a large number o f dependent labourers.
T he various bases o f ‘power’ have unclear relations to one
another. At times they overlapped, reinforcing one another, at other
times they pointed in opposite directions. This situation is quite similar
to what Marvin Davis encountered further south in West Bengal.
His study concerned rank and rivalry, and focused on how people
could become near-equals in a society thoroughly concerned with
rank and status (Davis 1983, particularly Ch. 3). They were con­
cerned with rank, he says, but the criteria for the actual ranking were
not always clearly defined, and often overlapped. His findings
include both a set of structural criteria for the ranking o f groups,
including ritual status and life-stage, and a set for the ranking of
individuals, which includes power, knowledge, wealth, and respect
or honour (Davis 1983: 99, cf. Inden and Nicholas 1977: 26). Each
of these, in the villagers’ perception, represents separate hierarchical
rankings. But in the case of individuals, who had values on each of

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the rankings, one ranking could invalidate another. One example in

Daviss study is of a clean caste Hindu who was lazy and untrustworthy.
Compared to another individual, of low ritual rank but hardworking
and reliable, the first ranked lower in general esteem. According to
Davis, it was the profound preoccupation with hierarchy but uncer­
tainty on how to rank individuals that eventually set off rivalry. It is
when these different criteria, without relative ranking, were at work
at the same time that controversies over rank arose.
Rather than confusion we should see fluid and circumstantial evalu­
ation of individuals and situations. Power is a social construction,
and its use is socially evaluated (albeit by people acting under certain
and often severe constraints). Influence in village affairs is not
* constructed by enforcing power’ alone, as in land holding, or by
authority’ alone, as in legitimacy, but by a mixture o f different
elements simultaneously. The individual’s position, at any point o f
time, is formed by a combination of elements that have different
sources, their use subject to different constraints, and evaluated
differently.
Asked about what it took to be a village leader, villagers o f Udaynala
and Gopinathpur gave a set of criteria quite close to the one forwarded
by Davis (and Inden and Nicholas): ‘Power’ or influence ( khamata),
wealth (dhan) or land, (caste) status (unchu ja ti ) and prestige (ijjat or
samman), ‘considerateness’ (.sarad), and intelligence or cleverness
(ibtuUhi). These criteria apply only after an initial restriction: Leaders
were males and adults, preferably head of their own families (although
some might still have a ‘retired’ father alive). The criteria should be
read as scales, from less to more. The beauty o f this set o f criteria li s
in its inclusion o f ‘knowledge’ and ‘prestige’, which must be regarded
as creating ‘authority’ pertaining mainly to individuals, together with
elements that create more directly coercive capacity, such as land and
wealth, as well as other structural criteria such as jati.
This leads us to an important point. By grouping these elements
together, it is recognized that people may behave as ‘supporters’,
‘followers’ or willing ‘clients’ for a variety o f reasons. They may be
compulsory clients (debtors, labourers), or loyal supporters in an­
ticipation of future patronage, or they may be followers for more
voluntary reasons, attracted by ideas and values, the ‘justice o f it all’,

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the morally superior qualities of the leader or of the ideals and practices
that he represents.
T he common denominator for these kinds o f ‘power is that they
mobilize people one way or the other. ‘Power is the capacity to
mobilize people. I shall use the Bengali term khamata to denote this
capacity.11Although it is a separate criterion in the list above, khamata
is a very loose term that only awkwardly translates as ‘power or ‘influ­
ence’. It constitutes a residual category for what cannot easily be
quantified or defined. Khamata denotes above all the capacity an
individual has to mobilize others, into action or non-action, a capacity
for ‘getting things done’ or making others agree, inspiring confidence,
arousing interest or enthusiasm, or ‘forcing’ people. Leaving aside
the issue of non-action, we can see that ‘powerful’ village leaders are
those who succeed in securing the consent and cooperation, for what­
ever reason, of a number of co-villagers. Some o f these co-villagers
will be poor and have little choice. However, they represent some­
thing, their support is sought after, as fighters or labourers or as an
implicit support base that is interesting because everybody knows
about it. Some o f the co-villagers will be richer, their consent being
important because they are potential rivals and also because they
represent resources— resources that in opposition can be harmful, if
coopted, further enhance the scale o f resources over which the village
leader has influence. It is in the nature of these alliances— ‘relationships’
is a better term— that they are vulnerable to moral considerations
and to ideological changes.
Most village polities will have a number o f individuals who are
relatively indistinguishable from the main leader or from one
another in terms o f social status: same jati, same landholding group.
They are potential rivals of the leader because they have the same
initial grounds on which to claim leadership positions. In fact they
are often his cousins or at least somewhat distant relatives. They
would have to be placated, satisfied, and assured that they are still
respected. By humbly stating that ‘We were all in it together’ the
village leader reduces his own role and enhances those o f his friends
and allies. He encourages an interpretation in which others appear
more as his equals, as having collaborated on an equal footing, taken
part in the decision-making as equally important members as having

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an important role in village affairs. The aim is to make the endeav­

our appear as a collaboration between equals, as voluntary, forth­
coming without pressure and hence legitimate.
The cousins are also valuable allies, and in this respect the phrase
‘We were all in it together’ also conveys something real. The village
leader by himself does not normally have sufficient power to enforce
his will on fellow villagers. Instead, he needs to placate them. Even
lesser personalities or groups may often have to be appeased— as in
Bhaskar’s alliance with Sakd Bag and Gobardhan Malik. But the
leader must do so w ithout alienating other supporters, as when
Bhaskar included Sakti and Gobardhan in most new institutions but
not the ritually important baroari committee. O f course, this was in
the early 1960s, and things have changed considerably. In the 1990s
no one objected to a bagdi holding such positions (although there
was still much reluctance with regard to muchis).
But herein lies a crucial aspect of what leadership is about: the
ability to know what is permissible right now, and to know what is
not permissible but will still pass within the given normative con­
text. The able players in the game o f village politics had a (lair for
knowing and understanding these finer borderlines o f what was or
was not permissible, and an ability to know when they could be
broken. Pierre Bourdieu has written on ‘the art o f being in society,
which he applies to all members of a community.12 Similarly, Bailey
talks about ‘the art of using values and beliefs and their accompany­
ing institutions’ (Bailey 1988: 46). In their study o f leaders o f ritual
institutions in south India, M attison Mines and Vijayalakshmi
Gourishankar show how personal qualities o f the individual are
crucial to the construction of the ‘big-man’ and to the network o f
institutions that he builds (Mines and Gourishankar 1990). The point
is that it takes a personal ‘feel for the situation’ to build positions o f
leadership.
An appropriate term to denote this personal capability is the evocative
German word Fingerspitzengefuhl, meaning ‘fingertip-feeling’. This
denotes an intuitive understanding which may be unrelated to for­
mal or articulated knowledge. Here we should restrict ourselves to
the case of Indian (village) leaders. The term would then denote an
intuitive understanding for what is acceptable and what is not,

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and, in particular, what needs to be done next, an understanding

that the individuals in question are perhaps not able to put into
words, or define; they just ‘know1. A better term perhaps is contextual
sensitivity’ (Ramanujan 1989), which, in the case of a successful
village leader, applies to his relationship not only with important
actors or groups but with all villagers. It is a quality that not only
helps him create trust among fellow villagers but also applies to his
ability to exercise khaniata, the knowledge o f what is permissible,
how actions are interpreted against the background of commonly
held values, individual interests, concerns and desires. In this sense,
contextual sensitivity is far from manipulation, pure and simple.
O n the contrary, in order to be effective it must refer very closely to
social norms and has to be confined within the borders of the accept­
able. It has to be employed in such a way as to create confidence in
the leader.
I would argue then, that most of the power that individuals may
‘possess’ derives from positioning in a broader social context, arising
from w ithin social relationships, where norms, interpretations,
expectations, ambiguity, and social evaluation are constitutive
concepts. I think Thom as Wartenberg has a point o f great interest
here. Power, he says, is not relational, i.e. existing in a dyadic
relationship. Rather power exists only in the form o f power rela­
tionships, that is, almost as networks, as webs o f people each with
some source of influence but none with much, but who combined
(as long as they are ‘aligned’) contribute towards a formidable
social power. Power, pace Wartenberg, ‘has a primary location in
the ongoing, habitual ways in which hum an beings relate to one
another’ (Wartenberg 1990: 165). Questions o f power only arise
when the agent in question fits into a broader net o f social agents
who support him. If he breaks the dom inant code o f conduct he
stands the risk o f losing the consent o f other social agents, and
hence his power.
T he next chapter will turn to the ideological changes that took
place in rural Bengal during the 1960s. We shall deal not only with
the sources and paths of intrusion o f these new values and ideas into
village society but also with how these changes could affect the
normative basis for ‘alliances’— relationships— among villagers.

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NOTES
1An early form of local government introduced by the colonial government
and dominated as designed by local landlords. No election to these boards
was held after Independence.
2 Confusing and unyielding even where we restrict ourselves to human
relations: consider the expressions powerful personality, power dressing,
‘the power of expression, ‘the power of money’, or land, ‘the power of
conviction’, or nationalism, etc.
3 Most investigations start off with the observation like ‘Definitions of power
are legion’ or ‘“power” is one of the most disputed and contested of all
concepts in the sociological lexicon’. The first quote is from Philip 1985:633
and the second from Scott ‘General comment’ (not paginated) 1994.
4 ‘The rule of anticipated action’ is what Bachrach and Baratz 1963 call this
phenomenon. And add, in a footnote (no. 21), ‘the rule of mis-anticipated
action’.
5 Also, as Lukes argues, these definitions do not deal with the ‘power’ of
structures, political, economic or social, nor I would add, with the ‘power’
of ideologies and changing perceptions.
6 Matheson (1994: 156) lists eight different sources of legitimacy, or authority:
convention, contract, universal principles, sacredness, expertise, popular
approval, personal ties, and personal qualities.
7 Bachrach and Baratz 1963 sought to do so, and defined concepts such as
power, influence, persuasion, force and authority so that they stand out as
clearly separated. But the strain with which they defined their terms does
not stand in proportion to the usefulness of their definitions.
8 For studies of factionalism in West Bengal see Nicholas 1963 and 1965,
and Davis 1983. For a comparative study, see Cohn 1990 (‘Anthropological
notes on law and disputes in North India).
9 1 shall return to these diaries and their origin in Chapter Four.
10 Cf. Chandra 1983 on types of labour contracts in Burdwan. Davis 1983
mentions a distinction between ‘mojur* and ‘munsi’, long and short-term
labourers.
11 Ksamata— n. power, strength, might; ability, capacity; efficiency, proficiency,
dexterity, skill; influence, control. SamsadBengali-English Dictionary 1989.
Although correcdy transcribed ksamata the term is pronounced khamataya
spelling I use here.
12 O r ‘the art of necessary improvisation, that is, the ‘virtuoso’s’ juggling with
options of response, recognition, improvisation, and delay, his ‘play on all

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the resources inherent in the ambiguities and uncertainties of behaviour

and situation in order to produce the actions appropriate to each case, to do
that of which people will say “There was nothing else to be done”, and do
it the right way (Bourdieu 1977:8). Although his point was another, to free
us from 'the objectivist model of the mechanical interlocking of preregulated
actions’, Bourdieu may have overstated his case, since people do make
mistakes and not all of us are able players.

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4
Roads, Poetry and
Some Crafty Young Men

O N CO M MEN SALITY AND O TH ER CHANGES

R
itual purity, well into the post-Independence period was a crucial
consideration for all clean caste Hindu villagers. They preserved
a clear distance from the lower castes in general, and from the ritually
very polluting muchis in particular. Commensality was fairly well
restricted also among Udaynala’s well-off sekh Muslims again
particularly in connection with the muchis.1Even Muslims considered
the muchi too polluting to touch. It was common practice for
landowners (Muslim or Hindu) who wanted a majur (labourer) or
having other business with the low-castes, to stand outside the muchi
para (hamlet) and call in rather than enter that neighbourhood. It
was also common to avoid situations where one had to touch the
labourer if he was low-caste, muchis in particular. The paddy and oil
that formed part of a labourers daily wages were left on the ground
for the muchi labourer to pick up, and the daily biri and occasional
cash payments were dropped into his hands. The muchis were
considered lowly and were expected to remain so. O n two occasions,
in the early 1950s, muchis were beaten up for wearing shoes. O ne of
them was the young son o f the moderately well-off Rishikesh Das,
who owned eight bighas. The situation was only marginally better
for other low castes.
This picture changed in the 1960s and 1970s. This was a period of
altering views on the legitimacy of strict caste divisions. Previously,
low-caste labourers were served on banana leaves in the middle o f the
employers courtyard while ritually clean labourers sat on the porch

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eating from plates. For labourers employed over some time, a separate
plate could be kept under the paddy storage, but never in the kitchen
area with the other plates. The low-caste labourer would take it out
himself from under the paddy storage, hold it out for food to be dropped
onto it, and, having cleaned it himself, put it back afterwards. It was
his, and no one else touched it. ‘Untouchable* labourers were also
expected to cleanse the ground they had been sitting on with cow
dung in most clean caste households. These practices changed in the
1960s, although it was a slow change. In an interesting narrative on
the process of change that the practice of untouchability went through,
Nimai Das (muchi) remembered how, in his youth (late 1960s or
early 1970s), while working as a labourer for a ritually clean house­
hold, he would be seated on the porch with the others, though at a
distance from them, and receive food on a plate as they did. No one
demanded him to rinse the plate or cleanse the place where he had
been eating with cow dung, but he did it nonetheless since, as he said,
it was customary (ritimata). By that time these practices had been
discontinued in the case of most former ‘untouchables*.
A lthough Nimai Das even in the 1990s still felt many people*s
unexpressed abhorrence at his ‘untouchability*, sanctions against
pollution had been abandoned and caste divisions were not publicly
expressed any more. Low-caste labourers were served on plates
and seated with other labourers. If that was a problem for the
employer, then it was his problem. In some H indu households in
the 1990s, the men would clean the plates left by low-caste
labourers, not the women. But publicly expressed untouchability
had become illegitimate.
W hat made these changes possible, or even thinkable? Why would
customs that appeared ancient, from time immemorial, be aban­
doned? We shall find that the upper social strata’s willingness to
pursue such traditions and to rigorously maintain the ritual divisions,
waned substantially over the post-Independence decades. This change
also indicates the nature and origin of the broader ideological changes
that rural West Bengal experienced. O ther changes, such as the
‘development* projects, building of schools, education o f women and
the ending of purdah (seclusion for women), point to the same origin
and the same social group— the upper social strata.

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During the first decade and a half after independence, increasing

numbers of youth from high-status middle and rich peasant families
were introduced to an ideology that had already gained or was gaining
acceptance among the urban class o f professionals and government
employees. It was the ideology of modernizing India, personified
above all by Prime Minister Nehru but more generally represented in
rural development projects, speeches, radio programmes, newspaper
articles, etc. Due to historical circumstances o f the development of
modern Bengali identity this new ideology o f progressivism was
particularly prominent in West Bengal, where it also came to contain
a strong element of radical thought and social critique. It also con­
tained strong literary elements, an association with a literary tradition
that marked the adherent as not only politically aware but also
culturally refined. I shall call ft Bengal’s modern tradition. By Inde­
pendence this ideology had become the ideology of that stratum of
society which was regarded as high-status and dominant: the bhatlralok
(‘gentlefolk’) even if not all o f them were politically radical.

T H E BHADRALOK AND HIS MAKING

The term bhadmlok is commonly used to denote a person of a certain

behaviour. The term is associated with education, so that a person who
is ‘gentle’ (or polite, bhadrd) but uneducated, will be characterized as
such (‘he is very bhadrd) but not known as a bhadralok. In general, the
term refers to a group— the gentle-folk. It is a disdnedy Bengali term
and a distinedy Bengali social group. In sociological terms, the bhadralok
are distinguished from the rest of the population by dress, mannerisms,
and language. This was perhaps more so previously than today. Broomfield
makes a veiy useful description of the turn-of-the-century bhadralok
which is still in many ways valid. ‘They were distinguished by many
aspects of their behaviour— their deportment, their speech, their dress,
their style of housing, their eating habits, their occupations, and their
associations— and quite as fundamentally by their cultural values and
their sense of social propriety’ (Broomfield 1968: 5-6).
The bhadralok represented and still represent a distinct ideology
(in the sense proposed in the Introduction).2 And it should perhaps
be thought of in terms of a set of values and an ideology and as a

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status rather than as a specific group. It was and is through educa­

tion that the bhadralok obtained his positions and was distinguished
from the general population. Education is ‘the hallmark o f bhadralok
status’— both as a defining and excluding factor. (Broomfield 1968:
8). This has made the status o f bhadralok partly open to mobility.
M ost bhadralok are aware and proud of this fact, and would consider
anyone educated as their equal, irrespective o f his caste. But as
Broomfield notes, just after the turn o f the century the bhadralok
social group consisted overwhelmingly of people o f upper caste, in
particular the Brahmin and Kayastha, with only a sprinkling o f
Muslims or individuals from other castes. This has been changing.
After Independence and certainly today the bhadralok as a group has
expanded considerably. The upper castes may still dominate numeri­
cally, but there is a large number o f Muslims and in particular people
o f clean caste status (although not of outright low ritual status). It is
im portant that entry into this social status was through education,
which opened the possibility for the newly educated sons o f rich
peasants to enter the lower echelons of the bhadralok status, as petty
or rustic bhadralok.
The bhadralok was defined by his education. His claim to fame
was as an intellectual, not as warrior, not as businessman. Because of
this and also because of the parallel development o f fiction and debate,
and of the modern Bengali language, the bhadralok’s was a very
literature-conscious culture, centring on novels, short stories, plays,
poetry, and on conducting debates through the medium o f literature.
The 'heroes’ of the bhadralok also did not comprise warrior-aristocrats
or politicians (with a few exceptions). The pantheon of heroes consists
instead of social reformers, novelists, poets, short story writers, and
philosophers. The major and archetypal heroes include such figures
as the debater, polemicist, and novelist Bankimchandra Chatterjjee
(1838-1894), religious reformer Swami Vivekananda (1863-19C/2)
and Nobel laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
The intellectual world o f the bhadralok developed under British
colonialism, in a reaction to the colonial state that was mixed, sometimes
embracing it, sometimes rejecting it, and always subject to a variety
o f influences (cf. Sarkar 1989b). A conservative strand of'sophisti­
cated and intellectualized revivalism’ exemplified in Bankimchandra’s

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writings distanced itself from Western ideas, while stronger in the

long run was a willingness to seek some accommodation to or adap­
tation of selected ideas from the West. The differences of opinion
were never ‘resolved1 but continued to influence people toward dif­
ferent strategies. From the 1930s onwards, an additional strand of
socialist and communist ideas emerged out o f the existing discourse
and social environment in Bengal.3This development was a result o f
a continuous conversation between the Bengali bhadralok and the
world around them in which many events and ideological develop­
ments played part: the disastrous Bengal Famine of 1942-1943; World
War II where an Asian power overwhelmed the British just across the
border in Burma; Gandhis obscurantism’ and his refusal to cooper­
ate with the more socialist-minded Bengali Subhas Bose; the lattcrs
anti-B ritish endeavour, the Indian N ational Army; com m unal
clashes in Bengal; nationalism and anti-imperialism throughout the
world; and admiration for the Soviet Union as both a communist
and an anti-imperialist model.
The cause for the development of middle-class radicalism in Ben­
gal lies in the history of bhadralok discourse, the sentiments and
orientations being formed in a political and cultural society in close
interaction with the surrounding world. In a way, the discourse was
no more than a local (Bengali, only in some ways Indian) variety o f
a world-wide discourse. It contained a prominent radical element
which assumed a particular momentum in Bengal, driving home the
point that being Bengali— i.e. educated, bhadralok— meant being
progressive, forward-looking, more ‘modern’ that the rest of India or
other inhabitants of Bengal. We may therefore name it the ‘modern
tradition’, with its belief in progress, development, institutions, and
equality.4Although spiced with a distinctly Bengali flavour, the ‘meat’
was a produce of several countries.
The radical strand grew in importance in Bengal particularly after
India’s Independence, and found political (albeit divided expression
in the large and increasing number of leftist and Marxist political
parties: the Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the
Socialist Unity Centre, and a range of other minor parties and splinter
parties. Marcus Franda calls them ‘The most distinctively Bengali
political parties’ (Franda 1971a: 117). In addition, there was the

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Communist Party of India (CPI), which became the main opposition

•party in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly after Independence.
T he CPI split in 1964 and the CPM was formed, gaining most of
the CPl support in the state. These leftist and radical parties were
what has been called the ‘bhadralok-parties', dominated by and rep­
resenting the bhadralok (if far from all bhadralok); they represented
Bengal’s ‘exceptionalism’, a politically radical middle class.
T he question before us is how this ideology, this culture o f the
refined and progressive-minded urban bhadralok, reached the coun­
tryside and the illiterate and backward peasants residing there. In the
following pages, I will try to answer this question by pointing out
that, firstly, there was not really one watertight compartment called
the bhadralok and another one called the peasantry. Second, after
Independence education spread substantially in India and West
Bengal. It made the upper strata of peasant society not only familiar
with the world and thought of the bhadralok but intimately so. Third,
I will seek to show the importance o f literature in this process. Lit­
erature is important for two reasons. It is very closely associated with
the defining characteristic of the bhadralok. A number of literary
works appeared that spoke directly to the educated peasants about
problems of village society and how to survive between high ideals
and grim reality.

SELIMMASTER’S N O TEBO O K AND A CRITIQUE OF

VILLAGE SOCIETY

The ideology of modernity was very forceful and was to have a

profound impact on a young man from Udaynala, a schoolteacher
to-be. While attending a teacher-training seminar during the years
1961 and 1962, Selimmaster of Udaynala was requested to write
about his village (presumably as part of the course). He produced a
small hand-written and hand-coloured notebook that expresses his
views on the good and the bad sides of Udaynala, ca. I960.5 Over
the following six years he filled in ‘major events’ at the back. This
notebook gives us a unique insight into how this young man saw his
own society after having been away to gain a bhadralok-inspired
education. As we shall shortly see, Selimmaster was not alone in being

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inspired by the same ideas, by the same modern tradition. A whole

generation of young people were enthused and bewitched by the
possibilities ahead, by the perceived tru th o f progress and
development, by a deep-felt moral obligation to reform society.
Selimmaster did not hesitate to present in his notebook what he
saw as negative aspects of village life, and there are several pages on
the ‘inconveniences (or problems, asubidhd) o f the village, more than
on the positive aspects. Negative aspects included the poor standing
of women, in particular their education, oppression o f the poor and
low-caste, and all sorts of other social, economic, and material prob­
lems. A reading of his lamentations suggests that he saw laziness and
money lending, the lack of a road, and factionalism as the main
problems of the village.
In his section on the economic situation of the village, he started
by stating that, ‘The economic situation o f the villagers is difficult’
because ‘most villagers are reluctant to work’— they were ‘lazy’. ‘They
are satisfied if they can in one way or the other fill their stomachs’.
Then he went on to lament the propensity o f loan-taking (mahajani):
‘They [the poor] have immense loans. Land and even household
sites have been mortgaged to the moneylenders’. He identified money
lenders and money lending as among the major causes o f village
misery. Over and over again he complains about another major prob­
lem: the lack of a road. From May-June till December-January cow-
carts could not reach the outside world (slighdy exaggerated). To
travel out even by foot was strenuous. There was also no proper bridge
across the canal to the north of the village, and so one would have to
take a long detour to reach the railway station. In consequence, ac­
cording to him, it was very difficult for the cultivators to sell their
paddy when they wanted (i.e. when prices were high), and hence
economic life suffered. The last major problem was daladali or ‘the
factionalist mentality’. Due to daladali it was difficult to do ‘good
work’, because somebody would always feel that ‘they would lose
and so start opposing you’. People were full o f ‘envy’ and it was not
possible to get them to work together. Udaynala was an unfortunate
village because it did not have ‘competent leaders’.
In a later chapter on ‘possible redress’ of the problems facing the
village, his favourite catch-words were unnayan (development) and

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paribartan (change, progress), goals that were hampered by faction­

alism, money lending, and the lack of an all-weather road. Towards
the end o f his notebook, he summed up an almost utopic outline of
redress, strongly influenced by socialist thinking it would seem.
If everybody in the village worked together all would profit from it. One
would have to stop factionalism [daladalt\ and the mamla-busincss [litiga­
tion: the common practice of taking disputes—particularly over land—to
court; for money lenders a secure way of obtaining land mortgaged to them].
A group of young volunteers would have to be formed. A communal paddy
storage will have to be arranged and money lending will have to be curbed.
The cooperative society will have to be improved [or ‘developed’] and land
should be tilled cooperatively. One would have to work in close collabora­
tion with the honourable government [sarkar bahadur\. If the honourable
government helps the villages then village development will be possible.
Selimmaster’s notebook suggests that foremost in the minds of
himself and his peers was a keen appraisal o f the need for coopera­
tion and on institution-building for the improvement o f the village,
together with a vision of state-assisted development. The problems
o f society—factionalism, money lending, and the ‘mamla-business’—
were identified with the old society and with the older generation of
village leaders. The older generation ‘all wanted to be kings’, an atti­
tude he still found in his village. He portrayed contemporary village
society as underdeveloped, sunk in ignorance, superstitious, divided,
lacking in economic life and cooperation. These were problems that
only ‘a group of young volunteers’ could possibly solve cooperatively
and with the support of the government.
The circumstances o f the production of this notebook are worth
noting. As a young man from a middle-class peasant family in a poor
and road-less village, Selimmaster (albeit he was not yet ‘master’)
attended a teaching seminar at which he met progressive-minded
teachers, possibly some leftists, representatives of the bhadralok, who
further instilled in him an awe for the new ideas, opened up for him
the literary world of Bengali writers, and showed him the ideology
and aims of modern India. The notebook was written with the latter
as audience. It was written for his teachers, to be shown to them'and
possibly to be graded. This could mean that he expressed ideas that
were not entirely consistent with his own views, but were meant to

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please his grading teachers. However, the notebook does seem to

contain views held by Selimmaster himself. After returning to the
village he filled in the remaining pages o f the notebook with more
notes and these do not contradict the earlier views expressed. In ad­
dition to his note-book he also maintained a dairy for about thirty
years, and they express the same sentiments— a condemnation of
disruption and money lending, and praise for efforts o f cooperation.
There are lacunae in Selimmaster s ‘socialist thinking, for instance
with the material problems of the poor (whom he saw as ‘lazy rather
than exploited) or with womens freedom o f movement (apart from
education, there is no mention of any problem), which suggest a
strong paternalistic attitude. However, if there is one theme that
dominates his notebook, it is the theme of change. Everything was
changing; nothing was likely to remain the same. Selimmaster pre­
sents a village society on the brink of moving closer to the ‘modern
world, but it would have to be brought there, the new society would
have to be built, by modern-minded people. Juxtaposed to the money
lenders, the factionalists, and those engaging in the ‘mamla-busi-
ness* were the ‘young volunteers who through cooperation and good
work would usher in a new era of development and progress. The age
of (young) men with a vision was dawning. And Selimmaster counted
himself among the group of young would-be village leaders that would
begin to change society. In Udaynala it existed calling itself wishfully
the ‘young group (tarun dal), but it was a group only in the loosest
of sense. As we have seen, the group was disorganized, with several
domineering personalities, and split in different political orientations.
O n a left-to-right political continuum , the young group included
both centre and left, but as individuals they were rivals within and
had conflicting connections outside.

IMPLEMENTING T H E M O D ERN TRA D ITION IN

UDAYNALA

Back in his home village and together with his peers— other young
men of comparable status who had been away in boarding school or
under similar influences— Selimmaster began putting the new ideas
into practice. ‘The young group* arranged cooperative societies,

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schools, poetry readings, and theatre performances. How successful

they were in terms of actually changing village society is not clear.
We may also question their commitment to a set o f ideals that were
so radically different from those o f their home societies. Historically,
their achievement lay elsewhere. Firstly, they recreated themselves in
the image of the modernizing and socially concerned village leader,
thus giving rise to a new model of village leadership and introducing
rival criteria by which to measure leadership. Secondly, they employed
arguments and engaged in actions that familiarized other villagers
with the new ideology and possibly gave them new arguments for
old grievances. Above all, the 1960s reads as a Kulturkampftin-spe,
w hich eventually came to lay the foundations o f the political
mobilization of the United Front period. How this was (re-)interpreted
by those other than the village leaders will be taken up in Chapter
Five.
In the following section we turn to what Selimmaster and his
peers did with their new-found ideology, their aspirations and
concerns, in their own village. Foremost were the government s policy
of economic development and the various economic development
programmes.6 The abolition of zamindars, and land-ceilings and
reforms (however half-heartedly implemented in West Bengal and
elsewhere) caused repercussions in most villages. We also find almost
all political parties using the rhetoric of progress, development, and
equality.7 Politicians were regularly brought into villages for election
campaigns, at least from 1957 onwards and possibly before that.
There were also a number of government officials o f leftist leanings
who sought to implement their ideas in spite of the constraints. We
may recall from Chapter Three that in 1957 the local Block Devel­
opment Officer (BDO) insisted that the well sponsored by the Union
Board be dug in the bagdi-para o f G opinathpur and not in the
aguri-para. During the land occupations of the late 1960s, many
local officials (BDOs, Junior Land Reform Officers) assisted in identifying
vested land.8
In Udaynala we find that the young generation of village leaders-to-
be were inspired and had already formed a loose group and started
their good work’ by the late 1950s. One important field in which
they first started to make their values known was in intercaste

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communality. Another striking although limited development was

in the position of women. Young women were increasingly allowed
access to education. The village school established in the late 1950s
was immediately opened for girls. Girls education was one o f the
compelling reasons for bringing the school to the village. T he more
encompassing womens question— relating to the position o f the
new bride, wife-beating, lazy or drunken husbands, etc.— was raised
in various fora, such as village drama performances (to which I return
below). However, the issue of the purdah was left largely untouched.
Some did encourage their wives to move outside o f the household
compound, but purdah seems to have been a stronger practice,
abandoned finally only in the mid-1970s.9
They were more successful (or eager) in other fields. In develop­
ing the organizational life of the village they were truly enterprising.
In 1956-57 they started an evening school where they, as the literate
members of society, taught elementary reading, writing, and math­
ematics to illiterate co-villagers. Another initiative was to re-launch
the villages defunct cooperative society in 1958, with the help o f the
local BDO. A few years later, a separate ‘Village Development Soci­
ety* was established as an overall organ for development questions,
planning and discussions. Then came the ‘Udaynala Village Friend­
ship Club* which organized visits to other villages and facilitated
mutual exchange of help and o f drama performances. Later came a
bridge club, a perm anentji/n? (theatre) club, and a library with some
200 books. And so it went on for the next 10 years. Table 4.1 is a list
of the major initiatives.10
These are only the major initiatives and efforts. Selimmasters diaries
are filled with entries on meetings— at least once a week, although
many meetings related to more m undane issues— and incessant
discussions back and forth outside the more formal fora. In addition
to these initiatives, they arranged annual celebrations o f Rabindranath
(rabindra jay anti) with recitals of his poetry, songs, and occasionally
a play. From 1961 onwards, they introduced jatra (drama perfor­
mances, see below) to the annual baroari (public) celebrations, an
annual cultural function for the Bengali New Year, again with poetry
recitals, songs, and speeches, and lastly there were the occasional
cultural functions, jatras, or similar functions for specific purposes

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T able 4.1. Development initiatives in Udaynala in the 1960s

1956/57 A night school opened, and a larger school building constructed.

A board established for equitable sharing of sharecropped paddy.
Village branch of Red Cross established; some money and milk ob­
tained.
1958 Reorganization and revitalization of village cooperative society.
A Primary School Managing Committee established.
1959 The school building again expanded.
1960 Meetings held and a committee for ‘social development’ constituted,
mainly to be concerned with the building of a road.
Free tiffin for the school obtained.
Collective guarding of ripe paddy fields initiated.
1961 The ‘Village Development Society’ constituted, plus the ‘Udaynala
Village Friendship Club’.
1963 Village library opened with 200 books, partly bestowed by the gov­
ernment, partly private donations.
1964 Political cooperation to end factionalism and to secure the Gram
Panchayat seats. Two counselling organizations created to supervise
school work.
1965 First ‘Peoples education day’ arranged; Rs 40 collected towards a new
school.
A building constructed for the cooperative and the development society.
A din-road constructed towards the canal nonh of the village.
1966 Brick godown and office raised for the cooperative.
New school-building raised with tiled roof on land donated by
Kajisaheb.
1967 New efforts towards a road construction, collection of signatures,
mapping of land.
1968 Expansion of the school into Junior High School; one months pay
donated by all service-holders. A ‘Managing Committee’ established.
Proceeds raised through entenainment channelled towards school ex­
pansion.

Sourer, field-data

(fund-raising, specific celebrations). O n four occasions during the

1960s they organized ‘peoples education days’. It should also be noted
that they, on occasion, sacrificed some of their material capital. In
June 1961 Kajisaheb donated land for the establishment of both a
cooperative society building and the school. Throughout the 1960s
they donated paddy and occasionally money for one or the other

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cause, in particular teachers* salaries. In 1962 H anu Chaudhuri

donated the large sum of Rs 1000 as the cooperative society’s starting
capital. Land and money were continuously pledged for the road.
Another field in which these young men sought to implement some
of their ideas is in bichar> the village court sittings. In this particular
setting the efforts have a clearer political tinge—openly using new values
to attack the practices of opponents and challenging existing norms.
Through Selimmaster s diaries we get a glimpse of how the modem
tradition had come to be the dominant discourse within Udaynala. Table
4.2 is a summary of the highlights from Selimmaster s diaries.
The group acted as political entrepreneurs, trying out new values
and references to a new ideology in a setting which had its own

T a b le 4.2. Some innovative bichar decisions in Udaynala in the 1960s

1. If fines were meted out on culprits, it had previously been common that the
money or means were given to village festivals. But from about 1959 onwards,
in cases where punishment was meted out in money, it was to be donated to
some project or the other (school construction, cooperative society, road).
2. In 1963 a series o f ‘test-case’ bichars was held against Manuar Munsi and his
local ‘manager*, Panchu Ali, for excessive money-lending and confiscation of
mortgaged land. One sought to stall a case of confiscation of cooperative money,
but this was not accepted by Manuar, member of the cooperative board. Manuar
and Panchu Ali did not attend the bichars and refused to abide by their deci-
sion. In the end nothing concrete came out of the efforts.
3. In 1963 Selimmaster wrote in his diary, ‘Who will do a poor man’s bichar?’ It
was difficult to get arbitrators for disputes among the poor and uninfiuential
because such disputes had no effect on the power-balance in the village, could
be time consuming, and were often difficult to solve. The following year it was
decided that any dispute brought to the attention of the village leaders should
be addressed by them.
4. In a dispute over the sharing of sharecropped paddy in 1966, it was decided
that although the sharecropper may have cheated (as was the allegation) he was
poor and should receive assistance from the cooperative.
5. As late as February 1972—with repression unleashed in various parts of West
Bengal - a bichar decided against Manuar Munsi. He had sent police against
one Sadek who sharecropped 5-6 bighas of Manuar s lands. The bichar de­
cided that Sadek should continue to sharecrop three bighas. Manuar did not
abide by the decision but sold the land.

Source, field-data.

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established way of working. Decisions such as these may well have

been seen as parts of ongoing factionalist struggles, and the different
decisions understood w ithin a very different framework. O ne
particular opponent of the young group was the money lending
M anuar Ali whom they portrayed as backward, scheming, and anti­
social. Above all they portrayed him and his ilk (including Manik
Dhara, Manuar Munsi and his manager) as not part of the new dis­
course. Manuar Ali was not only their political opponent (with Manik
Dhara he was included in some institutions because o f the influence
he enjoyed) but was above all their ideological opponent and as such
excluded from participation in jatras and other cultural functions.
In Gopinathpur, the level of activities was less marked. Unfortu­
nately I do not possess similar material from Gopinathpur given that
Selimmasters diaries are quite unique as documents. There is however
reason to believe, following the character o f the village leadership
there in the 1960s, that bichar deliberations would have been less
innovative. It is only after 1977 when the CPM-supported Mandal-
brothers took over village leadership that we find tendencies towards
clearly pro-poor attitudes. Innovations such as the ‘Village Development
Committee* were never tried out, possibly because of less enthusiasm
on the part of the Gopinathpur village leadership, all o f whom were
old-timers such as Bhaskar Mandal and Paritas Sen. The younger
generation, as we shall see below, did engage in some o f the same
type o f activities as the Udaynala young group*, but throughout the
1960s and most of the 1970s these activities were carried out by
individuals o f minor political influence. Nonetheless, the marked
ideological and political influences in Udaynala did not leave the
Gopinathpur leaders untouched.11 Village leader Bhaskar Mandal
had already introduced representatives of the bagdis into the rapidly
increasing number o f formal institutions in the village. Initiatives
were taken and projects implemented for a primary school, a village
cooperative society, and wells, and they donated land to and partici­
pated in the building o f a road between G opinathpur and the
metalled road at Seharabazar. Anadi Sen, as the main Congress worker
in the village, on many occasions organized cooperative efforts,
collection of money or delegations to government offices— some of
which were quite successful.

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But it was the younger generation o f leaders— in Gopinathpur

those who took over after Bhaskar Mandal and Anadi Sen withdrew
from active politics— that was the most active. The new generation
emerged as leftists, with the Mandal brothers Sailen and Chandi in
the CPM since the 1960s and Sukumar Mandal, school teacher, in
the left-wing of the Congress. These three, alongwith others, had
introduced contamporary drama performances clearly associated with
leftism. They also established a village youth club in 1965, and a
library in 1974. From 1976 to 1984 a volunteer primary school,
which was unsanctioned and where the teachers received no pay, was
run by three educated (but ritually incompatible) individuals: one
CPM-supporting kayastha, the bamun money lender Bijay Mukherjis
only son, and one person who from a land-poor family who was a
dule by caste. Bijay Mukherji was against the effort due to the presence
of the dule, and used his political influence to deny them government
sanction and thus salaries. After eight years they gave up.

FAMILY TIES, EDUCATION, AND NEW -FOUND

READING MATERIAL

T he division between bhadralok and the clean-caste peasant

population is often made too sharply. There are bonds both of kinship
and of affinity. The latter is perhaps the more important but the
former is by no measure irrelevant. Bhadralok in general hail from
the upper castes, in particular Kayasthas and Brahmins. Many,
although I have no figure to point to, o f the members o f these two
castes still live in villages but have kin in urban bhadralok positions.
Also the sekh Muslims o f Udaynala and the aguris of Gopinathpur
very often had kin in government service or business, people that
would pass as bhadralok. Though more chasi (‘peasant’, owner-
cultivator) than bhadralok, a number o f families were descendants
of lesser zamindar-families and had more or less distant relatives in
typical bhadralok positions such as lawyers, doctors, or government
servants. Some had links to the business community. The Chaudhuri,
Hak, and Hosen families of Udaynala were all descendants or relatives
of zamindar families, and the Sekh and Munsi families somewhat
more distantly so. Fajlul Hosen’s maternal grandfathers family

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consisted o f school inspectors and teachers in Asansol. A maternal

uncle of the bamun Umakanta was a general practitioner educated
in England, and Udaynalas lone kayastha-family, the Sarkars, were
related to a large family of businessmen in Calcutta.
In Gopinathpur one kayastha-family consisted of well-educated
government employees and first-rate bhadralok. The head-of-family,
Paritas, had retired from practice as a lawyer to pursue a landlord
bhadralok life-style in his ancestral village. Other villagers could also
boast zamindari ancestry without harbouring the same kind o f rustic
bhadralok pretensions. The aguri Mandals had relatives in business,
and the Sen family had relatives in good government positions be­
sides several who were school teachers— of whom one was raised in
Gopinathpur. O f the remaining kayastha families of Gopinathpur,
few did not have bhadralok relatives.
In spite o f these familial bonds to the world o f the bhadralok,
education does seem to have constituted a more critical source of
cultural influence, in particular because it was so closely tied to the
bhadralok-ideal. The level of schooling did rise substantially in the
post-Independence period. Poromesh Acharya records the growth in
primary schools in West Bengal from 14,700 in 1950-51 to about
50,000* in 1980-81 (Acharya 1985: 1785). Higher educational fa­
cilities also saw a substantial growth. The effects on Udaynala and
Gopinathpur can be seen from Tables 4.3 and 4.4. The tables report
the 1993 level of education (or schooling) by age-groups for males of
the ‘dominant castes*, i.e. for males of the jati(-s) with more well-off
families able to afford education for their sons, from which village
leaders would emerge. We also see that a small but not insignificant
number of villagers had reasonable levels of schooling already at the
time of Independence.
Among the interesting findings is the marked increase in years of
schooling for the age-group 46-55 (in 1993) compared to the older
group. In Udaynala, with only 14.5 per cent o f the ‘56 or older*
(56+) age group having any formal schooling, 34 percent of the next
group had some. O f these as many as 18 percent had more than 5
years in school. They were educated during the decade 1944-1953.
It was the decade in which most of the village leaders-to-be entered
school. O f the next batch, educated during the 1950s and early 1960s,

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T able 4.3. Education and age-groups, men above 16 years of age, of

selch jati, Udaynaia 1993

Age-groups*
(year when entered school)
Years of 56+ 46-55 36-45 26-35 16-25
schooling (before 1943) (1944-53) (1954-63) (1964-73) (1974-83)

None 46.1 28.6 25.9 16.0 7.2

Some** 39.3 37.5 19.6 16.0 8.7
1-5 2.2 16.1 16.1 24.4 20.5
6-10 11.2 17.9 29.5 29.8 38.5
11 + 1.1 — 8.0 13.7 4.1
Under
education 21.0
Sum 99.9 100.1 99.1 99.9 100.0
N 89 56 111 131 194

For asterix and source, see Table 4.2

T able4.4. Education and age-groups, men above 16 years of age, of

bamun, kayastha and aguri jatis, Gopinathpur 1993

Age-group*
(year when entered school)
Years of 56+ 46-55 36-45 26-35 16-25
schooling (before 1943) (1944-53) (1954-63) (1964-73) (1974-83)

None 11.1 12.5

Some** 5.6 — 3.7 — —

1-5 77.7 37.5 40.7 36.4 14.7

6-10 5.6 25.0 33.3 36.4 44.1
11 + — 25.0 22.2 27.3 11.7
Under education 29.4
Sum 100.0 100.0 99.9 100.1 99.9
N 17 8 27 44 34

* ‘Age-group refers to their age in 1993.

** ‘Some’ = literate; in case of elder generations often acquired at a pathshala, while
most of the younger generations were taught at the literacy campaign classes.
Sourer, field-data

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more than half received some formal training, one in three had more
than 5 years o f schooling, and eight per cent went on to higher
secondary or even higher education.
Contrasted with Udaynalas leading jati, the three clean castes of
Gopinathpur sported a higher initial level of literacy four to five
decades back. O f the 56+ batch three out of four had at least a few
years o f form al schooling T hough the num ber o f individuals
concerned are small for most age-groups, the trend seen in Udaynala
is also evident here: increasingly, from the 46-55 batch onwards, the
males o f these jatis were given formal education. In Gopinathpur,
one in two of those who started schooling in the 1944—1953 decade
went on to 6th grade or more. One in four went beyond 10th. And
of the 36-45 batch, again half received more than 5 years o f schooling,
with six individuals (22.2 percent) going in for higher secondary or
more.
U ntil about I960 there were no schools in these two villages.
There were primary schools in the nearby central villages o f Bajarpur
and H atpur, and for a few years in the 1940s even in the small
village o f Krishnanagar. Most o f those who gained more than a
few years o f education in those days did so in boarding schools
away from home, returning at the most for weekends, or studying
while living with relatives in larger villages with schools or in
town. This is quite a common way o f getting children and youth
educated and socialized even today and was much more common
then, given the lack o f educational facilities and efficient means
of com m unication.
O ne important effect of this education was exposure to different
values, to the ideology of modern India, and to the culture o f the
bhadralok. School teachers were archetypal bhadralok, and many of
them were quite young and often of leftist inclination.12 Unfortu­
nately, the material, statistical or otherwise, to show the propensity
of school or college teachers to be leftist back in the 1950s is wanting.
Most may have been more moderate, but the number of leftist teachers
in West Bengal was sufficient enough to give rise to a popular stereo­
type. The young village boys or men studying in schools away from
home were also exposed to this world of the bhadralok through the
curriculum, which included the reading of standard works on or by

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famous Bengali novelists, some of which, as we shall see, contained

radical ideas. Teachers, no doubt, constituted a major channel for
leftist ideas into the rural areas. Kajisaheb told the following story of
how he became a communist.
From 5th to 10th [1947-52] I read in a boarding-school. In the beginning I
was scared and did not like it. A teacher named Shyamal Nandi took care of
me. He was very good at football, and I liked football. In the evenings he
assembled some students at his house, served us tea and biscuits, and
engaged us in long discussions. He was a communist and thought the Congress
was bad. Many of us became communists under his influence. At that time I
did not understand much about politics and communism. It was only later,
when the CPI arranged a meeting in Bajarpur commemorating the death of
Stalin, that I was able to buy and read some communist literature.
O n being questioned, however, he admits to have read a far greater
number of Bengali novels and poetry than communist literature. No
one in these villages had read any original writing (in translation) of
Marx or Lenin or others before the 1980s. The main source o f com­
munist literature was the party using papers and pamphlets. The
main bulk of reading material, however, both at school and in their
off-time, consisted of the Bengali masters and novelists.

FROM T H E EPICS T O 20TH CENTURY NOVELS

This encounter with a new type of reading material was to have

marked effects. It changed the reading habits in village society. A
number o f villagers among the older generations were literate and
were familiar with reading— including people such as Hekimsaheb,
Jiku C haudhuri, M ohammed Hak, and others o f Udaynala, and
Bhaskar M andal, Shyamal M andal, Paritas Sen and others o f
G opinathpur. Although inform ation on these issues is lim ited
mainly to recollections by their siblings (except in the case o f the
octogenarian Bhaskar Mandal himself), a general impression o f
their reading habits seems clear. T he m ain source o f reading
m aterial o f the older generation was religious literature. For
Muslims, tracts on the Koran, on the history o f Muslims in India,
interpretations on the ‘correct' Muslim way o f life, were available
and read. H in d u s naturally read the epics, particularly the

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M ahabharata and Kashiram’s Bengali Ramayan, besides some

caste-based literature am ong the aguris. O f the vast body o f
m odern Bengali literature they read little if anything. Bhaskar
adm its to not ‘liking' the writings o f Rabindranath, the pre-eminent
w riter o f ‘modern Bengal.
It should be kept in mind that Bhaskar s generation grew up and
were formed during India's long drawn-out Independence movement.
Although anti-colonial movements were limited in this area (Bhaskar
could remember only two meetings/demonstrations), there is not
m uch doubt about a general pro-Independence attitude. More con­
troversial was the issue of Hindu-Muslim agitation. Mohammed Hak
collected a large number of pre-Independence Muslim League pam­
phlets (mostly undated), which suggests the degree of penetration of
the politics o f the Hindu-Muslim divide and of the Muslim League
into the countryside. The pamphlets, written in an Urdu-inspired
Bengali, do not speak of partition or mention Pakistan, but call on
all Muslims to be ‘good Muslims', to pray for the preservation o f the
faith. A number of Muslim League meetings were held in central
villages (more, it seems, than pro-Independence meetings).13This is
interesting because it suggests that the grand Bengali literature,
Bengal's long ‘conversation' with the West, had not reached the vil­
lages even by the time of Independence.
Contrasted to this is the reading material o f the following genera­
tion. The contrast is clear from a small survey on reading habits that
I conducted with 15 individuals in the two villages (apart from two
45 year olds, the rest were above 50).u They were asked to mention
novels or any other written material that they read while young, that
is, during the 1950s and 1960s. It is naturally difficult to put a year
even by approximation on a novel one read many years ago, particu­
larly when the novel in question is famous and one hears about it
from many quarters. However, there is reason to believe that people
did in fact mention works that had made an impact on them. One
should keep in mind that 30 to 40 years back books were not as
common as nowadays. They had to be borrowed, in some cases from
distant libraries, or more often from a relative or a friend, and the
rarity o f the opportunity would make the act o f reading something
special.

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O f the fifteen surveyed, all had read Saratchandra Chattopadhyaya’s

Palli samaj (‘Village society’). Indeed, to ask someone whether he or
she had read Palli samaj was considered rather silly and slighdy of­
fensive. It is a novel ‘everybody has read, that is, ‘everybody as in
‘everybody with some education*. Another novel by the same author
that was also widely read (13 out o f 15) was the voluminous Srikanta.
H alf of the surveyed had also read Sts prasna and Baikunther n il by
the same author. Other novels and short stories by him were also
well known. This reflects the fact that Saratchandra Chattopadhyaya
(1876-1938) was not just any novelist. His position in Bengali lit­
erature is quite remarkable. Although extremely popular, he was no
‘light* writer. He dealt in serious issues and is credited as having been
the first to bring village society in its everyday appearance to the
literary agenda, to take up social evils in a realist manner, and to
introduce strong wilful women as central characters. This made
Saratchandra compelling reading for young villagers undergoing edu­
cation. His novels became exemplary— examples to be followed. Let
us briefly review the story of Palli samaj.
Palli samaj is about a landlord’s son, Ramesh, who returns to his
native village on the death of his father. Ramesh has been away from
the village for a number of years, and has gained an education as well
as a totally new outlook. He is appalled by the egoism and supersti­
tion that he meets in his relatives and other villagers. He wants to
treat everybody as equals, but is opposed by his relatives who even
threaten to disrupt the ceremonies he arranges in connection with
his father’s death. W hen they do turn up, they behave badly in
Ramesh’s eyes. They gossip maliciously about one another, quarrel
without concern for the solemnity o f the occasion, and even the sup­
posedly otherworldly Brahmins throw themselves over the food and
try to bring home as much as they can lay their hands on. Later on,
Ramesh engages in a series of activities aimed at bettering the situation
for the poor in his custody, but he only finds that they take advantage
of him and show no sign o f having established any loyalty to him.
W hen he starts a small school, it is frowned upon and opposed. He
is frustrated and constantly on the verge o f leaving the village behind
him. Even his childhood sweetheart, Rama, who is the only one that
keeps him in the village, will sacrifice her relationship with him in

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order not to alienate other powerful villagers, so that she can maintain
the estate she manages for her younger brother. In spite of the adversity,
Ramesh does not leave the village but stays on to continue his struggle
for the reform of society.
Saratchandra differs from his illustrious contemporary, the Nobel
prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore, in that he ‘[did] not rise above
his themes and poor heroes but wrote as if being one of them* (Zbavitel
1976: 281). At the same time Saratchandra did not differ substantially
in social concern or thematic choices from Rabindranath, he only
brought the same themes closer to the village.
Rabindranath is the most prominent of a whole range of writers,
social critics, and reformers that made up ‘the Bengali renaissance*.
Literature— novels, poetry, some plays—was a major vehicle for this
intellectually active period. But even where it peaked, in Rabindranath,
the relationship to the countryside was one of distance. This is not to
say that Rabindranath did not see or did not take up the many problems
o f village society. He did indeed do that. The ‘unifying idea in
Rabindranaths short stories, was ‘humanism* (Zbavitel 1976: 251-
52). In Rabindranaths poetry, however, village society is allegorized as
a lost motherland, or introduced only as the backdrop home of poetic
and very sensitive individuals. He wrote for a sensitive and advanced
educated audience, stopping short of reaching a broader audience. And
it is ‘where Rabindranath stopped [that] Saratchandra Chatterjee be­
gan* (Surendranath Sen 1924, quoted in Zbavitel 1976: 280).
An analysis o f Saratchandra*s writings holds that his central
concern ‘never shifts beyond the bhadralok* (Mukherjee 1985: 107).
O ther novelists who followed in the path that Saratchandra had
prepared, went beyond that concern. One widely read novelist, also
popular among the 15 interviewed in Udaynala and Gopinathpur,
was Tarashankar Bandyopadhyaya (1898-1971). The most popular
novels by him were Ganadebata, Panchagram and Hansuli Banker
JJpakatha. According to the historian Rajat Ray, these novels had
such an earthly flavour that even Rabindranath— who by this time
had become something of an institution— ordered his lieutenants to
read them to village elders, who readily ‘understood and appreciated’
the novels because they were so ‘firmly rooted in his [Tarashankars]
indigenous rural experience* (Ray 1983: 274-75).

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Tarashankars novels extended this trend in Bengali literature a bit

further from Saratchandra. His portrayal of village society was starker,
and he was clearer when it came to pinpointing the source o f evils.
He portrayed a society of cruel landlords, superstitious and drink-
prone lower castes, quarrelsome peasants who did not know when to
cooperate, and thieves, money lenders, and prostitutes. All three novels
are situated in Tarashankar s native Birbhum, the district bordering
Burdwan in the north, and all three portray the same village society,
albeit from different perspectives, with its plethora o f characters high
and low. A passage which is quite characteristic o f Tarashankars writ­
ing appears at the end o f Panchagram. Here, Debu Ghosh, school
teacher and main hero, tries to get the other villagers to cooperate in
reinforcing the embankment that shielded the five villages from the
river. News has come from further up river about a terrible flood,
and the embankment is old and ill maintained. But no one listens to
him. The landlord— an upstart— takes no initiative, preoccupied as
he is with his own wheeling-dealings. The peasants too are preoccu­
pied with their own worries, and their own quarrels. Even when some
of the poorer hamlets are flooded, no one is particularly concerned or
deems it necessary to assist. In frustration Debu Ghosh goes alone to
the embankment and starts digging to improve it. Only when the
flood reaches unusual proportions and water is already seeping in, do
other villagers come to help. But it is too late, the embankment breaks
and water gushes in. The novel ends with a birds eye perspective of
the flooded villages. Internal divisions and complete lack of any sense
o f community, except on part of Debu Ghosh, lead to the villages
facing a catastrophe. The sombre note on which the novel ends leaves
little hope that any immediate lesson will be learnt from the dis­
heartening experience.
For their stark criticism, Tarashankars novels are not radical (he
was a Congress activist for many years). The hero is Debu Ghosh, a
do-good reformer who constantly seeks to make people realize the
benefit of cooperating and who insists on a humanists will to see the
best in people, despite every thing. From the 1930s and 1940s
onwards, into the post-Independence period, the above-mentioned
radicalization of Bengali politics created repercussions on Bengali
literature also. The emergence of an increasingly large (if still

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ordinated) leftist movement was equally represented in the literature

of the period. A prominent radical novelist was Manik Bandyopadhyaya
(1910-1956) whose novels Putulnacheritikatha (‘The puppets’ tale)
and Padma N adirM ajhi (‘Boatmen on the river Padma’) were widely
read and appreciated. The first, it is said, presents ‘the hard fight
w ith ever new clashes and defeats’ of ‘man against nature and all
those blind forces dominating his life and the old society’ (Zbavitel
1976: 287). Among these blind forces are superstition, old religious
beliefs, the dislike for innovation and new thinking, and unchecked
egoism— all represented in the frustrating experiences of Shashi, the
young village doctor.
Shashi, like Ramesh of Saratchandra’s Palli Samaj, is the village’s
prodigal son, who after years away in medical school in Calcutta
returns to the village and is appalled by it. People are superstitious,
some even believe in solar energies. They put faith in rumours, prac­
tise caste divisions, carefully protect their own ritual purity, put sta­
tus and money so high as to send daughters away to rich but un-
happy marriages. They are evil, mean, and in some select cases just
plain stupid. Shashi even struggles with his own father, a greedy
money lender, and with other extravagantly superstitious members
o f his family who have little faith in his practice of an alien medicine.
T he novel centres around two themes. One has to do with the slow
and troubled, but nonetheless reasonably successful establishment of
a medical practice and eventually a country hospital. The other has
to do with Shashi’s love for the true-born village girl Kusum. It is she
who keeps him from running away— as with Ramesh and Rama—
and the reassuring note at the end of the novel is that when she
finally abandons him and his father leaves the village behind, Shashi
accepts his burden and the obligation that he has to continue to
fight to improve and reform the village.
Is the reading of these novels significant? Was reading them im­
portant in any way to the recendy educated young generation in
villages such as Udaynala and Gopinathpur? First, the novels are not
freak-writings, but formed an integral part of a larger body of literature
and thought, one that permeated the schooling system, the news­
papers, the government and politics. This was part of what was fast
becoming the ruling orthodoxy, the need for reform in order to achieve

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progress. The novels were important because literature in general

enjoyed a central place in the Bengali interpretation o f the ideology
of progress. But they are also interesting because the main charac­
ters, the heroes, were avant-garde representatives o f the reformist
desire, people who pioneered the good work. Young villagers reading
these novels several decades later, could readily appreciate the lack of
progress and reform in their own villages.
Another point we should note is that the actual reading of these
novels itself constituted a departure from previous practice. There was
a clear contrast between this type of literature and what the previous
generation used to read. Where the father read religious literature—
epics or tracts— or political pamphlets written in a polemical tone and
concerning the legitimacy of the government, the sons read novels
about the legitimacy of the construction of society, about its problems,
about heroic individuals trying to reform it. Although there is not
much of open Marxism in the novels— not even much o f a coherent
socialist ideology, at least as seen from todays perspective— society in
its fundamentals was still attacked, as was the position of the young
readers’ fathers and the practices that had made them rich and power­
ful. Many issues are left open in these novels. For instance, prejudices
of caste are attacked but rarely the hierarchical system as such, at least
never direcdy. However, the identification of the problems— backward­
ness, superstition, money lenders, infighting—also identified the solu­
tions. The value system that the novels transmit can be summed up in
words such as progress, rationality, modern thinking, economic devel­
opment, and cooperation. All these constitute critiques o f the existing
shape of society and its favoured representatives. They point instead to
another set of values, and to their representatives.
The novels were not alone. They pointed to a set of values and to
its representatives, a social group that may have been heterogeneous
but nonetheless came to represent certain values more than others.
The outlook and values of Ramesh, Debu Ghosh and Shashi are
implicit. The heroes are bhadralok and their values are those o f the
bhadralok, the modern educated Bengali. These did not have to be
stated— they were known both to the authors and to their readers in
the 1950s, the young generation of college educated villagers. Vil­
lage society is described as sunk in a quagmire of misery and super­

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stition out of which it cannot escape by itself. The saviour is the

educated man. He may not be successful, his task appears almost like
Sisyphus’s, but without him there is no hope. And more than the
man, the individual, it is education which will save village society
from itself and promise to bring village society into the modern world,
to make it a better place for everybody.
There is of course an important difference between the bhadralok-
heroes o f the novels and the young village readers. The post-
Independence readers sought to follow up ideas that were au courant
in their own days. They were not isolated loonies such as Shashi or
Ramesh, treated with disdainful respect. They were representatives
o f a new era, an era also represented by the dom inant ideology of
West Bengal, in government programmes, and by all political par­
ties. However distant the government may have been from villages
such as G opinathpur and Udaynala in the mid to late 1950s, it was
still much closer, stronger and positive to their endeavours than
what the Shashis experienced in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover,
there were many more o f them, whole groups that had been to
school.
Since there were more of them, since they had the implicit if not
explicit support of the government, and since their ideals, were those of
the highest social strata of society, the efforts of the young village leaders
were more successful. In the following section, we shall see first how they
reacted to the situation in their own village society, and second how they
sought to change it. These were efforts towards the implementation of
the increasingly dominant ideology, that is, the ideology of the socially
and largely politically dominant section of society, the ideology of the
high-status people. It meant that implementation became more than
self-sacrifice. It also became a way of asserting ones own status, ones
belonging or at least association with the revered and high-status.

M O D ERN TRA D ITIO N IN VILLAGE DRAMA

Parallel to institution building and innovative bichar decisions,

another development took place that was a direct and perhaps more
tangible outcome of their contact with Bengal’s ‘modern tradition.
This was thcjatra, which in a village context denotes (the staging of)

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plays on temporary stages. The tradition o f jatra is ancient in Bengal,

dating back at least to the sixteenth century and the widespread bhakti-
cult to which Chaitanyas Vaishanvite movement gave rise. Jatra
remained popular in the countryside over the centuries, enacting
themes from the scriptures or devotional themes. Jatra was thus ‘an
associative ritual of religion (Saha 1978: 4), dramatizing devotional
themes. Its style was ‘operatic and hallucinatory, relying on songs
and religious fervour for its effects’ (Bharucha 1983: 7). In Calcutta,
since the mid nineteenth century, a European-style theatre tradition
had developed in which ‘folk’ forms were shunned. Only during the
last decade o f the Raj was this gap sought to be bridged. Nationalist
and later leftist playwrights, particularly in the Indian People’s Theatre
Association (IPTA), sought to bring their message to villagers through
the m edium o f jatra. This effort continued into the 1950s.
Representatives o f an increasingly radical milieu o f Bengali literati
incorporated ‘folk forms’ into their acting, and their style and plays
were staged on village stages (ibid.). In spite o f its ‘operatic
conventions, melodramatic gestures, and hypnotic songs’, this effort
showed how ‘the structure of jatra was so resilient that it was able to
incorporate radical alterations in its subject m atter and adopt a
contemporary idiom’ (ibid.). After Independence, radical actors and
playwrights wrote and enacted plays that were ‘folk’ in form but radical
in content. Radical theatre adapted to certain requirements, certain
expectations o f form and style, but found ample space for a
developm ent o f its own themes. Jatra became an increasingly
im portant vehicle for spreading political messages and ideology.
C om m unist-ideological them es were received w ith the same
enthusiasm accorded to traditional jatras.
The IPTA declined and vanished but the endeavour of which IPTA
had been part left an imprint on rural society. A remarkable revival
of jatra took place in West Bengal after Independence.15 Over the
years the repertoire has become broader, and standard characters in
modern village jatra include contemporary characters and issues: For
instance the easily recognizable money lender, the bad father-in-law,
the corrupt politician and the political goonda. In its revitalized form
jatra was increasingly modernized, with raised platforms, theatrical
lighting, and microphones (Saha 1978: 8). Old-type devotional jatra,

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IPTA jatras and many contemporary jatras were and still are per­
formed by professional troupes. But after Independence, jatras were
increasingly staged by amateur teams of village boys and young men.
T hey stage the same plays with the same themes, although the ama­
teurs stage somewhat less elaborate plays. Although professional jatra
performances continue to be more popular (one I visited had an
audience of nearly three thousand), amateurs stage the majority of
performances in contemporary West Bengal. And they are popular.
In Udaynala, as many as five jatras over two days in 1993 attracted
several hundred spectators each. Gopinathpur, for its festivities later
the same year, had three performances, funded in part from the vil­
lage public fund, which suggests that jatra has become integral to
village festivals and was accepted even by village elders. Amateur
staging of plays is nowadays a common occurrence in most villages
in Burdwan district, as much part of village festivals as the pujas,
fairs, and visiting relatives.
It would be wrong to see this recent development in the forms of
jatra as a one-way influence, from outside, o f the educated and al­
ready converted. The performing villagers selected and bought the
play scripts themselves, in Burdwan Town or even in Calcutta. The
self-staged jatras were initiated locally. By briefly mapping the his­
tory o f jatra in Gopinathpur and Udaynala, we will see how a select
number of young men were active in bringing about a new tradition
and had conscious ideas about the aim of the endeavour.
The first to start doing jatra in Gopinathpur ‘50 years ago’ (in
1993) were Dasarathi Mandal, Sakti and Ranjan Mandal, and Bibhuti
Mukherji, all four in their late teens and from the more well-off
families. Three of them had some experience o f jatra performance
from nearby villages. All these jatra-enthusiasts were also politically
active. Dasarathi and Bibhuti died at an early age but Sakti and
Ranjan became important figures in village affairs in the 1950s and
1960s. Jatra in Gopinathpur did not immediately become standard
fare at the baroari festivities but was staged on and off over the next
decades. With the growing-up of the next generation— in particular
Sukumar Kes and the Mandal brothers Chandi and Sailen—jatra
became an annual event from 1965 onwards (with the exception of
1969 and 1972). The Mandal brothers (sons of Ranjan) became CPM

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supporters during the United Front period, while Sukumar (son of

Dasarathi) was in the left-wing o f the Congress. Sailen became
Gopinathpur’s first CPM village leader and panchayat member, and
both he and Sukumar became school teachers. Chandi later became
a professional full-time actor in a Calcutta-based jatra troupe.
In Udaynala, the first jatras were staged a little after Independence
but did not give rise to a local tradition. Comprehensive jatra perfor­
mances started only in the late 1950s, by Najir Hak, Kajisaheb, and
Bhola Sarkar. Later on many others joined in to comprise a few steady
groups that together staged at least one but more often two perfor­
mances at the annual baroari festivities, besides one or two during
the year. The ‘peoples education days’ included jatra performances,
and occasionally they even staged performances in other villages
(Gopinathpur in 1961 and Palashan in 1962). The most prolific
actor was Kajisaheb, who participated in other jatra troupes— and
for a period in other districts also. All those belonging to the young
group participated as organizers of and actors in jatras—-with the
exception of Ohabsaheb (and also excluded were their opponents,
Manik Dhara and Manuar).
Among the first few locally staged plays in G opinathpur and
Udaynala some were ‘nationalist’ but most were ‘historical’, i.e. with
known ‘romantic’ themes from the history o f Bengal or India. A few
puranic plays were also staged, i.e. with themes from the epics. From
the late 1950s ‘social’ plays were staged, typically with themes centring
on casteism, ‘superstition’, arranged marriages, the fate of the ‘new
bride’, money lending, and poverty. These themes, as indeed the
authors, belonged firmly to the ‘modern tradition’ and were perceived
as such. A typical jatra had a ‘happy ending’ where the ‘good’ forces
win against the ‘bad’. This was also the case o f ‘social’ jatras. In
addition they had moral lessons and heroes who pointed towards
values of equality between man and woman or high and low, or
towards social or economic progress. According to Sukumar Mandal
and Chandi Mandal, active in jatra in Gopinathpur from the mid
1960s onwards, they were careful to stage two plays on each occasion:
one historical and one social. The social plays were often regarded as
a bit tedious and did not provide the colourful entertainment re­
quired, and the actors were conscious o f the need to entertain. A

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good jatra, in the opinion of Chandi and Sukumar, was entertaining

at the same time as it conveyed a moral, an idea, and particularly a
criticism o f social conditions. It should enlighten the audience and
give them something to think about. ‘A good jatra’, said Sukumar,
‘makes people discuss on the way home.’ They entertained, but only
with that other aim— to teach— firmly in mind.
In this we see an interesting feature. In addition to bringing new
ideas and a new ideology into village,society, jatra also represented a
captivating new role for those who thus engaged themselves. They
became teachers for their community, conveying the values and ideals
of modern society, ideals associated with progress and development.
The actors identified themselves with or were identified with the
culture o f literature, and with the role model o f the ‘modern social
reformer teacher-bhadralok.
An important aspect of village jatras is that they are more closely
associated with the modern tradition than with the original tradition
o f ‘associative ritual o f religion. To be part of such a staging indicates
ones adherence to the modern tradition and to its values. It is very
interesting to note that staging of jatra eventually also contributed to
changes in language, that is, in villagers’ understanding of what ‘correct’
pronunciation was. It is interesting because it constitutes a very
substantive indication about these actors’ relative positioning vis-i-vis
the language and culture of the bhadralok.

LANGUAGE AND STATUS

All jatras were written and performed in the standard variety of

Bengali— devoid of the rusticities of local language. This variety of
the language is known as Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB) or chalit
bhasa, and has formed the basis for spelling and grammatical rules in
standard written Bengali. Apart from the SCB, Bengali consists o f a
host o f dialects and idiosyncratic sociolects. Most people, even among
the educated, will use their own local dialect at home, while the SCB
is the form for the mbre public or formal communications: meetings,
theatre plays, university education,16and formal gatherings. It is above
all the language of the educated, developed from a Hugh dialect by
the Calcutta intelligentsia in the nineteenth century. Dominance of

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the SCB form has spread slowly, and one o f the media, at least to
villages, was jatra.17
Plays were written in the SCB form, and conscious efforts were
made to conform in performance to the written form. Rusticities
were laughed at, or used only to portray uneducated people. We may
note some recent changes in local dialect, which at least the villagers
themselves attribute to their endeavours in jatra. In the villages of
this region, the old ending for past continuous and some other forms
in the first person is -nu (e.g. chinu, I was). It can still be heard but
mainly among older illiterate people. It has been replaced by the
ending -lum (e.g. chilum), which is an old literary form o f western
Bengal. This has become the accepted form in Burdwan villages, but
only over the last 20-30 years. The transition was eased by jatra, in
which the SCB form -lam (e.g. chilam, I was) was used.
In contemporary Burdwan most people will prefer the dialect va­
riety in common daily speech, but the correct1pronunciation is con­
sciously employed when addressing an audience, a formal gathering,
such as in meetings, functions, announcements or jatras. O ther lan­
guage changes, too, took the same direction, from a dialect form
towards the SCB. For instance, the use o f the negative n i in the
future form (e.g. am i karba ni) was gradually abolished in favour of
the SCB form (ami karba no). The verbal construct with -he- in the
past continuous (as in kothae geheli?, where did you go?) has also
vanished in favour of the SCB construct with -chhe- (kothae gcchhili?)
as the standard form. The old construct can still be heard, but only
in very informal settings.
These differences in spoken language were not entirely new to all
in the villages of Udaynala and Gopinathpur when the home-staged
jatras were first introduced. People such as Paritas Sen and Jiku
Chaudhuri had been in perfect command of the SCB form as members
of the literate and educated classes. But such form was first employed
in a pure village context by the young group o f people, in meetings
and announcements (centring around their new institutions) but
particularly in jatra. Jatra plays were written in the SCB (unless some
rustic character appeared) and consciously pronounced in that
manner. Pronunciation in tune with local dialect and local custom, was
considered to be ‘wrong’. Only the SCB pronunciation was ‘correct’.

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Language changes may seem peripheral to issues o f political

culture and power. But it is necessary to underline that spoken
language is not socially neutral. The change from local dialect forms
to the form preferred and nourished by the socially and culturally
dom inant segment of society holds important information about a
change in cultural orientation and values. The culture and values o f
the bhadralok were considered high-status, both because of an asso­
ciation with power, high caste, the refined and technically advanced,
and because o f the abstention from manual labour. They held higher
status, and so their language held higher status. As Jnanabrata
Bhattacharyya and Poromesh Acharya point out, in the context of
Bengal, language and literacy were not rank-neutral. Bhattacharyya
insists that historically the development o f SCB was used to rein­
force social inequalities. ‘While serving to unify the Hindu elite,
social hierarchies o f class, caste and religion were reinforced by a
conscious moulding of the Bengali language’ (Bhattacharyya 1987:
62). Equally, Poromesh Acharya feels that English-medium in par­
ticular but also much of the Bengali-medium education in contem­
porary West Bengal is elitist and exclusivist, designed so as to in
effect deprive the poor and low caste access to higher education.18
O ne may not agree with such an interpretation, but education, even
mere literacy, was in (West) Bengal was never quite free from its
social identity, its association with the higher castes, with social re­
finement and non-manual labour. The conscious use o f a particular
pronounciation in village public settings such as drama performances
indicated a command over a certain body o f ideas and a willingness
to represent these.
In Chapter Three I suggested that in the Bengali conception of
‘power’, namely ‘khamata, there were several quite different elements:
influence, wealth, high status or ritual rank, personal prestige,
compassion, and intelligence. Davis’ listing of different criteria along
which individuals could be ranked is quite similar: ritual status and
life stage, power, knowledge, wealth, and respect or honour. It is
clear from these two not very different sets o f criteria that intelli­
gence or knowledge in some form was crucial in forming people’s
perception of an individual, particularly of these young leaders. To a
considerable degree one was judged by one’s command over a known

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and accepted body o f thought—whether this body was a separate

ideology, as in the modern tradition, medical practice, or knowledge
of spirits. Education was a particular form o f knowledge. Being a vari­
able that also influences several other criteria rnhanced its importance
and role. It indicated influence, contacts with powerful persons out­
side of village society, prestige (in that literacy was for the few), and
command over words and thoughts. It also indicated an ability to
appropriate and command such knowledge and information that came
in writing (e.g. government papers, newspapers, written contracts, etc).
Moreover, literacy, and particularly modern-type education in its
specific Bengali form, bestowed the individual villager with the status
of bhadralok among his fellow villagers. This was done through a
certain comportment and manner, but more crucially through manners
of speech associated with the educated classes, through a manifested
concern with poetry and literature, and through an exposure o f the
values and ideals commonly associated with the bhadralok group,
publicly showing that one shares those values.
In particular, the new village leaders sought to give the impression
of being different from old-style village leaders and part o f that high-
status world outside. Here we see them as political entrepreneurs,
trying out something new. They moulded for themselves a new model:
The modern-minded villager, free from superstition, free from the
prestige* and ‘distance* considerations o f the past, and knowledge­
able and conversant in many things new (literature, the ideology o f
parties, the international scene). In doing so and because of the im ­
peratives of the particular adopted culture, the village leaders came
to promote specific ideas in village society, ideas that were radical.
Through their jatras, rhetoric and actions, a discourse was intro­
duced, one in which ‘equality*, ‘anti-casteism*, ‘cooperation* and
‘progress* were the main catch words. This discourse identified a wide
range o f ‘problems* in village society and legitimized new and possibly
radical courses of action, new social relations, new attitudes to old
grievances. For the larger audience of poor and low caste, jatras
addressed social problems in a new manner, within an ideology
different from the one hitherto dominant. Through the medium of
jatras, problems and solutions and moral points could be suggested
without directly threatening the existing social order.

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T he changes and influences described in this chapter refer in the

main to the activities of a small segment of village society. It can,
therefore be argued, that the ideas could be misunderstood, only
superficially adopted, or inconsistendy selected from a wide body of
literature (which in itself was not too consistent). However, in the
next chapter we shall see how this effort to appropriate the modern
tradition and introduce it into village society contributed towards
substantial political changes.

N OTES
1 Commensality with a select number of other castes is considered one of the
core characteristics of dominant caste behaviour. Mayer 1960, Ch.s IV and VI.
2 I take note of Partha Chatterjec’s (1993, Ch. Three) critical assessment of
the term, and that he prefers the term ‘the (Calcutta) middle class to denote
its ‘middleness’. In the present context, however, I prefer the term bhadralok
since, seen from a village, particularly after Independence, this ‘middle class’
is not ‘middle’ to anything but superior to most. Also it could be argued
that today, in the 1990s, the educated middle class is so bloated and varied
that the term no longer carries any sense. However, this chapter refers to
the first post-Independence decades when the term referred to a particular
social group, or at least to certain cultural and social traits.
3 The reasons for this radicalization are difficult to pinpoint. Franda (1971a: 11)
attributes the leftist turn among the bhadralok to their becoming
‘permanently disenchanted with electoral politics’ after having been
politically marginalized, and increasingly facing unemployment. Re.
Gordon’s 1972 critique of Franda. In a more sensitive analysis, Kohli
emphasizes ‘the political diversity’ of the bhadralok, and sees ‘political
alienation’ as having affected only a section (1990:394). However, he insists
on Tagore’s occasional leftist sympathies to explain political radicalism. Such
explanations deprive the ‘tradition’ of an ability to change, to renew and to
respond to history as it unfolds.
4 The term ‘tradition of modernity’, or just ‘the modern tradition’, is from
Heesterman 1985:9.
5 The notebook and his diaries were given to me by his son.
6 Burdwan district was selected for the Intensive Agricultural Districts
Programme. For a study see Frankel 1972.
7 A possible exception was some minor soon-to-vanish Hindu revivalist parties
in eastern Burdwan.

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8 However, the majority of officials were probably anti-communist, and the

CPM Land and Land Revenue Minister, Harekrishna Konar, sought ways
of circumventing his ministry’s officials during the second UF Government’s
tenure. See Konar 1979, Ruud 1994. Interestingly, Selimmaster wrote that
an anti-hoarding drive by the administration in the Block in 1974 first
targeted the biggest hoarders— who were all major Congress figures— and
only thereafter minor hoarders.
9 Selimmaster’s widow still practised the purdah in 1993.
10 The dates are mainly from Selimmaster’s diaries.
11 Major village leader-to-be, Anadi Sen, who was affiliated to the left wing of
the Congress party, was often thought of as a potential CPM supporter and
sought to be recruited by Udaynala’s Kajisaheb and Najir Hak.
12 A Burdwan and Midnapur survey conducted by Atul Kohl in the early 1980s
indicates some of the leftist inclination of the village intelligentsia, by
revealing that 31 per cent of all CPM Gram Panchayat members were ‘mainly
teachers or social workers’. In a Midnapur study cited by him, 217 of 515
Gram Panchayat chairmen were found to be teachers (Kohli 1983:792).
13 The material was shown to me by his son, Najir Hak.
14 This section draws on Ruud 1997b.
15 At least in the Rarh Bangla region, of which Burdwan is part.
16 Although most written material is in English. Normally, only Bengali courses
are fully taught in Bengali.
17 Another important medium for the SCB form was the radio. I owe this
point to Sudipto Kaviraj.
18 Acharya 1978, 1986. Acharya (1981) has a particular grudge against
Rabindranath’s primer, Sahaj Path. This ‘poetic’ primer is considered essential
by many bhadralok to a proper ‘Bengali’ education.

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5
Caste Stereotypes and
Com m unist Mobilization

EXCESSES AND TYPICAL VILLAGE POLITICS

There is nothing unnatural in some mistakes occurring or some excesses
being caused through over-enthusiasm in a movement involving lakhs [lit­
erally ‘hundreds of thousands’] of peasants out in the drive for recovery of
vested and benami land [held under false name]. A child learning to walk,
stumbles now and then. [...] Similarly, there have been some mistakes and
excesses during the peasants march.1

he quote that serves as an opening to this chapter is taken from

T a speech that was given over the radio in 1969 by Harekrishna
Konar, then Minister for Land and Land Revenue in West Bengal’s
second United Front (UF) Government. The speech concerned the
success and aims o f the CPM-led land occupation movement and
peasant mobilization. The quote stresses the difficulty involved in
preventing a popular movement from transgressing legal boundaries
or staying within the pure ideological goals. It was a huge movement,
mobilizing hundreds of thousands of peasants. The CPM peasant
organization witnessed a phenomenal growth, and land was occupied
all over the state. The police was largely pacified by the mobilized
peasantry, and landlords fled or succumbed to the new rulers.
The CPM experienced a strong upsurge of support in the rural
areas during the United Front period, as reflected in the election
results (see Chapter One). From 1968 onwards the party also initi­
ated a programme o f mass m obilization, in particular peasant
m obilization. O ther parties soon joined in, but the CPM was the
more successful in this respect. This mobilization came in part as a

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response to the first UF Governments inability to change agrarian

condition through the administrative apparatus. From 1968 onwards
and particularly during the 1969-70 second UF Governm ent,
implementation o f radical land ceilings and redistribution o f land
was effected through mobilized peasants, with the administration
and even the police completely sidelined. Besides being able to mo­
bilize thousands and more for particular events, the Krishak Samiti
(the C PM s peasant wing, although organizationally separate) doubled
its membership within a year to almost one million members. The
party itself, with its much more strict rules for membership, raised
its membership from about 10,000 in 1968 to 23,000 by the end of
1969.2 A partial reason for this success is that the party did indeed
manage to portray itself as the party for the poor. It became regarded
by many among the poor as our party’.3 However, there is no straight
forward relationship between what the party officially wanted and
what it actually wanted, between what its leadership wanted and
what its local activists wanted, or, lastly, between party objectives
and how these were perceived by the poor.
No doubt, as Konar argued, much of the movement— the CPM -
led mobilization of peasants during the years 1968-71— unfolded
without problems and without ending in any untoward incident,
and it met its own goals. But, as indicated by Konar s speech, much
of it was characterized by all sorts of ‘mistakes and excesses’.4 Else­
where Harekrishna Konar characterizes these excesses as ‘typical
village politics’.5There were several types o f ‘excesses’, here grouped
into three. First there were transgressions o f legal or ideological nice­
ties. For instance, lands owned in excess o f the ceiling o f 75 bighas
could be occupied, but in many cases also lands belonging to owners
of less than 75 bighas were also occupied. Second, land legally
under injunction— to be decided by the court— was also occupied
and redistributed. And lastly, there were instances where gener­
ally unpopular individuals were targeted in spite of not fitting any
criteria o f ‘class enemy’.
‘Mistakes and excesses’ often ended in acts o f violence: burning o f
crops or houses, looting of storage houses, post offices, shops, etc.,
even quite a few murders and innumerable instances of creating terror
and fear in the name of the party or possibly with the implicit

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support o f the local party leadership. The mistakes and excesses that
Konar referred to also included instances where party symbols and
colours, party slogans and even pieces of its ideology, and party affili­
ation, were exploited in issues unconnected to the goals of the move­
ment. Inter-and intra-village conflicts, for instance, gained the colours
of party politics, and conflicts over prestige symbols did involve in a
number of cases CPM slogans, symbols, and even local activists. In a
not untypical incident, a CPM-supporting village in Asansol thana
o f Burdwan district was raided in November 1969 and several houses
were burned down and looted. The attackers were from a neighbouring
village, and they were alleged by the police to be either CPI-
sympathisers or belonging to a rival CPM group. Again according to
the police, ‘The clash was due to an altercation in connection with a
jatra [drama] performance’.6 Numerous newspaper reports from the
period suggest that in many instances people were mobilized along
ethnic or communal lines in the name of this or that party (includ­
ing the CPM), and the clashes that did take place often had as much
to do with old tensions, grievances, and antagonisms as they had to
do with a new-found class identity. To say the least, popular percep­
tions o f what the party stood for and why they rallied in its support
was not always what the party leadership would have liked to see.
Rather than constituting the odd deviation, these ‘mistakes and
excesses’ seem to have represented something permanent and inte­
gral to the movement. As a lasting and quite prominent feature, it
reveals something about the mobilization itself. It is striking how a
movement led by a reputedly well-organized and disciplined political
party such as the CPM, with its solid ideological baggage, was still
marred by deviations, including instances of looting, slashing, and
even murder. It is striking how the CPM colours and symbols seem
to have been used by local activists in non-party issues.
Another puzzling aspect of the UF-period mobilization is its
deviation from the values and norms central to the ideology of progress
with which the middle class village leadership was familiar— as has
been outlined in Chapter Four. The ground for mobilization had
been prepared for close to a decade, with the education and intro­
duction of middle-peasant youth to the kind of world-view o f which
the CPM was part. T he jatray for instance, staged by the locals

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themselves, drew inspiration from among others the IPTA, a theatre

movement politically on the radical left. The CPM was part o f the
same ideological environment, and the village had come to be intro­
duced to it by a few select villagers propagating it in their own village
societies. These village youth, now somewhat older, came to func­
tion, according to both senior politicians and students o f the period,
as the crucial link between party and the masses, as the social
segment from among which leaders of the illiterate poor were drawn
during the mobilization.
To what extent were they effective leaders, if they could not
control, perhaps not even substantially colour the movement? And
given the three stage rocket— ideological leadership by the party and
its call for mobilization, local leadership provided by educated middle-
peasants, and the masses (as masses ‘should*) following their lead­
ers— then why the excesses? Was the middle class peasant leader less
than completely devoted to the cause o f mobilization o f the poor?
T hat was quite probable in many cases. But would that not have
hampered the mobilization? Do not the ‘mistakes and excesses’
suggest over-energetic but erroneous mobilization rather than half­
heartedness? And can the poor be thought o f as having willy-nilly
followed die middle-class leadership? Did they react only to economic
compulsions or to their master’s voice?
This chapter will seek to address these questions. Basically, my
argument is two-fold. Those targeted for mobilization— the masses,
the poor— interpreted the mobilization efforts and the movement in
their own terms, based on their own history and experiences. It was
a particularistic world, one in which a fixed 75 bighas distinction
line between ‘rich peasant’ (to be left alone) and ‘landlord’ (whose
excess land could be occupied) made little sense. To put it bluntly,
there was the good landlord and the bad landlord. T he second
element of my argument is that the ‘modern tradition, Bengali flavour’
presented in the last chapter was one of several available ideologies.7
O ther such bodies of values and norms— ‘ideologies’—were more
diffuse but nonetheless well-known and formed rallying-points for
certain group identities. By comparing two jatis, the bagdis and the
muchis, and their involvement in the political mobilization o f the
UF period, we shall see how they identified themselves and were

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identified with different sets o f values and normative systems—

different, although both referred in their own way to the dominant
theme o f hierarchy—which made mobilization possible for one group
and next to unthinkable for the other. The particular nature o f those
ideologies caused a specific perception of the mobilization. This
contributed towards the two jatis’ understanding of the movements
goals and the legitimacy o f forms of action. Those mobilized’ funda­
mentally altered the movement, since any leader is only partly a ‘leader
and is also very much a follower of his ‘followers’ and their perceptions
o f what he must be.
The first section of this chapter will investigate the idiosyncracies
o f the United Front period in Udaynala and Gopinathpur and the
surrounding areas. The next section will investigate the socio­
cultural background and rationale o f one group that participated in
the mobilization and the land occupations, and the last section will
investigate the background and rationale o f a group that did not
participate.

UDAYNALA AND GOPINATHPUR AND T H E UNITED

FRO N T PERIOD

During the years of food scarcity in the mid-1960s, a spun o f political

activity took place in Burdwan (which contributed towards the CPM ’s
later ‘discovery’ of its rural potential). In Raina there were several
instances of looting or similar incidents, and even more rumours o f the
same.8Though the food situation in Raina and Dakshin Damodar was
not particularly precarious, many took the opportunity to rally against
the government. Raina’s Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA),
Dasarathi Tah of the opposition PSP was alleged to have led a procession
o f several thousand peasants, a procession that ended up looting the
hoarded paddy of several landlords in various villages in the Dakshin
Damodar. Paddy ready for the market was also looked from the land of
the Dawn family (who also owned land in Udaynala and Gopinathpur).
After a lull in 1966-67, looting was resumed after the installation
of the first UF Government. It became so rampant that the then
Krishak Samiti leader in Burdwan, Benoy Chowdhuri, had to re­
peatedly denounce it at village meetings throughout Raina: ‘Looting

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is not our ideology’.9 At least officially the party tried to prevent its
members and supporters from looting and other irregular practices,
but it proved difficult. Some months after Chowdhuri’s speeches,
one cloth and ready-made shop and one grocery store in a near by
village H atpur were looted, and the post office in was burnt down.
Efforts were also made to set fire to the Raina police building. A
large gang tried to loot the ration ‘godown’ (storehouse) in
Seharabazar, but this was prevented by the police. Minor cases of
looting took place all the time. In April 1968,360 kg o f paddy owned
by two Udaynala inhabitants but stored in Bajarpur was looted and
lost.10
It is quite clear that many CPM-affiliated individuals (some o f
whom later joined the Congress) participated both in looting and in
dacoity (robberies). It was even rumoured in 1967 that a locally promi­
nent CPM leader (and later member of the Panchayat Samiti) named
Rabin Mukherjee had assassinated one big dacoit named Ganesh
Sarkar. Ganesh Sarkar was also CPM-affiliated and had organized
and participated in dacoities and looting himself. In an earlier in­
stance during the food movement he had apprehended and stolen a
cargo of paddy illegally destined for the market. He then sold the
paddy locally at below the going rate, in the party’s name. The owner
of the cargo was one Akbar who was also a CPM supporter. The
reason for the murder, it is alleged, had to do with intra-party rival­
ries among different bandit groups scrambling for influence and loot,
contesting the use of the party symbols and colours.
In 1969, a dacoit in the neighbouring thana o f Khandaghosh was
chased by the police. He hid his weaponry at the house of Manuar
Ali in Udaynala, who was his sister’s husband. Someone named Ohab
tipped off the police, and Manuar was sure this was his old enemy
Ohabsaheb of Udaynala. His brother-in-law’s dacoit gang consisted
mainly of bagdis, and the Udaynala bagdis for once supported Manuar
Ali against Ohabsaheb. Ohabsaheb’s house was ‘bombed’ (a ‘Molotov
cocktail’ perhaps, since the straw roof caught fire). About a week
later it emerged that Ohabsaheb had not been the informer.
In 1970 it was rumoured in Udaynala that Kajisaheb’s eldest son
was involved with party-affiliated dacoits, and that the loot was shared
in Kajisaheb’s ‘discussion house’ (baithakkhand)y with Kajisaheb’s

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consent.11 In yet another incident, a year later, a militant Congress­

man, Naba Sain, headed a group that engaged in a shoot-out in the
village of Alladipur in Khandaghosh with a locally famous CPM-
supporting dacoit and his supporters. T he village was generally
considered supportive o f the CPM . During the shoot-out locals
either hid or supported the dacoit. The battle was indecisive and
Naba Sain and his men fled. Several people had been wounded and
there were casualties on both sides. The following day Naba Sain
returned with a large gang of Congress strongmen. They attacked
the village and torched it. It burnt to the ground.
T he incident became infamous and contributed to the many
stories about atrocities committed during this period. It also formed
part o f the background for the brutal killing o f Naba Sain and
several members of his family in Burdwan Town.12 Most people in
Udaynala believed Ohabsaheb was involved in the burning o f
Alladipur, although he denied this.
Land occupations constituted an ideologically more correct mode
o f action, and although for long its legality was uncertain, land
occupation during the late 1960s was a much more public statement
than the forms mentioned above. Nevertheless, land occupations too
came to have an air o f secrecy and militancy about them. The occu­
pation of land held in excess of the legal limit (khasAand) or land
held under false name (benamiAznd) was the most striking aspect of
the unrest during the UF period. Such land could legally be taken by
the government and redistributed to the landless, and much o f it had
already been formally vested in the government. The Congress
Governments, however, never put much effort into implementing
this legislation.13 During its first period in office, the UF and its
Land and Land Revenue Minister, Harekrishna Konar, sought to
implement these measures through the ministry’s machinery. The
efforts were largely unsuccessful. During the UF’s second period in
office, Konar called for illegally held land to be occupied by peasants
themselves and for the bureaucrats to come in afterwards to register
the new owners. As per the law, however, lands under injunction (i.e.
with the courts) could not be occupied or redistributed.14 Although
the legality o f such occupation was unclear, the CPM leadership
supported the strategy. In speeches throughout the countryside, Konar

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called peasants to fight the landlords, occupy lands forcefully if

necessary, and cultivate the occupied lands before the legal matters
had been dealt with. The party coined the slogan ‘Peasant, occupy
the land, and then cultivate it’,15 and the strategy was perceived as a
major— perhaps the most popular— aspect of the party’s mobilization
efforts.
In Burdwan at least, the problem for local mobilizers was not
merely that occupation was legally uncertain, although that could
and did lead to clashes with the police.16 Another problem, particu­
larly pronounced in the beginning o f the land-occupation movement,
was that land occupation was perceived by many as dangerous and
even morally wrong. The poor hesitated, were reluctant and cautious,
and did not ‘press forward*.
This can be seen from the experiences o f Gopinathpur, which
remained calm throughout this whole period. No agitation took place,
and the only land occupation within its borders was carried out by
people from Udaynala. The lower classes in Gopinathpur remained
within the factionalist set-up of the village, with the muchis directly
under Bhaskar Mandal as the baroari chairman, the bagdis split
between Sakti Bag and Gobardhan Malik, both in the Bhaskar-headed
alliance, and the dules somewhat in the periphery. There were only
three communists in the village at the time: the near landless labourer
and bagdi Baul Dhaure, and the Mandal brothers Chandi and Sailen.
Baul had few outside contacts and organized only secret meetings
with a few friends. Chandi and Sailen were quite young still, in their
late teens, and not up to facing the potential wrath o f more powerful
villagers. The CPM and the communist mobilization drive does not
appear to have been strong enough to oppose the dom inant forces
in this village.
In the politically far more active Udaynala we also find the poor to
have been quite hesitant at first, relying on the leadership o f the
educated middle-class village leadership. The first instance o f land
occupation within Udaynala took place in 1967. A letter had reached
the villagers from the panchayat chairman (the only leftist chairman
in the Block) urging them to occupy vested land. According to
Udaynalas village historian Najir Haks account, the leftists (including
him self) hesitated because they felt that the people were not

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prepared, that people believed in the ideas of the olden days'.17 Only
the Congressman Ohabsaheb urged for land occupation. He wanted
to implement the legislation o f his party, but nothing came o f this.
W hen land occupations were finally undertaken two years later,
in 1969, the initiative was taken both by those associated with the
CPM and village Congressmen. An outside CPM activist had brought
a list of vested land in the four mouzas of Udaynala and Gopinathpur,
and by then land occupations had become prominent elsewhere in
the district. Vested land was open to occupation, and the following
day a meeting was held with a representative from the Junior Land
Reform Office (JLRO). The names and plots o f 15-16 individuals
owning vested land in Udaynala and Gopinathpur were checked.
The same day people went into the fields and occupied the plots by
raising a red flag on them. Elsewhere large fights took place over
such attempts and some people were even shot. But in Udaynala and
Gopinathpur the targeted landowners were absentee, like the Dawns,
and clashes did not take place.
In this first incident as in later incidents, prom inent villagers
including Ohabsaheb, Hanu Chaudhuri, Hosen Imam, Selimmaster,
N ajir H ak and Kajisaheb provided leadership. O ther villagers
participated in large num bers, not least people from poor or
low-caste households. We note a fairly large and enthusiastic
participation, on two occasions numbering several hundred— quite
substantial for a village of 1,200-1,300— ‘all with lathis and Abdul
Alim with his gun. Among the participants there were three ‘core
groups: the sekhs o f East-para, the saotals, and the bagdis, the latter
being the most active. From among the remaining generally poor
jatis— the namasudras, the malliks and the muchis— only one or
two individuals participated. Altogether some 15 bighas were occupied,
all belonging to absentee owners.
Somewhat later, rumours circulated that the land o f Manuar Munsi
had been vested. There was much discussion about how appropriate
it would be to occupy land held by a fellow villager. Nonetheless, in
March 1970 a delegation of prominent villagers went to the Block
land office to have the rumours confirmed. Manuar Munsi had paid
bribes at this office to prevent them from obtaining an official signature
stating that the land had indeed been vested and could be occupied.

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After a while the signature was nonetheless obtained through

contacts that Fajlul Hosen had at the office. But in spite o f the
official signature, they were very reluctant to do anything against
Manuar Munsi. He was after all a fellow villager, and besides he had
shown himself to be an ardent protector of his wealth. Even with the
signature in hand, the local leaders were hesitant and delayed action.
Nothing might have come of this had not the second UF Government
been dismissed a few days later, on 16th March o f 1970. A number
of villagers went by foot to Calcutta to participate in a protest dem­
onstration (among them were Kajisaheb and ten or eleven others)
while back home Najir Hak, Ohabsaheb and others went into the
fields to occupy Manuar Munsi’s land, equally in a show of protest,
again with the gun and red flags.
O ther minor plots had been occupied in the meantime, and some
of the Udaynala people participated in similar operations in adjacent
villages. None of these actions ever appeared quite safe, neither in
Udaynala nor elsewhere, and an air of semi-legality and secrecy seems
to have stuck to the practice. According to Najir Hak’s w ritten
account, in an incident in 1971 it was decided that the ripe paddy
on a certain plot in Krishnanagar a neighbouring village, would be
cut that night unless there is a clear moon’. Some women were sent
away to relatives for safety.
All occupations were characterized by m ilitant language and
militancy, and the lathis and a gun or two were standard equipment,
even when they faced no immediate threat. Harekrishna Konar is
allegedly to have said in Raina, ‘You, the poor, you have often given
your life in fights [danga] over land, spilt your blood, for somebody
else’s land. Now fight [larai karo, make war’] for your own land, not
others’ land’. This spirit was also found in Udaynala, where the
villagers talked in terms o f ‘war’, ‘spilling blood’, o f ‘force’ and
‘conquering’ the land, while waving lathis and shouting slogans.
The ‘excesses’ and air o f militancy reflected the momentum o f the
movement. These were expressions that reflected the views and
perceptions of those mobilized, their interpretation and understanding
of the phrase ‘make war’. Their views were not always ideologically
‘correct’ but it is in the excesses that we see expressed the very par­
ticularistic sentiments the movement fed on. There is good reason to

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believe that the party, at least in Burdwan, was well aware o f this and
exploited it. For instance, in choosing targets for the early stages of
its mobilization efforts, the CPM in Burdwan was careful to select a
limited number o f ‘the most unpopular jotedars.18It accommodated
other landlords or left them peace, at least for a while. The move­
m ent represented and fed on two coinciding aims: the targeting of
an ‘exploiter class, and the targeting of individuals who did not
conform to popularly held moral codes of conduct. The local party
could not offer cheap loans to the poor, nor higher wages, nor
protection from potential repercussions. W hat it could offer, and
did, was land, redistributed land. However, land redistribution alone
cannot explain the extent and the form o f the mobilization. The
movement also offered redress of old particularistic grievances, and
in doing so it promised meaningful action, even excitement.

CASTE AND CLASS, ca. I960

A breakdown o f landownership by jati (Tables 5.1 and 5.2) in these

two villages, suggests a strong correlation between ritual status and
landowning status around I960; the higher jatis owned in general
sufficient amounts of land to pass as owner-cultivators, while the
lower jatis tended to be landless. Among some o f the low castes one
found a few owner-cultivator and rich peasant families, but in general
they were close to or entirely landless. The muchi, dule and saotal
jatis were invariably land-poor. The higher status groups (aguri, sekh,
etc.), were in general well-off, though these too included a number
of land-poor families.
Those who were landless or land-poor depended on landowners
for employment and food. They also depended on others— employers
or money-lenders— to get them through the lean season before the
harvesting started. Employment in the agricultural processes was
limited to a few months a year. The rest o f the year they were simply
‘sitting around' (hose thaktum). Under such circumstances they were
particularly receptive to whatever small patronage that was forth­
coming. The economic position of the poor was reflected in their
appearance: very simple and often torn clothing, commonly a mere
loincloth, and shirt-less even in winter. Their houses were small and

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T able 5.1. Landownership per household, by size group and jati, in

percentage o f total, Udaynala, 1957

Land Clean- Sekh Nama- Mallik Bagdi Muchi Saotal Total

(bighas) caste* sudra

0-4.9 12.5 13.9 34.8 50.0 54.2 81.8 91.7 35.2

5-9.9 25.0 30.6 4.3 33.3 25.0 18.2 8.3 23.1
10-19.9 12.5 33.3 43.5 16.7 12.5 — — 25.0
20+ 50.0 22.2 17.4 — 8.3 — — 16.7
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
N 8 72 23 6 24 11 12 156
Percent 5.1 46.2 14.7 3.8 15.4 7.0 7.7 99.9

* ‘Clean-caste’ includes bamun, kayastha, bene and kalu.

Sourer, field-data

T able 5.2. Landownership per household, by size group and jati, in

percentage of total, Gopina thpur, ca. 1960

Land Bamun Kay- Aguri Napit Bagdi Dule Muchi Total

(bighas) astha

0-4.9 75.0 33.3 7.1 _ 53.8 100.0 100.0 44.2

5-9.9 — 7.1 — 30.8 — — 9.6
10-19.9 - 55.6 28.6 66.7 7.7 — — 23.1
20+ 25.0 11.1 57.1 33.3 7.7 — — 23.1
Total 100.0 100.0 99.9 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
N 4 9 14 3 13 5 4 52
Percent 7.7 17.3 26.9 5.8 25.0 9.6 7.7 100.0

Sourer, field-data

low and poorly built. They lived in poor and cramped conditions,
and to outsiders their para was congested and dirty. It is clear that in
such a situation land was a great attraction.
However, the amount of land redistributed during the UF period
was very limited: in Udaynala only 15 bighas— not much when hun­
dreds were mobilized— and most was redistributed in minor unviable
plots. Besides, the erstwhile owners immediately put most o f the
land that was redistributed under injunction, as happened elsewhere
in Burdwan and West Bengal. That the redistribution was contested

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and sought to be tried at court, meant a delay o f several years for

settling the final ownership. This not only questioned the legality
but also the security of the redistribution, also in the eyes o f the
recipients. Landowners with the use of lathials forcefully reclaimed
some o f the land that had been redistributed. Occasionally people
trying to till ‘redistributed* land found themselves in severe trouble—
facing threats, economic boycott, and even violence from the former
ow ners. A lthough no such event took place in U daynala or
G opinathpur until 1971-72, they were common enough elsewhere,
both in the Dakshin Damodar and adjoining regions. People were
then sufficiently informed about the violence.
In addition to the chaotic situation in much o f the countryside,
the political situation at the Government level was far from stable.
The infighting among the constituents of the Front became particularly
visible during the second UF Government (1969-70). It seems fair
to suggest that in this situation the rather radical step o f forceful
land occupation and the subsequent tilling of a plot o f land until
recently held by a powerful landlord— and to which one had no more
claim than the support of a party only tenuously in power—was for
the daring, for those willing to fight, and not just for the hungry.
Some o f the redistributed land— probably much less than half—was
never actually tilled. In a few instances in Udaynala the recipients of
redistributed plots sought to sell them, but there were few if any
bidders. This strongly suggests that redistributed land was perceived
as not very secure, over which the present occupant had only a tenuous
hold. Although land was attractive, the method of forceful redistri­
bution was perceived as too controversial and unstable, and caused
many to opt for a wait-and-see attitude. Although many did partici­
pate, many also did not.
So who chose to participate, and who did not? And what moti­
vated the choice? W hat seems to have been important for such a
choice was a sense of identification between the participant and the
party. We have noted that much of the mobilization centred on
issues other than land occupation, and involved modes o f action
that had an air of secrecy, militancy and assertion, and violence. These
modes quite frequently erupted into what Harekrishna Konar termed
‘excesses’. These modes of action and the activities themselves would

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not always coincide with the public strategy o f the CPM movement,
but such inconsistencies were often enough ignored in local action.
The party represented by its local activists condoned and partici­
pated in such actions. Moreover, in Raina as elsewhere much o f the
mobilization (such as land occupations) took part through covert
action, even when formally legal. Such a mode of action, as we shall
see, was not unknown in Raina or elsewhere. O n the contrary, these
were ancient practices. And they were associated with certain groups,
groups that also identified themselves with such activities. These
groups formed the main bulk of manpower behind the mobilization,
the land occupations, and other activities. Other groups that had
not previously identified with these types of activities or with the
values that permitted such activities did not participate to the same
extent. This explains, I believe, why bagdis were more actively in­
volved than the equally poor and untouchable muchis of the same
localities.

DACOITY

This section investigates a particular set of values and a particular

widespread set of activities (at least in the Dakshin Damodar region)
that were associated with the values of assertion and prowess. An
im portant section of the lower castes and the poor were closely
associated with these values and activities. I shall start with the rather
extreme case of dacoity. Dacoity (dakati) or robbery was an old
phenomenon in Bengal and was quite widespread during the UF perio
as well, with some cases taking place even the late 1970s.19 Dacoit
was a form of robbery in which small bands o f five to ten or mor
would steal out at night and raid valuables from rich households
preferably far away from home. Dacoits returned to their home vil­
lage before the break of dawn, and passed the loot on to middlemen
who sold it elsewhere. Locally famous gun-toting cases involved two
raids on the household of the well-off napit Jagatnath Majumdar in
Gopinathpur, and one in Udaynala in the house o f Baulchacha the
money lender. There were also many other minor cases of dacoity.
That the bagdis had a central place in the local history of dacoity is
suggested by the ‘bagdi-dacoit’ as standard character in jatra— along

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with other standard characters such as the poor Muslim* (garib

musalman), the ‘stupid Brahmin (boka bamun) and the ‘clever Barber
(<chalak napit). O ther communities also had dacoits among them. As
mentioned earlier, Manuar Ali of Udaynala had a brother-in-law who
was a dacoit in Khandaghosh. I was given a list of the most famous
dacoits o f Raina thana after Independence, and of the eleven listed
seven were bagdis, the remaining being two Muslims, one kayastha
and one saotal. O f the bagdis, there was one from the bagdi-para of
Udaynala, a locally famous dacoit named Nitai Singh, who had been
active with his group o f five in the 1940s and 1950s. O ther active
bagdi groups operated from neighbouring villages, and some— fur­
ther away. Some of these groups ceased to be active in the 1950s
while others continued into the 1970s.
The dacoit leaders were mostly unusual characters. They rarely
married (although they were not childless) and spent their wealth on
bribes, feasting, and gifts to poorer villagers. Few left any fortune to
pass on. These leaders were the ‘professionals*, but their groups con­
sisted o f four, five, ten or more ‘semi-professionals* who otherwise
pursued ordinary lives. According to my informants, the non-profes­
sional dacoits were motivated by need. It could be hunger, debt, or
expenses for ceremonial feasts. In the general climate of poverty and
inequality, accentuated by the occasional poor harvest, flood or
drought, dacoits enjoyed a degree o f sympathy among large sections
o f the population, although not am ong victim populations. If
caught, dacoits were always summarily and severely punished, and
if not killed they were handed over to the police (in near-by
Krishnanagar one dacoit was caught and beaten to death by local
villagers as late as in 1971). To participate in dacoity required daring
and courage, physical strength and agility in the use o f weapons, and
the willingness to use violence if needed. To participate in dacoity
demanded knowledge and dexterity. Physical strength was required
for the long marches, often through mud since the best time for
dacoity was the dark and muddy rainy season. For a hasty retreat
through muddy fields dacoits often used stilts. Should the alarm be
raised during a raid, the dacoits would communicate in codes u n ­
intelligible to outsiders. Above all, courage was required: To be caught
meant a beating, possibly death, and at the very least imprisonment,

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and starvation for the family. A majority o f such semi-professionals

were bagdis even in groups led by non-bagdis. O f other com m uni­
ties, the sekh Muslims were also considered to have been quite promi­
nent, followed by a variety of jatis.
Among some low-status sections, however, dacoits were accepted
and occasionally accorded near-hero status. This was particularly true
among bagdis, a correlate of the many bagdis in dacoity. People in
the bagdi-paras used to tell stories about dramatic events during raids,
about the exploits of famous dacoits, of their courage and cunning,
of the amount of loot they got, of close escapes and dramatic deaths.
Pride was attached to daring exploits and in general to their some­
what reckless reputation. These were stories o f daring courage,
cunning, fabulous wealth, and largesse. Below are two examples o f
such narratives.
Baldeb Pakre [a bagdi name] was a big dacoit. He was very dark, and his
shoulders were so broad he had to walk sideways through doors. His home
was in Sahajpur [in Raina], his fathers family was very poor and he had
many brothers and sisters. When Baldeb was young, his father stole some
paddy for his starving family, but he was caught by the landlords lathials
and beaten to death. In anger Baldeb set fire to [the straw roofs of] the
landlord’s houses and fled the village. For many years he lived from begging
and majuri in Hugli and many other places, where he came to learn about
the rich landlords there. He made his name as lathial and became part of
Gautam Mandal’s [dacoity] gang. After Gautam died, Baldeb became leader
of that gang and raided many villages there. He became a famous dacoit
and all villages were afraid of his gang. Then he came back to Raina and
raided the household of the man who had killed his father. With the loot,
he went home to his mother, and gave all his sisters more splendid
marriages than had been seen in Raina for many years.
Uday Santra [also a bagdi name] and his brother Amal were big dacoits in
Khandaghosh [a thana neighbouring Raina], and the police were always
chasing them. But they were both very cunning and always got away. One
night they were staying in the village of Ranapur [very likely a bagdi
village], when the landlord there heard about it. He came with all his lathials,
but Uday and Amal got away and ran quickly over the muddy fields and
raided his house. A week later, Amal went to the thana and said, ‘Daroga-
saheb, I am tired of running. I will tell you how to get my brother and his
gang, and you will let me go.* The daroga agreed, and Amal said that next

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Monday they will raid the house of the big money-lender Subol Chatterjee
in Bajitnagar. On that day the daroga took all his men to Bajitnagar and hid
there. But Uday took his gang to the thana, freed his brother, and together
they raided and burnt the thana.
Sankar Bag of Udaynala’s bagdi para who told me these stories,
was himself strongly rumoured to have been involved in dacoity. His
rival in the para, Manik Dhara, allegedly functioned as middleman
for a dacoity gang over many years, and at one point even cheated
them. This may or may not be true, but Sankar and Manik them­
selves have done little to denounce the rumours. The mode in which
these stories was narrated suggested a broad acceptance of the prac­
tice o f dacoity. Dacoity stories primarily found legitimacy in poverty
or injustice but only as an introduction to the central themes of
heroism, cunning, physical prowess, and largesse. We find in the
narration of such stories a delight in the ability to fool the more
powerful, to get hold o f their wealth and ‘distribute’ these in frantic
spending-sprees. The tradition of telling stories of this kind was promi­
nent and made dacoits a valued part of low-caste folklore: ‘Robin
H ood’ heroes with an unarticulated sense of justice.
I suspect these stories to be a bit ‘updated’ and adapted to the
‘political correctness’ of contemporary society (and the assumed
values of the visiting anthropologist), particularly this targeting of
landlords and money-lenders. In practice, far from all victims were
rich. Many were relatively poor, but were raided at a time when they
had accumulated cash or valuables (such as borrowed money for
marriage feasts). Dacoits could also be hired. O n occasions they were
‘employed’ by landlords or others to raid an enemy’s household. The
pattern would be the same, and it was thus difficult to tell that the
target had not been picked accidentally. As Najir Hak put it to me:
‘When someone unknown raids your house and takes your gold,
how do you know why they picked you? Maybe they were sent by
your enemy, or maybe they knew you have an enemy and will blame
him’. Such use of dacoity, a blending of motives, was a well-known
practice. T hat was the case when two major Raina landlords fought
each other in the late 1940s. Banerjee o f Nandagram had a long­
standing dispute over no less than 150 bighas o f land with Subhas
Ghosh, landlord and zamindar in Bolla. Banerjee allegedly sent a

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gang of dacoits to raid Ghoshs household. In retaliation Ghosh

brought a gang of lathials and labourers to cut and carry away the
ripe paddy on Banerjees lands. Banerjee turned up with his lathials,
but lost in the ensuing fight. Two days later, Ghoshs in-laws’ house­
hold was raided by dacoits, and the straw roofs set on fire and a large
quantity of goods stolen. In both cases the dacoits got to keep most
of the loot, according to the stories.

‘WE ARE BAGDIS!’: T H E BAGDI STEREOTYPE

The qualities required in dacoity, dacoity s place in the outskirts of

mainstream society, and the stealthy manner in which dacoity was
carried out, all have striking similarities with the image and identity
of the bagdi. The similarities between the two are in im portant areas
such as the premium given to the value of courage and to physical
strength, dexterity in their use of weapons and even willingness to
use violence, and in the position on the fringes o f society. The
following is an investigation into the bagdi identity.
The phrase ‘We are bagdis!’ (amra bagdi!) was commonly pointed
to by bagdis and others alike to suggest the pride with which bagdis
regarded themselves. Although they were poor, low-caste (‘untouchable’,
or, in contemporary parlance, ‘Scheduled Caste’) and until recendy
considered filthy and uncivilized, bagdis were not in general thought
of as a group that tried to hide their identity or that felt any shame,
as would otherwise have befitted an untouchable community at the
bottom of the ritual hierarchy. O n the contrary, they are portrayed
in oral history as proud and defiant towards others, as fierce and
quite willing to live upto all the stereotypes about them. As we shall
see, these were stereotypes about drunkenness, wildness, and violence—
for this they were feared. One elderly bagdi leader from Udaynala,
Sankar Bag, in a bit of an understatement, characterized bagdis o f
the old days as ‘mischievous’ (badmaisi). He then went on at great
length to describe how they used to fight, steal and drink. This
image was quite consistent with how the bagdis were regarded in the
villages some thirty or more years back. Even as far back as British
times, the bagdis of Raina and Burdwan had a dubious reputation.
To the British they were known to be fierce and warrior-like, and at

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least one report termed them a ‘Criminal caste although they were
never officially branded as such.20
Bagdis comprise a sizeable portion o f the population in Raina and
in Burdwan district generally. The picture o f the bagdi presented
here— a stereotype— was not of local significance only. It applied
broadly in the district, where it was sustained in popular imagina­
tion and in actual behaviour. The bagdis were a significant jati in the
Dakshin Damodar area and the rest o f Burdwan district. The 1901
Census reported that 24.3 percent of the population in Raina were
bagdis. This made them the single largest jati. ‘Musalman Sekh* and
aguri followed as number two and three with 20.0 and 11.1 percent
o f the total respectively.21 In the last census that listed caste (the
1931 Census), bagdis constituted 11 percent o f the total population
o f Burdwan district. Sekhs were the single largest jati at 18 percent,
while aguris comprised 7.6 percent of the district population (in the
1921 C ensus).22 In Udaynala and G o p in ath p u r, too, bagdis
com prised a large proportion of the population. To recapitulate from
Chapter Two, the bagdis comprised 15 percent o f the population in
Udaynala in 1937, and 33 percent in Gopinathpur in I960.
N ot all bagdis were mischievous*, even in the early 1960s. One
family in Udaynala and two families in Gopinathpur had changed
their lifestyles from that of the ‘typical bagdi*. Dasarathi Porel was an
educated school teacher, the Maliks were thrifty and devout Hindus,
and M anik Dhara was devout and increasingly rich. Nevertheless,
most bagdis followed norms and practices that clearly set them off
from the mainstream Hindu or Muslim population. As opposed to
the higher status jatis, bagdi women worked in the fields (mostly
their own) or as servants in landowner households. Women enjoyed
more freedom of movement and had in general a status more on par
w ith the men than what was common among high status jatis.
Before the late 1960s and 1970s, dowry was not common in bagdi
marriages in contrast to most other H indu jatis (including other
lower castes). O n the contrary, the groom paid a small ‘bride price*.
This was at least the custom when marriages were arranged in the
sense of being premeditated and agreed by parents, which most were.
But a number of marriages were undertaken by the couples them­
selves, where the involvement of parents or other relatives was more

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limited. Bagdis of both these villages also practised widow-remar­

riage at least until the 1960s. At least three relatively young indi­
viduals (in their 20s and 30s) in Udaynalas bagdi para and two in
Gopinathpurs bagdi para had mothers who had been married twice.
There were probably more, but a sense o f embarrassment made it
difficult to inquire in more detail.
According to some bagdi informants, though others disagree,
bagdis in the old days held relatively liberal views on sex. They
suggested that sexual intercourse before marriage and extra-marital
affairs were not infrequent. Furthermore, divorce was not uncommon
and not particularly frowned upon. Rather, sexual prowess was an
important part of the male bagdi image, while bagdi women in the
popular stereotype were considered sexually very attractive and
passionate. The way non-bagdis saw bagdis was not all that different
from how they saw themselves, although they themselves saw these
characteristics as positive: physically strong,, stocky, black and beauti­
ful, with curly hair, somewhat uncontrollable, and at the same time
attractive. See for instance the following story collected in a bagdi-para
many years ago.23
The god Mahadev [Shiva] has gone to earth but does not return. His wife,
Parvati, sends some retainers to look for him, and they return telling her
that he has found a place on earth of such abundance and beauty that he
does not want to leave. The place is Bengal. She goes out to have a look for
herself, and she sees the abundance, the fertile paddy fields, the ponds filled
with fish, the trees abounding in fruit. She understands perfeedy why he
does not want to return to her. So in order to have him back, she decides to
ruin the place.
One day Mahadevs nephew is out walking in the fields. There he sees a
bagdi woman [bagdint\ destroying the ripe paddy, ruining the fruit trees
and emptying the ponds of fish. He rushes over to stop her, but she uses
foul language [khistt\ at him. This scares him, and he runs back to his uncle.
Mahadev asks his nephew what the woman looked like, was it perhaps your
aunt? No, answers the nephew, this woman is short, dark, with curly hair,
and has big breasts. Determined to prevent this woman from ruining his
fields, Mahadev goes to find her. He is very angry and decides to shout at
her. However, when he secs her beauty he cannot shout at her and only asks
in a low voice, ‘Where is your husband?’ Her husband, she answers, is old,
beats his wife, and has gone far away. Mahadev pondered that the

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description might be of himself. So he offers to fish and harvest for the

woman, and does so. After the fishing and harvesting, he wants her to cook
him a meal while he is having a bath and resting. She agrees and says she
will go and find some ingredients. To tie her to himself and make her come
back, he gives her a ring. She takes the ring and leaves, but she never
returns. Mahadev goes looking for her in heaven, where he meets Parvati.
Parvati asks him if he has given his ring to a bagdini. He admits his errors
and stays in heaven.

The story suggests that bagdis are both dangerous and destructive,
and at the same time irresistibly attractive even to gods. A beautiful
but wild and uncontrollable people, the story seems to say, the very
opposite of the refined and delicate caste-Hindus with their fair skin,
values of chastity, and frugal and respectable lifestyles. This part o f
the stereotype may or may not have been true in actual practice.
While upper caste men exploited women of certain other low castes,
this was rarely done to bagdi women— though this may not be
universally true. W hat is important and interesting to us here is the
stereotype, and how it fed onto their identity. O ther sides of the
imagery were much closer to actual life-style. This ‘bagdiness*, this
image o f bagdis as sexually attractive and of dangerous beauty and
pride, coincides with their image as irresponsible, quarrelsome, and
prone to theft.
Bagdis were also known to pursue a frivolous lifestyle, with heavy
drinking, brawling and much quarrelling. Their production of
liquor was substantial, with almost every household producing its
own liquor. Bagdis also had a reputation for being fond of fights, to
which numerous stories of disputes, fights and spilling of blood testify.
Excessive drinking and brawling at their festivities made others stay
away. The bagdi Ulaichandi celebration was particularly notorious
for excessive drinking. Bagdis were also ‘known to be prone towards
small-scale theft, a common practice particularly during times of
duress. Quite often well-off villagers found that ripe paddy had been
cut from the fields at night, or that fish had been caught in their
ponds. Occasionally chickens, goats or husked rice or straw vanished
from compounds in the main parts of the village. Whether the bagdis
were more involved in such practices than other groups o f poor is
not certain but possible. Selimmastefs diaries contain numerous

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references to instances of theft and subsequent allegations against

one or the other bagdi. Some bagdis also acknowledge that their
contribution to the rate of these activities was quite substantial.
W hether or not this was so, the blame was more readily put on bagdis
than on other low-status and poor jatis. Because o f this, bagdis were
excluded from the communal guarding of ripe paddy fields against
theft (the rakh) until the early 1980s; to an extent it was directed
against them.
At the bottom of these stereotypes lies persuasive cultural material
that was well-known and had given rise to one of the more dominant
perceptions o f social divisions in rural western Bengal, indeed in
India: The profound difference between ordered caste society and
disordered chaotic non-caste society. This difference was reproduced
in innumerable ways, from hairstyle and clothing to marital and
martial practices, to language,24 but most particularly in the position
of women. The lower castes were filthy, lived in cramped conditions
and ate poorly— a result of their economic positions as dependent
labourers. This condition also (re-)confirmed to others many of the
stereotypes about the lower castes. The bagdis life-style, their mores,
ritual and social traditions, the relative freedom o f movement for
women, all confirmed their place within this broader theme. These
traits in bagdi behaviour are not all that different from those o f other
ritually low jatis. The importance of the distinction between the ritu­
ally clean cultivators and the lower castes and tribals becomes
particularly clear in historian Rajat Rays readings o f Tarashankar
Banerjee’s novels, set in Birbhum in the early decades o f this
century.25 Ray found three social groups: the bhadralok (landlords),
the chasis (ritually clean cultivators) and the lower castes (also known
as the majursy labourers). One of the most striking aspects o f Birbhum s
social world, Ray points out, is that these groups were so different as
to have distinct emotional patterns. It is the contrast between the
clean caste chasi cultivator and the low caste labourer that interests
us here. The chasi characteristics also fitted Muslims o f comparable
status, such as the sekh Muslims of Udaynala.
A model chasi lifestyle evolved around notions o f frugality and
avoidance o f excesses of any kind. Hard work and dedication to the
land (particularly if inherited) were crucial elements, and cleanliness

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in dress and manners their outward appearance.26 In their non-work

related pursuits in particular, great care was taken to avoid being
seen engaging in excesses such as drink, womanising, brawling and
slandering. Women of a chasi household would be kept within the
confines of the household, and their sexual life closely guarded. A
wholesome chasi would also scrupulously execute his ritual or reli­
gious duties, and would normally be literate enough to read reli­
gious literature. The rituals and mores were ‘cleaner* in a ritual sense,
like abstention from drink, ban on widow remarriage and the use of
real Brahmins. Chasi deities were from higher up in the Hindu pan­
theon than those of the lower castes.
In general the lower castes did not follow the rules and norms of
the clean-caste owner-cultivator society to which they were economi­
cally and politically subjected. The Kahar Bauris of the novel Hansuli
Banker Upakatha had few eating inhibitions, practised extensive
commensality, drank heavily, and had a defiling caste occupation.
Economically they were poor and dependent and entangled in end­
less webs of debt and patronage. They were illiterate and their reli­
gious beliefs were of a world of spirits of the dead and of animals, of
ghosts, and of the erratic ways of wrathful and vengeful gods. It is in
sexual mores we find the ultimate contrast to chasi society, a con­
trast that expressed social position. At one point Ray underscores
this by characterizing a particular labourer couple like this: ‘Param
and his wife Kaloshashi are a fairly typical couple— Param is a dacoit,
Kaloshashi a prostitute (Ray 1987: 714). The sexual norms o f the
Kahars were lax compared to the chasis. They largely accepted pre-
and extramarital sex, divorce, and widow remarriage. At the same
time the purchase of or exploitation of Kahar womens sexual favours
by clean caste men formed an integral aspect o f the relationship
between the groups. Sexual favours could not be sold freely, to anyone
with money, only to the babus and Mandals o f the locality, to the
landlords and leading villagers. ‘Sexual servility and sexual freedom
sustain[-ed] each other, writes Ray (1987: 739). He argues lucidly
that sexual mores— as concerns women, to be sure— are central to
perceptions of caste ranking and to the construction of subjectiveness
within the larger construct of a ritual hierarchy. Sexual mores were
both instruments of social formation and tangible expressions of

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status. ‘Liberal’ sexual mores were paralleled by low ritual status,

landlessness, dependency— and vice versa. All these elements marked
their difference with the clean caste chasis, who were known for their
sexual restraint (for women) and preoccupation with ritual cleanli­
ness, their economic independence and frugal morality, their
dom inance in village affairs, their brahminical rituals and Puranic
gods. The lower castes were not only lower, they were different,
following mores that marked their origins as the untouchable other,
which also implied their lowliness and their dependency.
W hether or not the bagdis of Raina several decades later still
fitted this picture is not terribly important. W hat is important is
that to an extent bagdis themselves actively cultivated this image and
exploited it vis-i-vis other villagers. As landless majurs one would
have expected bagdis, like other jatis, to have behaved in a subordi­
nate fashion. But in addition to being subordinate they were also
insubordinate. They openly defied norms o f interaction between
superior and inferior, between labourer and landowner. They smoked
in front o f employers, refused but the bare necessities o f respect, and
could on occasion even pick an argument with landowners and yell
at them. During festivities bagdis did not hide their drinking even
from the eyes of high-status people such as the quasi-aristocratic Jiku
Chaudhuri. And people such as Bhaskar Mandal rarely ventured into
the bagdi-para. This tendency to defy superiors, or at least to deny
them customary displays of respect, was attributed to bagdis only.
Other jatis, such as muchis or namasudras, did not allow themselves
such liberties.27 Generally bagdis were not ‘reliable’ or amenable as
labourers, but were known to be strong and sought after when heavy
work was to be executed. They were not ideal subordinates but rather
needed subordinates because of their dexterity with sticks and their
physical prowess. Bagdis were not employed in spite of their insub­
ordination, but because of it.

BAGDIS IN UDAYNALA VILLAGE AFFAIRS

The bagdi image was actively maintained and exploited in village

politics by both village leaders and bagdis themselves. For the bagdis,
it secured them a peculiar place in village society and allowed them

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some freedom from the constraints of subordination demanded by

mainstream society. We may recall, for instance, what their ability as
fighters did for their position in Gopinathpur, securing them an
im portant role in Bhaskar Mandals net of allies (see Chapter Three).
T h e bagdis of Udaynala originally functioned as lathials for the
Chaudhuri family, who was very prominent in Udaynala until about
I960. W hen this familys position was challenged in the late 1950s,
the family lost its riches in an effort to retain the bagdis support.
T h e case is interesting for what it reveals about the clout, however
limited, that this group of dependent subordinates enjoyed in relation
to their superiors.
T he role of bagdis in village affairs did not end there. During the
1960s they continued to be involved as fighters and the nature of
their role is well illustrated by the two following incidents. The first
is famous in village lore and is also mentioned in Selimmaster’s diaries.
It took place in September 1967. Ohabsaheb, who was then a prominent
village leader and manager of the village cooperative, was accused of
embezzlement. It was alleged that he had taken 60 kg o f sugar from
the cooperative and sold it in a neighbouring village. A great number
o f people were angry with him, and a bichar (village court) was called
and held. The bichar was held in the school compound one evening,
where a large number of people were present. Many were very angry,
and shouted^ and intimidated him ‘in a militant manner’ (wrote
Selimmaster). Before the meeting could get properly under way, how­
ever, sounds were heard from behind the school building. A large
group of people—who could not be seen because of the darkness—
were shouting and making intimidating and fierce sounds by beat­
ing lathis on the ground. Everyone understood the bagdis had come
in Ohabsahebs support, and that they had probably drunk a lot. In
another context I was told that ‘everyone knew what the bagdis were
capable of when drunk’. The meeting rapidly disintegrated and people
went home. The issue was left unsolved.
T he second incident took place two years later, and again
Ohabsaheb, now as secretary of the cooperative society, was discov­
ered to have cheated the cooperative of several thousand rupees.
Villagers sought to have Ohabsaheb tried at a bichar, but he avoided
it. However, the bagdis normally supportive of him were also angry,

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as they had apparendy not been in on the deal. Paddy started to

vanish from Ohabsahebs fields at night, and a stack o f straw was set
on fire. Everybody ‘knew’ these were the doings of bagdis. Only bagdis
would steal from Ohabsahebs field, as everybody else would fear the
bagdis supporting him . Eventually, O habsahebs father-in-law,
Baulchacha, paid a large sum of money towards the forthcoming
festival season in the bagdi-para and the problem blew over. W hat­
ever grip Ohabsaheb as a major village leader had on the bagdis it
was tenuous.
When we look at the previously mentioned events o f land occupa­
tion and other forms of action during the period o f the United Front
Governments, contemporaneous with the two incidents mentioned
here, we find to some extent a continuation o f the bagdis role in
local politics, but under another banner. The CPM , although led by
high-status villagers, aimed at mobilizing the sections o f the popula­
tion identified as poor and low-caste, among whom were the bagdis.
The CPM-led mobilization and activities relied on Volunteers and
activists who would be able to perform the same tasks as lathials o f
old, namely intimidation of enemies (class or otherwise), a willing­
ness to be part of covert actions, to participate in fights or demon­
strations of might, such as militant marches, forceful occupation o f
land, boycott and intimidation of police personnel, fighting land­
lords’ lathials, and the like.

T H E SHIFTING ALLIANCES OF T H E 1970s

The image of the bagdi as fierce and willing to use violence enabled
them to secure a place in the new CPM raj, at least in the Dakshin
D am odar area. But that was not a self-evident and autom atic
development. After the UF period came a period o f repression of
communists and reversal of the land occupations. This was the period
of Presidents Rule in West Bengal in 1971-72, then Congress rule
under C hief Minister S. S. Ray from 1972, followed by Indira
G andhi’s repressive Emergency period from 1975 to 1977. In
Udaynala the bagdis under alleged dacoit Sankar Bag had been active
in land occupations, demonstrations, and other activities in support
of the leftists in the village and the policies o f the UF Governments.

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Now, w ith the repression, they sided w ith Ohabsaheb and the
Congress, engaged in reversal o f land occupations, chasing o f
communists, and intimidation of other villagers who had been active
in the same UF-time activities. During these years, a group o f bagdis
would daily sit in front of Ohabsahebs house, preventing anyone
from making open threats at him. They also escorted him around
the village. Occasionally, at night, they would run through the village
shouting and waving lathis. Several people were on occasions beaten
up, including one Sadek Ali who was so thoroughly thrashed by a
group of drunk bagdis that he setded in another village never to
return.
This situation of local autocracy did not last for more than a few
years. Ohabsaheb and his methods became immensely unpopular
among other villagers, and eventually in 1974, he was forced out of
village affairs. I shall return to this event in the following chapter.
The consequence for the bagdis was that they too were forced out of
village politics, with no one asking for their support anymore. For
the rest of the Emergency period the village remained without any
dominant leader. No major initiatives were taken, and no patronage
was forthcoming from the Congress dom inated administration.
Kajisaheb was considered an authority, true, but he was partly in
hiding and certainly without the reliable support o f a ruling party.
During this period then, the bagdis of Udaynala were free from the
political domination of the main village and engaged in extensive
liquor production and sale.
In 1977 the CPM won the state elections, and the old commu­
nists could again enter the centre stage o f politics, including at the
village level. In Udaynala, Kajisaheb, as the seniormost villager asso­
ciated with the party and a member since the early 1970s, naturally
became more prominent in village affairs, a village leader. There were
others as well— Najir Hak as the senior associate, and a host o f younger
people, then in their 20s and 30s. The communists of Udaynala, as
their counterparts in other villages including Gopinathpur, initiated
a range of activities. One of the first obvious tasks in Udaynala was
to mobilize the poor. W ithout a following o f ardent supporters little
could be done in face of the opposition of landowners in the village.
In an interesting event the bagdis were again enlisted in support of

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the CPM , and they were to form the backbone o f CPM activity in
the village.
Extensive liquor production had started in the bagdi hamlet when
patronage from Ohabsaheb dried up in 1974 and went on unchecked
in the early days o f the new CPM raj in 1977- The CPM was heir to
much of the bhadralok ideology of previous decades and could barely
tolerate such activity.28 One day the new village leader, the CPM
activist and card-holding member Kajisahcb, led a procession o f
village notables towards the bagdi-para with the objective o f curbing
their drinking and illicit liquor production, so harmful to the
ordinary labourer. The procession was met by angrily shouting bagdis,
who waved lathis and threw pieces of dried mud at the notables.
Persuasion a complete failure, police were brought in a few days
later and destroyed all the liquor production equipment they found.
The bagdis were naturally angry and very displeased with the new
raj, and the local CPM leadership saw an obvious need for reconcili­
ation— not least because of the potential benefit o f such a vigilant
and militant group as supporters for the new party in power. W ithin
a m onth or two a rapprochement took place. Kajisaheb enrolled
ex-dacoit and former Congress-supporter Sankar Bag into the local
CPM set-up. Sankar was made the CPM s candidate for Udaynala
South for the 1978 panchayat election. For the next three five-year
periods, until 1993, bagdi members represented Udaynala South. .
Over the next few years the bagdis proved crucial to the CPM in
the village as it engaged in a range o f radical activities. One o f the
first tasks was to identify land to be redistributed. In many areas
known to the villagers here, clashes took place between landowners
and land-occupying communists. Such clashes did not occur in
Udaynala, but the land occupation— on the remaining bits and pieces
of Manuar Munsi’s land— was shrouded in an air o f militancy and
danger. The party activists brought lathis and guns into the field,
stood close together, and shouted slogans. There were constant
dem onstrations or marches against or in favour o f various issues:
Many demonstrations centered on external events, protesting against
the Central Government for instance, but sometimes something very
local was taken up, such as a casteist incident or some unfortunate
money-lender. The more important aspect o f these activities, I was

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told, was the effort to create organizations that could effectively

demand higher wages. Wages were raised three times during the late
1970s and early 1980s, twice after a strike of labourers. Such unrest
took place in Gopinathpur too, but only once. T hat was a prolonged
strike by labourers under the instigation, it was held, of party leaders,
some o f whom were from Udaynala. Communist landowners in
Udaynala gave employment to the Gopinathpur labourers for the
duration of the strike.
The earliest confrontation between communist-organized labourers
and landowners in Udaynala is informative about the need and use
o f ‘the masses in local Communist campaigns. After a march around
the village, the labourers had assembled in the school ground, where
they staged a demonstration and shouted slogans. A large number of
landowners had in anticipation also organized themselves— in the
‘Udaynala Krishi Samiti’ (‘Udaynala cultivator society’)— and met
at a place not far away from the school ground after a much smaller
march. The two rival meetings developed into a match o f slogan
shouting, which the landowners lost. These shows o f strength were
im portant for the CPM as they enabled the local party to reach a
compromise with the otherwise powerful landowners. The struggles
between the two groups went on for several years, and although physi­
cal clashes did not take place, there was a plentiful history o f demon­
strative meetings and marches, shouting of slogans, waving o f lathis
and red flags, and the occasional strike and boycott— all under the
intimidating leadership of the alleged ex-dacoit Sankar. The bagdis
constituted the main group o f ‘masses’ in the demonstrations and
the marches in both villages. In addition, the campaigns were also
actively supported by two large families of sekhs from the east para of
Udaynala, and in Gopinathpur by the dule community (who were
ritually related to the bagdis). The leadership in both villages came
from dominant caste communities. A number o f less prominent in­
dividuals from these communities also participated. The muchis con­
tributed only a few individuals, and only in the early phases. The
namasudra and mallik communities were more numerous but quite
shy o f the slogan shouting and lathi waving. The militancy was still
delivered by the bagdis.

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T H E BAGDI, AND ASSERTION AS IDENTITY AND

SOURCE OF INFLUENCE

We should keep in mind that bagdis were not the only group that
was militant. Members of other communities too were engaged in
various more or less illegal activities, prior to the UF mobilization,
during it, and after the coming of the CPM raj. Members o f the
dominant sekh caste and aguri jatis were often found in marches,
some had allegedly participated in dacoities, or in fights, or had
shouted slogans and waved fiercely with lathis or guns at one or the
other occasion. The point made here is that the particularistic redressal
of grievance, the violence with which these were executed, the heroism
attributed to the dacoit-robber and the willingness to fight together,
all point to values where prowess, daring, and particularism had a
pride of place. It constitutes an ideology, a reasonably coherent set of
values that compare to other sets of values. It compares for instance
to the norms that made up the ideals of the Hindu householder: the
thrift and fidelity to his land, the protection and confinement of
women, his devotion, cleanliness, and restraint. O r it would compare
to the ideology o f the ‘modern tradition, Bengali flavour we
encountered in the previous chapter, with its emphasis on social work,
professed values of equality and progress, education, poetry-recitals,
and jatras.
The ideology that supported activities such as dacoity and fight­
ing, uninhibited drinking and brawling at festivals, and denial of
signs of respect to superiors, did not belong to the bagdis alone. It
was known by all, although not shared by all. It constituted a
particular, reasonably well defined and confined set o f values that
bagdis more than other groups identified with and lived out. N ot
all bagdis, and not only bagdis, but more bagdis than most other
groups. In these two villages, most bagdis o f Udaynala under the
leadership o f Sankar Bag, and most bagdis in G opinathpur under
the leadership o f Sakti Bag, adhered to this ideology. They had
historically been associated with such values and activities and
continued into the 1960s and 1970s to actively engage in such
activities. In spite o f the scorn and contem pt others would have
for them, the activities and the image in particular were positive

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points o f identification for them , creating a strong sense o f worth:

We are bagdis! At the same time this stereotype was useful and
allowed them to obtain some patronage. We may recall the first
incident m entioned above, where the bagdis came to Ohabsaheb’s
support and scared off other villagers: Not a drop of blood was shed,
nor anyone beaten. Nothing violent happened. Yet a threatening
image served their purpose.
In the mid-1960s, but more clearly a few years later, the line be­
tween political parties and gangs of dacoits was far from clear, at least
in the popular perception and in rumours. Rumours contributed
towards creating the environment in which options were created,
and action was taken or forsaken. Rumours alleging the involvement
of locally important party politicians in close relationships with dacoits
and in looting, created an unstable and fluid situation. Equally,
rumours contributed towards giving the CPM a more popular image.
The party of the bhadraloky the gentlemen, was so to speak coming
to the chhotolok, the little people, and was seen as using, even if
unintentionally, ways and means associated with the poor and the
lower castes, w ith quasi-legitim ate forms o f action. T he party
appeared to have stepped down from its pedestal of formal meet­
ings, petitions, ‘calls for action and demonstrations, or instructive
jatras, which had so far been its main contribution to political life in
Burdwan.
The relationship of bagdis to village leaders was always a negoti­
ated one, most visibly so in Gopinathpur, but also in Udaynala where
they almost let themselves be bought by the Ali brothers. The rela­
tionship was always one in which their subordination and fighting
capacity had to be rewarded and secured. Their strength was invari­
ably put at the service o f someone else, but the relationship was one
o f negotiated mutuality, a suspense-filled truce. Originally as poor
and dependent as anyone else the bagdis gained some extra leverage
by acting as lathials for village leaders. Anyone could act as a lathial
provided he had the physical strength and the skill,29 but the bagdi
was particularly efficient as a lathial because o f fearful images and
stereotypes about the bagdi. Brawls and drinking, irreverent behaviour
and actual fighting skills sustained it. O ther areas or groups may
have had, other stereotypes, but in Burdwan district and possibly

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most o f Rarh Bangla the popular stereotype o f the bagdi was o f

someone irresponsible who at the same time was a good fighter.
The CPM-led mobilization was not all that different, or at least a
number of the same featues could be recognized. W hen the local
CPM ’ers in 1964-65 erected roadblocks to prevent paddy smuggling,
they made litde impact on local imagination. When in 1968 the
party called for mobilization, and when in 1969 land occupations
finally got underway in the Dakshin Damodar, ‘the masses’ were
mostly hesitant and unwilling. Only a few groups came forth at first—
the most daring, those most ready to take up a fight. As the mobili­
zation and land occupation unfolded, landlord and landowner reac­
tion caused clashes, fuelling the need to use a variety o f methods that
would impress potential followers and opponents of their might and
willingness to fight. At the height o f the movement the situation was
tense, with threats, intimidation, violence and, even deaths taking
place. It was then necessary to operate stealthily, often at night, in
order to avoid confrontation, or make sure to carry weapons if op­
erating during daylight. By this time the movement headed into
several directions, including instances o f looting, raids and gross
intimidation. The aim of the mobilization was blurred.
The bagdi core of this hypothesis should not be drawn too far.
But it is worth keeping an eye on the importance given to bagdi
support by villager leaders old and new. We may recall that the bagdis
constituted a mere 15 percent o f Udaynala’s total population, and
the proportion of able-bodied males would be roughly the same.
That is, 85 percent of the able-bodied males were not bagdi, and yet
it was the bagdis’ support that counted among leaders in that village.
Unlike m ost able-bodied male villagers, Bagdis were known as
willing fighters. W hy were others not known as fighters, and why
was their support not sought after to the same extent? In the following
section I briefly investigate the m uchi jatis in Udaynala and
Gopinathpur, who represented a stark contrast to the bagdis. Muchis
were also poor and low caste, but they played a very low-key role in
village politics in both villages, prior to the UF period, during the
UF period mobilization, and in the CPM raj. W hile the bagdis
cultivated an image of themselves that allowed them to be politically
active and carve out a niche role in local politics, the muchis cultivated

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another image, built on other stereotypes that exploited a different

set o f values and cultural material. The specific content of these values
did not easily facilitate a political role.

‘W E MADE OURSELVES LOW ’: AN UNTOUCHABLE

IDENTITY
• •

Muchis were found everywhere in Bengal but were nowhere numerically

dominant. Their numbers in Burdwan and Raina were small: about 5
percent in Raina thana, and 4.0 percent of the district population.30 In
Gopinathpur circa I960, four of a total of 52 households were muchi,
and in 1993 they made up a quite substantial 15 percent o f the total
population— a figure which equalled the bagdis in Udaynala. In
Udaynala the muchis formed 7 percent of the population in 1957, but
only 4.5 percent in 1993. The muchis were generally poor, though not
entirely landless. The five muchi families in Gopinathpur owned among
themselves 21 bighas. In Udaynala their position was worse. Most were
landless, one family owned 8 bighas, another 5 bighas, and the rest
minor plots (see tables 5.1 and 5.2 above).
The muchi jati s ritual occupation was that o f carrying away and
disposal of cow carrion, the preparation of drums and shoes from
leather, and die beating of drums during Hindu rituals.31They performed
tasks necessary for the ritual well-being of the entire Hindu society
and were integral to the ritual hierarchy and its maintenance. To­
gether with napits (barbers) and bamuns (priests), muchis were one
o f the three jatis in this area with ritually defined tasks. Their specific
ritual tasks were seen as highly polluting because o f their association
with death, blood, and rotting flesh. Muchis were further stigma­
tized because they reportedly ate the flesh of dead cows. Muslims too
considered them dirty, even abhorrent.
They themselves explained their position at the bottom o f the
ritual and social hierarchy in a typical manner (tf. Prakash 1990).
According to one story, muchis were once kings o f this area. Among
the muchis of Udaynala, two households were rajbangsiy or of royal
lineage. But that, they say, was before their ‘fall’ and the advent of
bamuns and caste Hindus. All the stories suggest that the fall was
accidental. One story goes like this:

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It was usual for owners of cows to mark them with their individual signs in
ink. Some muchi ancestor was fooled into stealing cows, but in order to get
rid of the ink marks, that area of the hide was cut off. Slowly, increasingly
large ink signs were made on the cows and more hide had to be cut off, and
eventually a cow died from the wound. They became untouchable as a
punishment for having killed a cow.

Another story said:

A bamun on his way to the Ganges brought a (lower garland as an offering
to the river on behalf of the muchis* ancestor. He brought the consecrated
garland back, and the muchi-to-be planted a tree in the goddess’s name and
offered the garland to it. But he did not manage to keep the tree alive, and
as punishment he and all his descendants became untouchable.

There are many similar stories. The message in the stories, as well
as the muchis’ own generally held perception about their deplorable
ritual position, was that they had inflicted it upon themselves, tKat
they themselves were to be blamed. In the words o f one informant,
‘We have made ourselves low' (nijeke nemc diechhi). N ot that they
were necessarily at fault. Mosdy they attributed their fell to accidental
circumstances or treachery. But given these circumstances (as out­
lined in the stories), their present-day position was legitimate from a
general acceptance of basic tenets of Hindu cosmology. Killing a cow
did— even to muchis— cause the killer to be outcaste, untouchable
to others. I did not encounter any general critique o f the (Hindu
hierarchical) system as such.32
Paradoxically, the low ritual status offered them some respite from
economic duress and a limited degree of influence in village affairs,
which would translate into the occasional show o f patronage. The
distance that muchis were required to observe from the divine image
(thakur) underlined their low position, while at the same time the
required beating of drums in the vicinity o f the image by muchis
shows how they were integral to Hindu cosmology. Their position
was ambiguous: they were polluting and dangerous but, notably,
indispensable.33W ithout the beating of the drums the offering ipuja)
could not be performed, and without scavengers other Hindus could
not remain ritually pure. The muchis' subordination as recipients o f
pollution was necessary for the well-being and ritual cleanliness o f

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th e rest of society (Gould 1958, Pocock 1962). This ascribed role in

H in d u cosmology was in contrast to other low castes in these
villages, and gave muchis a more clearly defined position within
H indu society than most jatis.
Due to this well-defined ritual occupation, grants o f land were
occasionally extended to muchis as compensation for their ritual
services. Commonly a few bighas of land were given to them in
perpetuity, though the donor landlord or committee remained the
legal owner. In exchange, muchis performed their ritual tasks. In
Gopinathpur, seven bighas of the village communal land was set
aside for drumming and originally divided between two muchi house­
holds. In Udaynala two muchi households held 3.5 bighas granted
by the former zamindar family of the village for a village Shiva festival
(the sibagajan), and three bighas had been granted by the once-weal thy
Chaudhuri family for a Kali festival that was discontinued in the
early 1960s.54 Drumming could only be done by muchis and so the
land grants could be held by them only. There were also some extra
benefits: they were normally fed for the duration o f the pujas at the
organizer s expense, and received some extra recompense (cash, paddy,
and/or cloth) at the organizers discretion, at least for major occa­
sions. In addition, muchis were paid for both disposing cow car­
casses. The meat (which they ate) and the hide (raw material for
further income-generation) were theirs by custom.
If a village did not have muchi inhabitants, non-resident muchis
could be hired for special occasions from neighbouring villages.
However, there was a sense of prestige in having ‘our own muchis
(amader-i muchi), a prestige reflected in the widespread practice of
granting them lands and thereby tying them to the place, creating
the village into a proper dharmik Hindu village. Some 60-70 years
ago Gopinathpur was left without muchis after illness and death in
the one family of muchis that had lived there. The village sought to
entice other families to setde there, but those approached asked ‘What
will we eat?’ The village relied for some years on hired-in muchis for
the necessary tasks, but found this dependence (on muchis from the
rival village of Krishnanagar) demeaning and unsatisfactory. A few
years later, the village received what was to be the core o f its baroari
(communal) land, some 12 bighas.35 It was decided that one-third

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should be used to entice a muchi family to settle. A year later another

three bighas was given to another muchi family, related to the first.
The relatively generous patronage of muchis caused a rapid growth
in the population o f muchis in G opinathpur as more fam ily
members settled here.36 These resident muchis ensured the ritual
purity of the village, but above all their presence was a matter o f
prestige and evoked the image of a dharmik, good Hindu village.
‘Every [caste] Hindu village has muchis*, I was told, and it was a
matter of concern to many residents that Gopinathpur had long been
denied the status of a full village because o f the absence of its own
‘untouchable’ community. Hence the villagers o f Gopinathpur pre­
ferred to use their communal land to invite and setde muchi families
rather than to divide up the land or sell it. The land tilled by these
muchi families was still considered part of the villages communal
wealth, but the muchis enjoyed its usufruct rights.37
The muchis were granted some ‘moral economy’, m inim um
income and employment— but at the discretion o f leading villagers’,
subject to the benevolence of their patrons. While in the bagdi-para
of Udaynala I listened to stories about daring dacoits, in the muchi-para
o f the same village I listened to stories about benevolent and
m agnanim ous patrons. Two examples follow below, involving
Hekimsaheb, the maternal grand-uncle of Kajisaheb. Hekimsaheb
was a towering personality in village lore and the main village leader
before Jiku Chaudhuri.

Hekimsaheb was a great and terrifying man. He would hit and thrash
labourers if they did not work properly, and no one dared to oppose him.
But during one monsoon there was a terrible storm and a flood. Especially
in the muchi-para there was much destruction. Houses were destroyed and
harvest was ruined. People went from here [muchi-para] to Hekimsaheb
and said ‘We will starve, and we have no shelter. Hekimsaheb answered
that ‘You will take straw from me and mud from your own para, and you
will build new houses. For one week you will all eat here/ Hekimsaheb s
family was aristocratic [baniadt] and he could be a very great [mohan] man.

Chandi Das s [also muchi] husband had worked for Hekimsaheb, but when
her husband died young Chandi was left alone with one son and no land.
But they never starved because Hekimsaheb always gave her work. Even if

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there was no work he always gave her food. Every day she came to
Hekimsaheb’s house and was given food in the courtyard. When the child
was old enough he was also given work by Hekimsaheb. No one cried as
much as Chandi when Hekimsaheb died.

These are also stories about survival in an unjust system, just like
the dacoity stories heard in the bagdi para. But these are stories about
how the muchis were ‘lucky’, how they were favoured, how they had
some patron who looked after them. O f course, most people will say
that things are much better nowadays. In the old days, they were
poor and often starving. However, as a remembrance o f the past
these stories suggest that there were good landlords, who knew the
importance o f taking care o f the less fortunate, and great men such
as Hekimsaheb who would not let them down when things were
really bad. The stories were about muchis and there were many of
them. I am not sure that the muchis had a story telling tradition
quite on par with the oral tradition of the bagadis that formed the
backbone in the creation of their self-image. Yet the muchis too had
a story telling tradition, and the stories about their mythical origin,
their ‘fall’ and their place in society, were certainly part o f this tradi­
tion. And even if only told to the visiting anthropologist, they reveal
something crucial. First they have been remembered for a long while.
Hekimsaheb had been dead for nearly forty years in 1993. Second,
things had changed considerably over the last decades, mostly for the
better, and there seems no obvious reason for bringing out rosy
stories from the past unless it was in order to substantiate the claim
that muchis did have a special, more favoured, place in the village in
the old days, a place that ensured numerous instances o f voluntary
patronage to them.
More substantial historical material from Hekimsaheb’s days has
not been retrievable. We know that the bagdis in the same period
played a crucial role in village affairs, particularly so under
Hekimsaheb’s successor as village leader, Jiku Chaudhuri, but there
is no mention in village history of the muchis that far back. In the
case of Gopinathpur, they entered into village history when they
disappeared from the village. Again there was no mention o f political
involvement. Probably they played no political role whatsoever in

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either village. In the following section we shall see how the muchi
community maintained relations with various political leaders o f the
villages and how they coped with changing political situations in the
subsequent periods. We shall see a pattern o f political behaviour that
fits into the subordinated patronage-seeking role for the muchis that
the two stories related above suggest.

MUCHIS IN VILLAGE PUBLIC AFFAIRS

As a group and as individuals, muchis of Gopinathpur and Udaynala

kept a low profile and were never publicly involved in village affairs.
They rarely spoke at meetings, if they attended them at all. Historically,
the Gopinathpur muchis have always been ‘known* to be aligned
with the village leaders, particularly the chairmen o f the baroari
committee. They were ‘known to have been so in the sense that this
was how village history presented them, and this was how they
presented themselves. They usually did not participate in anything
controversial, but confined themselves to their own para and rarely
voiced a disagreement. Living off communal land the muchis o f
Gopinathpur were aligned to Bhaskar Mandal in the years that he
was the most powerful village leader. Since he was largely unchallenged
the choice was easy and unavoidable. However, when the Congress-
supported Anadi Sen became Bhaskar *s rival in the 1970s, young
Ram Das— in these villages the name Das indicate muchi jati—
joined the reformist Hindu sect Satsangha for a while in which Anadi
Sen was prominent. The Gopinathpur Satsangha was at that time a
large organization, with around 40-50 members. It was open to
members of all jatis, but of the large number o f muchis only Ram
Das joined. This was a period of controversy and political realignment
in Gopinathpur, and the general strategy among muchis was low-
key—seeking advice, approval or individual cases o f patronage only.
The public* alignment with the major village leader was less easy
in Udaynala, where the division among rival village leaders was more
pronounced. While the Chaudhuri family was still im portant—
until Jiku Chaudhuri was retired— the muchis ‘belonged* to them
by default. The Chaudhuris were wealthy and had a special claim,
based on history and practice, to the leadership o f Udaynala South

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and the loyalty of its inhabitants, which included the muchi para.
W hen village leadership passed on to Kajisaheb and Ohabsaheb of
the north mouza, the muchis found themselves there, together with
Jiku Chaudhuris son Hanu Chaudhuri. Throughout the 1960s the
muchis were ‘known supporters of the young group and not its
rival Manuar. This support was expressed only in a very limited man­
ner. They rarely attended meetings, and only Tarapada Das partici­
pated in land occupations during the United Front years— and then
only once or twice. When Kajisaheb fled and Ohabsaheb took over
as the main village leader, the muchis did not welcome the develop­
ments: ‘Kajisahebs family*, said Nimai Das, ‘is baniadi [prestigious],
and they used to do more [for us]*. Kajisaheb and Hanu Chaudhuri
had taken the muchis* subdued support more seriously than did
Ohabsaheb, who demanded more explicit support. However, Ananda
Das came to frequent Ohabsaheb*s house in this period. Ananda was
unblemished by land occupations and had once come into some
trouble because he opposed the sexual exploitation o f muchi women
by the village top families, a practice which Ohabsaheb also opposed.
Through him, muchis again had a link to the village leader, while
others, in particular Tarapada, laid low. Their earlier limited involve­
ment prevented them from being targeted in the aftermath of the
land occupations.
During the euphoria of the first post-1977 years o f CPM rule,
frequent and huge processions, demonstrations, and meetings were
organized. A few individual muchis along with members o f all other
poor jatis participated in these, though they never had any organiza­
tional position. Gour Das, a member of Kajisaheb’s entourage, was
the lone muchi who occasionally attended village meetings or bichars
during my visit but he never spoke up. According to village historian
Najir Hak, muchis never spoke at meetings, nor were they expected
to. According to Nimai Das, ‘Nobody would have listened*. Though
the leader might well have been disliked, he was not opposed or
given an opportunity to doubt their general, albeit subdued align­
ment or acquiescence. O ther groups, including bagdis, as we have
seen, were ‘out of favour* for periods. The muchis were more clearly
‘in favour* most o f the time, occasionally through the good office of
one or the other o f their jati, but primarily because they never

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assumed any position of influence on the central village political

scene.
Muchis were ‘known to be aligned to one or the other village
leader in an uncommitted way. They also made their alignment clear
in other ways of less immediate political consequence. These were
the establishment of private relationships between families, though
they were also a public statement since it was well-known and adver­
tised. They maintained their alignment to im portant villagers by
frequendy seeking their advice, by showing of respect (e.g. not speaking
until spoken to, sitting at a distance), and interestingly by making
the patron part of their lives, by actively making him their patron.
This could, be seen for instance, in how they invariably asked the
patron for approval of marriage proposals or other important decisions,
pleading with him to preside over weddings, the infants first rice
(mukhe bhat) or other appropriate ceremonies. Patrons were addressed
in kinship terms suggesting respectful inferiority.38 Equally the
patron was involved in family matters small and large and asked for
blessing, protection, and patronage. By seeking to involve the land-
owner in their own lives— not only in the financial but also ceremonial
and even private matters (dissatisfaction with the new bride, house­
hold quarrels)— they created themselves as his related inferiors, the
extended group to which he would be morally bound in ways closely
resembling the ties o f blood kinship. This ‘role had been defined by
their ritual position and practice, as that o f the village servant.
Through a subservience that emphasized this role and their special
place in village life, and by quietly supporting the major village leader
as a matter of course, they contributed towards his creation as village
leader.39
As mentioned in Chapter One, it has been suggested that the
relationship between inferiors and superiors— economic dependants
and landowners, subjects and kings, devotees and gods, and children
and parents— constitutes a dominant, paradigmatic cultural idiom.
This structural relationship is typically exemplified, according to Akos
Ostor, in situations of request and supplication. W hen the economic
dependant asks for a favour he does so in a vocabulary and a manner
that invokes the image of a child asking for indulgence, or of a devotee
without whom the gods would not be worshipped, evoking the

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obligation to protect (Ostor 1984). Paul Greenough makes this view

more explicitly valid for the sharecropper-landowner relationship
(Greenough 1982, cf. Inden and Nicholas 1977). The proper code of
conduct for superiors demands them to both indulge and feed, as
well as to guide and punish. Such a requirement to feed and protect
can to an extent be ‘created* by submission. The superior is appointed*.
In the case of muchis the element of choice was of course limited.
Nonetheless, submission had an effect because of the moral obliga­
tions of the (would-be) all-village leader to protect and care for all
villagers. To support muchis as integral to an ideal society estab­
lished the credentials of a future all-village leader as someone who
has the interests of all groups and the whole village in mind, and
seeks to maintain a good society in the style o f a good king. By their
submission muchis contributed towards the making of that image
for individual village leaders.
The muchis* role in society was somewhat less marked in Muslim
than in H indu villages, where they were more clearly part o f an ideal,
complete society. To an extent, however, it was also found in Udaynala.
Nearly half the population there was Hindu, and the dominant sekh
Muslim jati, in a number of ways, behaved in a manner comparable
to that of H indu jatis of similar social standing. The Chaudhuri
family had bestowed land for the expenses of the ‘Chaudhuris* Kali’
puja, including the muchis* drumming.40 The Chaudhuris them­
selves did not participate in the pujas, but acknowledged the coming
and going of the deity with signs of respect and maintained the land
grant. This behaviour symbolized the concern for the well-being of
their Hindu ‘subjects’. In general Muslim landlords were generous
patrons of Hindu festivals, as befitted any village leader. Moreover, the
specifically religious content was but a particular aspect o f a more
general construct. A leader of society, as also a householder or a king,
was ideally responsible for the well-being of all subordinates, including
their religious lives. It was in providing for all inhabitants of a village
that one morally substantiated a claim to all-village leadership.
This picture o f‘patronage through submission’ contrasts with how
the bagdis created influence through assertion. By juxtaposing the
two cases, from the same two villages, we are able to see how groups
of poor and seemingly powerless sought, with some success, to make

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use of cultural and ideological material—although the same material

also restrained them.

HIERARCHY AND MOBILIZATION

The dom inant ideology of village society was one o f inequality,

hierarchy and rank, separateness and distinction. All groups o f
non-dom inant castes lived under these conditions. In addition
they suffered from acute lack of economic power. They were mostly
poor and landless and near-completely dependent on landowners
for their survival. These factors being similar for several groups,
one would have expected similar reaction to similar stimuli, as
for instance in the United Front era's ‘call* for mobilization and
the land occupation movement. However, they did not. They
reacted very differently, where one group actively participated
whereas the other did not.
Although both groups studied here lived under quite similar eco­
nomic conditions, their respective places or roles in village society—
the village perceived as a polity or as a ritual society—were very
different. Where one group filled the role of the fighters and recalci­
trant subordinates to one or the other village leader, the other group
filled the role of the loyal village servant. Both roles found justification
and leverage within the overarching theme of hierarchy and patriarchy.
Bagdis constituted a group that saw it as compatible with their
identity as fighters rather than docile labourers.41 In doing so they
actively maintained the political order of the village, since they main­
tained the relatively favoured position as fighters, but never assumed
the position of leaders. They were always subordinate, always enacting
a role in a hierarchy. The muchis too, albeit from a different angle,
actively sustained— and reproduced— the dominant politico-moral
order by evoking the norms of patriarchy and of the religious-ritual
order in which they had an assigned role. By quietly aligning to the
dominant villager and explicitly relying on him for protection, they
could bestow on him the obligations of the village leader of moral
rectitude. The leader, on his part, could defy their supplications to
the peril of his moral status as a righteous leader, as a ‘king not
fulfilling his rajdharma, his kingly duty.

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The ‘excesses found in the movement of the United Front period,

I have argued, stem from a similarity of sentiment between the types
of actions engaged in by those ‘mobilized’ under the CPM-banner,
and the types of values and actions that many knew and cherished
and that some— in particular bagdis— identified with. The militancy
of the movement identified those willing to engage in such actions
not only as potential followers but as prized followers, without whom
the movement would not be possible.
Certainly, the CPM did more than initiate a series of actions which
then took off on their own. The party started the movement and
gave justification and leadership, organization, and a semblance of
coherence. Nonetheless, the movement that arose out of the CPM s
mobilization efforts during the United Front period was in certain
important aspects shaped by those who came forward as willing
followers rather than by the leaders. Subordinate groups may gain
some patronage, some concessions from the dominant groups, in
both ordinary and extraordinary times. The constructed role o f a
subordinated group made it possible for that group not only to take
advantage of events but to actively mould the events. W ithout the
masses there would be no movement, and in that sense the masses
contributed—from their own perception of events and desirable goals—
in defining not just the aims and goals but in particular the modes
o f the movement. This of course is not to conclude that the masses
controlled the movement. They did not. But there was a substan­
tial degree o f adaptation on the part o f those we would normally
style leaders to the sentiments of those we normally call followers, or
masses. In order to get closer to the mechanisms o f such a relation­
ship of mutual influence we turn away from the extraordinary and focus
on the more ordinary and everyday instead.

NOTES
1 Speech by Harekrishna Konar in 1969, reproduced in Konar 1979:72-3.
Konar was then chairman of the All-India Kisan Sabha (CPM’s peasant
organisation) and Land and Land Revenue Minister. Konar 1979:72-3.
2 For details, see Ruud 1994.
3 A characterization is always more powerful when admitted by opponents.

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According to a newspaper report, a leading Congress man admitted the

poor had come to regard the CPM as ‘their party*. The Statesman (Calcutta
daily) 28 February 1972.
4 See for instance the numerous reports in The Statesman during the period
December 1969 to January 1970. The Statesman or other Calcutta-based
newspapers characteristically do not over-report on rural events, which
suggests that there probably were many more.
5 A phrase Konar used in commenting on a riot between local land-poor
(supporters of the CPM) and immigrant landless (supporters of the Forward
Bloc) in West Dinajpur district. Both groups were Muslim. The Statesman
25 July 1969.
6 The Statesman 6 November 1969.
7 This, following the Comaroffs, sees ideology as separate sets of values and
norms not excluding the existence of other comparable sets; cf. Chapter One.
8 For a lucid account of rumours forming political action, see Amin 1984.
9 lLut kara amader niti nay. This according to Najir Haks account. As party
activist he was present at several of these meetings.
10 Mentioned in Selimmastcr’s diary. All places mentioned here arc within or
near Raina.
11 The information is from a friend and party colleague of Kajisaheb.
12 The cruel killing of the Sain brothers and other members of their family by
a mob took place during a huge CPM-led demonstration. The brutal incident
caused much protest and unrest and reached the Calcutta newspapers. It
contributed to the rationale for government-supported persecution of
communists.
13 For evasions see Bandyopadhyaya and associates 1985, particularly appendix
VA-B which cites P. Bandyopadhyay (Setdement Officer) A study on evasion
o f Land Ceiling-X under West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act 1953. See also B.
Sen Gupta 1979, Dasgupta 1984b, Franda 1971a and Bose 1981.
14 For the history of land reforms under the UF Governments, see B. Sen
Gupta 1972, Nossiter 1988, Ruud 1994.
15 ‘Chasi tumi dakhal karo, dakhal kare chas karo\
16 Jyoti Basu of the CPM took charge of the Home (Police) portfolio in the
second UF Government. After this, the police increasingly sought to stay
out of politicized conflicts.
17 lPurano amaler biswasi.' Village historian Najir Hak has written a notebook
entitled ‘Raina’s peasant movement*. All quotations in this section are from
that notebook.
18 Interview with Samar Baura ofBurdwan CPM, Burdwan 1989, quoted from
Ruud 1994. ‘Jotedar’ is a term for landlords.

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19 Dacoity is nowadays quite rare in the Dakshin Damodar, although cases

still take place. Today dacoity is more common in urban areas. Newspapers
commonly report dacoity raids in private homes, storages, shops and trains.
For a discussion on the phenomenon in British Bengal, see McLanc 1985
and Mukherjee 1984.
20 J. N. Bhattacharya Hindu Castes and Sects Calcutta 1896, cited in Satadal
Dasgupta 1986.
21 Peterson 1910: statistics 1901-2, Table V, pp. 6-7.
22 For 1921 figures: Census of India 1921 Volume V, Bengal, Part II: Tables.
For 1931 figures: Census of India 1931 Volume V, Part II: Tables. Aguris, a
relatively small and geographically confined jati, was left out in the 1931
census.
23 The story was recorded by ‘Rajaram’s son Rameswar’ in the village of
Madanagar (Burdwan), in its bagdi-para, in the Bengali year 1264 (a d 1858),
and written on a punthi (scroll). Such scrolls are not entirely uncommon.
This particular scroll was in the possession of Najir Hak of Udaynala. The
story has been paraphrased in the text.
24 As suggested in Chapter Four. Moreover, the bagdi-para of Udaynala was
also known as Ranapur, and not too long ago, although not heard anymore,
local rustic dialect did riot pronounce the initial V sound in any words,
which meant that the bagdis could not properly pronounce the name of
their own para - naturally a source of great amusement among those who
could. The absence of the initial V was a common feature in spoken language
among lower castes throughout Bengal, I was kindly informed by Dr
Girindranath Chattopadhyaya, Bengali Dept., University of Burdwan.
25 Ray 1987 and Ray 1983. Bose 1986 corroborates the picture of a tripartite
socio-economic system in western Bengal
26 It was said in praise of one elderly chasm in Udaynala that he had never
urinated within the view of others.
27 Some of this behaviour was legitimized by myth and history which connect
bigdis to the peasant-warriors of the ancient and once powerful Hindu
kingdom of Bishnupur (in todays Bankura district). The bagdi jatis
sanskritized name, barga-ksatriya, means something close to cultivating
warrior and refleas this myth. Moreover, some bagdi ‘surnames (padabiy
‘title’) suggest particular roles in the royal entourage or administrative set­
up: Dhaure (‘runner’, troop), Bag and Pakre (who arrests, chaukidar), and
Thandar (colleaor). Until recently bagdis supposedly smoked the hookah
with members of the royal lineage jati, the Rajbangshi Mai, a practice which
suggests equal ritual status (Peterson 1910). They were thus pardy connected
to images of Kshatriya-hood and the ‘Kshatriya-model’ as a code of condua.

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The model is associated with notions of rule, valour, physical prowess, and
dispensation from rules of ritual piety. See for instance Srinivas 1955,
Hitchcock 1959, Mayer 1960:63. Mandelbaum 1970b, Ch. 24.
28 For the CPM’s ‘cultural programme’, see Ruud 1999a.
29 In local folklore, a muchi from a near-by village was once lathi-instructor to
the Burdwan maharaja.
30 For thana figures: Peterson 1910. For district figures: Census of India 1931
Volume V, Bengal, Pan II, Tables.
31 The muchis in these villages were not tanners. That task was carried out
elsewhere.
32 One would have to look quite closely at these village societies to find anyone
willing to openly criticize religion as such, irrespective of ritual position or
denomination, even among those affiliated to the CPM. Udaynala has had
two Muslim members of the party, neither of whom will denounce religion.
33 For a discussion of the ‘ambiguous position of Harijans in rituals see Fuller
1992, Ch. 6.
34 The Chaudhuris were Muslims, but it was not unusual to find such dominant
Muslim families sponsoring Hindu festivals. This was in the interest of the
ritual sentiments of their Hindu ‘subjects’.
35 The story is that a dacoit from neighbouring Krishnanagar—with which
Gopinathpur has traditionally shored a rivalry—had murdered a man but
escaped with a lot of money. After many years he returned to settle in
Gopinathpur where he bought land and was protected against revenge from
Krishnanagar. After his death the lands lapsed to the village baroari fund.
3r>The unusually large lands given—7 bighas—should probably be seen in
connection with the age-old rivalry with the village of Krishnanagar, where
people, according to one Krishnanagar informant, harboured much spite
for ‘poor Gopinathpur’.
37 The literature abounds in examples of how ‘kings’ sacrificed material wealth
in order to conform to a dharmik model of the ideal king. Some of this
literature was referred to in Chapter One. See also Price 1996.
38 Typically terms such as dada (elder brother) or kaka (father’s brother), and
more rarely bhai (brother, or younger brother) unless of the same age group,
or mama (mother’s brother, with whom one would be expected to have a
close and warm relationship). Muslims, however, use bhai more often than
dada.
39 An interesting ethnographic portrayal of how patrons can be ‘made’ in Nepal
is found in Kondos 1987.
40 For possibly several hundred years the Chaudhuri family sponsored a Kali
puja (Chaudhuridcr kali), revered the image (although they did not worship),

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and bequeathed land for the expenses. Three bighas of this land were held
by village muchis. The image of Chaudhuris’ Kali paused in front of the
Chaudhuri household, where it was greeted; the Chaudhuris kept the door
facing the site of the puja open throughout the year, and the family did not
eat beef. The Chaudhuris’ Kali tradition was terminated in the early 1960s.
41 According to Rudolph and Rudolph: \ . .for many rural Indian, political
participation is like pilgrimage and sport. The increased self-consciousness,
the sense of community and adventure that collective action can yield, even
the exhilaration of “combat” experiences by cultivators in [marches, sit-ins,
and road blockades] can benefit them as much as the realization of policy or
electoral objectives\ Rudolph and Rudolph 1988 ‘Lakshmi defended’, quoted
in Varshney 1995.

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6
Formal Politics and Informal Politics

FROM T H E DISCUSSION-HOUSE TO TH E OFFICE

n the old days, prominent or wealthy villagers had a separate house
I as a venue for social interaction, in particular for their group, or
‘faction’. This was the baithakkhana> the discussion house. Ornately
decorated small buildings, this was where the head o f a family received
his male neighbours, friends, supporters, and relatives in the evenings.
He had tea and snacks served. Betel-nut and the hookah were sent
around, while the lesser guests were offered biri (‘country cigarettes’).
Here people played cards, gossiped, and discussed, and quite frequendy
someone present sang a song or told stories. Thirty or more years
back there were a large number of such discussion houses in Udaynala
and Gopinathpur: possibly as many as fifteen in Udaynala, and six
or seven in Gopinathpur. The social life in the evenings centred on
the discussion houses and most adult males took frequent part. There
was little work that could be done in the evenings, especially between
the peak labour seasons, and there was no other form of entertainment.
Besides, the discussion house was important because this was where
gossip flourished and you would go to stay informed. Your choice of
which discussion house to attend also marked your belonging in the
set-up of village groups and factions. For the owner, the discussion
house also represented his display of wealth and entourage required
of village leaders.
In the 1980s and 1990s the situation was very different. W ith the
possible exception of one discussion house in Udaynala, the remain­
ing more than twenty discussion houses had ceased to function. Some
of the buildings were still intact, but only on rare occasions used as a
social venue. Most discussion houses had fallen into disuse by the

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1970s, and eventually fell into decay. This old venue for everyday
social interaction had vanished, together with any requirement for
ostentatious displays of wealth and entourage. The discussion house
was part of the past, and only people in their fifties had seen how
they were originally used.
In the 1990s, leaders were more commonly identified by one or
several formal positions. These would include positions in the statutory
village council (the Panchayat), in different boards (cooperative
society, school), in the Gram Committee (a village level institution),
in the CPM, or in one of the party’s auxiliary organizations (the
Krishak Samiti, Mahila Samiti, DYFI, SFI or the like).1 A parallel
development is found in the pattern o f evening chatting. The
absence of discussion houses has not meant that people have stopped
meeting. Instead, they would gather outside, at some central loca­
tion in each neighbourhood, where they sit and while away evenings
away with gossip, discussions, an occasional song, or the planning of
future schemes.
This change was fundamental. It represented the transition from domi­
nated social gathering spaces to dispersed ones, and, seemingly, a transi­
tion from informal politics to fotmal politics. The question raised in this
chapter is whether or not these changes represented a transition in the
mode of conducting politics, from the very informal and person-centred
encountered in Chapter Three, to an ordered system based on elections,
formal offices, and formal rules of accountability. Did the personal qualities
that had ensured a following no longer apply? As we shall see, formal
institutions to a considerable extent had entered village society and formed
its politics, taking over many of the ‘responsibilities’ that the informal
village leaders used to hold. At the same time, there remained a consid­
erable spectrum of activities and issues that were not handled by formal
institutions. I will suggest that the two arenas— formal and informal
politics—did not exist as separate entities, but influenced one another.
Individual authority was much enhanced by elevation to one or the
other formal institution. But interestingly, the vice versa also applied; a
formal office did not exempt the politician from engaging in the kind of
particularistic activities required in the informal arena—a point which
the CPM and its activists in the early 1990s were very aware of and folly
exploited for the legitimacy and entrenchment of their rule.

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After coming to power in 1977 West Bengal’s Left Front imple­

mented two major reforms in the village council system: it was
politicized down to the lowest level, that is, political parties were
permitted to fight over seats; and second the system was simplified,
the lowest tier (at actual village level) was abolished, leaving the name
Village council’ (gram panchayat)2 to an institution that covered not
one but 10-15 villages. These reforms, particularly in the early years,
gained much attention from scholars.3
This chapter will investigate the various innovations in formal
institutions during the different periods of our history, and seek to
understand their use and importance in the village context.

N EW FORMAL INSTITUTIONS: 1960s

The image of the village-state relationship, as encountered in some

of the anthropological literature, was summed up in the term ‘the
great Indian faction’. Village level patron-client relationships were
supposedly tied into a district level net of patron-client relationships
in the dominant political party, which again was tied to a similar net
of relationships at state and ultimately national levels.4Nicholas writes
for the 1950s and 1960s that, in general, village leaders (or ‘the village
establishment’) aligned themselves to the Congress in an alliance of
convenience, whereas ‘the village opposition’ became by default aligned
to; for instance, the Communist Party of India (CPI) or any other
locally important party of the opposition— from a lack o f choice
(Nicholas 1965). Still according to Nicholas, there was little difference
between the CPI-group an^ the Congress-group. Both included rich
peasants and poor people.
This picture, however, did not entirely fit the villages I deal with
here. In previous chapters, I have argued that the choice o f leftist
ideology by leading villagers was very specific and conscious in a
broader ideological sense yet at the same time also suggested that
party alignment was more of a symbolic gesture than a material invest­
ment, more directed at a village audience than at ensuring political
contacts. This point will be further underscored by a brief investigation
into the history of political alignments in the villages o f Udaynala
and Gopinathpur. As we shall see, party alignment made litde difference

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to the general power configuration in the villages, and had only a

limited impact on the selection o f the major village leaders. For
instance, the 1964 election to the Panchayats can more accurately
be described as a selection process, whereby positions were distrib­
uted among those who already counted in the village, and not those
who counted to the political party in power.
The Union Boards of the colonial period had been manned by
appointment of influential individuals in the localities. These bodies
were continued after Independence. Suffrage was nominally extended,
but at least in this area elections were never held, and the selection of
Union Board members continued to be monopolized by local influ­
ential figures. In 1957 the Union Boards were replaced by the
Panchayat system. This was organized on four levels (tiers), of which
the two with direct relevance for villages were: the Gram Panchayat,
which comprised single villages (composed of wards with one or two
representatives each); and the Anchal Panchayat, which comprised
10-15 villages.5 In Burdwan, the only Panchayat under this system
was formed in 1964. Election to these bodies was not politicized, i.e.
candidates could not run on party tickets.
In Gopinathpur there was not even a formal election. The village
leadership selected representatives among themselves and presented
the district authorities with the ready list. Panchayat membership did
not confer power on the holder; he needed power to be there in the
first place. In Udaynala the election was more contested, and a formal
election did take place. ‘The young group entered the election, and
to their own surprise secured most votes and seats. However, the re­
sults created resentment among the members of the losing list, in­
cluding prominent villagers such as Ohabsaheb,. Manuar Ali, and
Manik Dhara. To avoid conflict, the results were tampered with so as
to ensure representation of all. These two stories were probably not
uncommon.
The four-tier Panchayat system did not control much money or
other means of influence. Except for the status and potential contacts
to be gained from such positions, Panchayat membership was irrel­
evant to most village leaders. In the accounts of those elected in 1964
in Gopinathpur and Udaynala, few if any meetings o f the Gram
Panchayat were ever held, and those who had been elevated to the

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Anchal Panchayat soon stopped attending the meetings there. The

Gram Panchayat had no business— and what it could have had was
dealt with already in other ways— and the Anchal Panchayat was
hampered by disinterest on the part of the administration and disin­
clination on the part of the dominant political party. No election was
held again under this system.
Although formal positions may not have counted much, the issue
of informal contacts in the dominant political party is still left to be
dealt with. In Gopinathpur Bhaskar Mandal became the main village
leader through events that were entirely confined to the village
(conflict between dominant caste and main non-dominant caste). At
that point and for a number of years afterwards, he was aligned to the
Peoples Socialist Party (PSP), a party of the opposition although it
represented Raina at the state Legislative Assembly. Bhaskar switched
to Congress in 1964, but remained uncommitted. He did not advo­
cate the Congress in village contexts. This was done by Anadi Sen, a
vocal and active protagonist of the Congress in Gopinathpur. He
organized the occasional rally, collection, or meeting, and was known
as the Congress man in Gopinathpur. Even with his active member­
ship, however, Anadi Sen was not able to challenge Bhaskar .Mandal s
leadership in the village.
In the more contested leadership of Udaynala, the young leaders at
times collaborated well, at other times they were at loggerheads. In
1964, after the Panchayat elections mentioned above, the group agreed
that one of them needed to be member o f the Congress. The choice
fell on Ohabsaheb. Kajisaheb, of the same young group, was more
inclined towards the CPI, which was then in the opposition. The
different political orientations of these two leaders— one to the dominant
party, the other to the opposition— had no influence on their
fortunes in the 1960s.
From 1971 onwards the Congress assumed autocratic powers in
the state. This meant considerably increased power in the hands of
the Congress network in most parts of the state. In Gopinathpur,
Anadi Sen emerged as a rival to Bhaskar Mandal. A major reason for
this was that one of the main bagdi leaders, Gobardhan Malik, switched
his allegiance to Anadi and weakened Bhaskar s old alliance. Although
the importance of internal village alliances were still vital contacts
i

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in the dominant political party seem to have been of some importance.

Since Bhaskar was also in the Congress, the Gopinathpur case to some
extent supports the premise that contacts in the dominant political
party did matter. In Udaynala, however, a completely different story
unfolded itself. The Udaynala story is particularly interesting because
not only did the village live through the Emergency period without a
leader aligned to the Congress, the village was also able to dismiss a
leader who had aligned himself to the Congress during the years of
repression, just when the Emergency was introduced.6

OHABSAHEB’S EXIT

All Udaynalas village leaders in the 1960s, especially the young group,
placed themselves somewhere between the Communist party and
the left wing of the Congress, with Ohabsaheb the most influential
o f the latter inclination. They collaborated on several occasions.
Ohabsaheb harboured a well-known antipathy towards landlords and
moneylenders. He even joined the land occupations. In 1969, when
some of the more leftist villagers were away in Calcutta to protest
against the dismissal of the United Front government, Ohabsaheb
led a group of villagers in the occupation of land belonging to a
village landlord. Ohabsaheb himself raised a pole with a red flag on
the occupied plot.
In the autumn of 1971 the state Government started with repression
o f communists. During this autumn, Manuar Munsi, who owned
200 bighas in Udaynala, some of which had been occupied, brought
a police party to the village in order to secure his harvest. Ohabsaheb
had participated in the occupation of his land, but unexpectedly came
out in support of Manuar Munsi. He helped the police party o f 12
that had been stationed in the village, and lent them his support in
whatever manner he could. The relationship quickly became close,
and Ohabsaheb came to enjoy the police party’s support in his politi­
cal manuveres in the village. W ith Congress and police backing
Ohabsaheb soon became the most powerful man in Udaynala. Otli vr
prominent leaders either fled or backed out: Najir Hak moved to live
with an uncle for four years; Kajisaheb spent his nights in the fields
for two years to avoid arrest;7 and Selimmaster and Fajlul Hosen

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denounced their own involvement in activities led by communists

and turned their attention instead to the Muslim layman-organization,
Tabligh Jamat.
O n a number of occasions over the next few years Ohabsaheb
brought the police (with guns) to arrest people. At least ten individuals
were either arrested or fled the village for having opposed Ohabsaheb.
He also invariably won court cases— there were four or five in this
period— and cheated on government resources extended to the village
school and cooperative society, without facing prosecution. In the vil­
lage he enjoyed support from a section of the village bagdis, who
were previously active in land occupations under the leadership o f
Sankar Bag, and from a small group of young sekhs, the Hitus, sons
and nephews of Ohabsaheb s former enemy, Manuar Ali. This was
very limited support, considering the size of the village and the tense
political climate, and so Ohabsahebs dominance was maintained
through some use of intimidation. During these years a group o f
bagdis was found sitting in front of Ohabsahebs house every day. They
were his retainers, his lathials, whose presence suggested a potential
use of force, even violence. Some bagdis also accompanied him on his
rounds in the village as practitioner o f ayurvedic medicine. O n
occasions, his supporters ran through the village at night— the Hitus
with a gun or two, the bagdis with lathis— shouting loudly and in­
timidating people. The threat or actual use of violence was manifest.
Individuals were beaten on several occasions.
In general, however, intimidation, use o f force, and violence were
limited. The potential use of violence, the threat of violence, was as
important in maintaining his position as actual force. Moreover,
people from the other side of the political divide acknowledged that
‘He was not all bad’. O n many occasions he helped the poor (par­
ticularly actual or potential supporters), brought grain to the village
in times of scarcity, and assisted villagers who were in conflict with
authorities outside the village. During his ‘reign he initiated a
dharmagola,8 and organized the actual construction of a road be­
tween Udaynala and Hatpur, a road that had been planned and re­
planned for nearly ten years.
Ohabsahebs many initiatives, however, were not enough, or not
the type needed to maintain his regime. His manner made him

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increasingly unpopular in the village. Dissatisfaction with his leader­

ship was increasingly shown in unambiguous ways. The straw-roof
of his house was once set on fire, though without much damage. His
daughters marriage in 1973 was a near fiasco since none o f his
neighbours were willing to come forward to assist in the preparations
or be present at the festivities. It was a most humiliating experience
for him. Only Kajisahebs unexpected intervention saved the occasion.9
Ohabsaheb s problem was that, despite constant contact with a large
number o f people through his ayurvedic practice, he came across as
impatient, irritable, prone to give short authoritarian orders, and
dismissive of people. Rather than listen, gossip, argue, and spend
time with others, he used his lathials, his Congress party contacts,
and his guns to enforce his will and decisions. He also promoted his
own interests and used force to silence opposition.
The final turning point came in 1975. The school board elections
were due, and Ohabsaheb, as had been his custom for some years,
appointed himself and his ally Manik Dhara. However, resentment
was already strong and this instance of high-handedness in the case
o f the communally constructed and funded village school was the last
straw for many. In the days before the formal election meeting, hectic
albeit secret discussions took place in the village. An unusually large
crowd turned up at the meeting itself. Ohabsaheb gave a speech and
proposed his candidates. Kajisaheb immediately got up and counter-
proposed Selimmaster and Fajlul Hosen— who could count as
Congress-supporters but were not on friendly terms with Ohabsaheb.
They were elected with near unanimity.
W ith this, Ohabsahebs authority was effectively broken. A large
assembly of villagers had turned down his suggestions, and did so in the
face of the bagdi group he had used to build his position. When the
physical force he commanded was no longer sufficient and he had no
other major base of support, only his Congress contacts remained. From
then onwards he was unable to assert his authority in the village. Fearing
for his life, he moved to neighbouring Hatpur and did not spend nights
in Udaynala for the next three years. He even transferred his daytime
ayurvedic practice to Hatpur, where he opened a small ‘doctors shop'.
The case suggests the limits of political contacts for village leaders
and how dissatisfaction can translate into support for a rival leader

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who may eventually ‘conquer* the position. Kajisaheb’s ‘power

derived not from his land or his communist contacts, but from his
position as a representative of a majority sentiment that expressed
what m ost thought and wanted done. O habsahebs increasing
unpopularity was due to instances of intimidation that denied others
even a semblance of a right of participation in village affairs, and to
his disrespectful dismissal o f others who thought o f themselves as
deserving respect. In this way he alienated people who together
controlled substantially more resources than he himself controlled
with his bagdi— and Hitu— support. Even the backing he enjoyed
from Congress politicians outside the village did not ensure a hold
over the village.
Ohabsahebs case may seem interesting but not typical.10 The re­
mainder of the chapter will delve into the post-1977 period, when
the CPM come to power and secured its presence in village society in
tangible and substantial ways. The same period also saw the intro­
duction of a rejuvenated Panchayat system, which represented a big
step in the direction of formal institution making at the village level.
Both these developments, however, have not been enough to do away
with the particularities of village politics or its importance in the
making of village leaders.

H O W IMPORTANT WERE T H E REFORMED

PANCHAYATS?

In 1978, the Left Front Government implemented a reformed

Panchayat system. The lowest tier, which covered single villages, was
abolished. In addition, candidates were allowed to run on party tickets,
and the CPM with its tight and efficient organization was highly
successful, continuously winning around 60 percent o f all Gram
Panchayat seats in the state until the 1998 election. In the anchal
that included Gopinathpur and Udaynala, no non-CPM candidate
was elected in the four elections held since 1978, in spite o f Congress
candidates being fielded at each election (and, in 1993, BJP
candidates).11
In addition, the state government has infused the Panchayat system
with decision-making powers o f political importance and made

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available increased financial resource. Together, this has ensured a

vastly increased role for the Panchayats. The Panchayats and the chairman,
together with the Block Development Officers (BDOs), were in charge
of the local level implementation of the land redistribution programme,
and influenced the allocations made by the large number of develop­
ment programmes (the IRDP, NREP, RLEGP, Food for work, etc.12)
to eligible individuals, families, or projects. These programmes taken
together disburse large sums of money. In particular after 1988
much of the allocation process has been transferred from the state
government to the Panchayats, bringing the total sum handled by
this institution to Rs 7,000 million, or Rs 175 per capita o f the rural
population in 1988.13
The most important of the development programmes handled by
the Panchayats was the Central Government-funded IRDP (Integrated
Rural Development Programme). In the reality o f Burdwan in the
1980s, the signature of the local Panchayat member (more often than
not CPM s representative) was indispensable for an IRDP applica­
tion to be successful. In effect, these resources were (at least in Burdwan
district, given the party’s dominant position) controlled by the CPM.
The Panchayat members were answerable to the party; and the party
did not consider Panchayat members as individual representatives
but as the party’s representatives. Larger decisions— for instance budgets
or the allocation o f programme resources— were discussed and
decided upon in the party’s organs some time before the formal
Panchayat meetings. This practice, common enough in modern-day
parliamentary democracies, was rigorously implemented, and the party
was quite frank about it. In this situation, the more influential figure
was not necessarily the Panchayat member but the party worker. This
division was also apparent in popular perceptions—villagers tended
to first turn to their Panchayat member for assistance with problems,
and if that failed they turned to the party men.
However, in spite of the resources channelled through the system,
the potential clout of both party and Panchayats in the villagers was
still, in important respects, quite limited. Let us first visualize the
relative size and importance of the IRDP loan. IRDP loans were about
Rs 9000 during my visit, a reasonably large sum of money for a poor
household. However, in a village such as Udaynala, IRDP loans were

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distributed to 5 or 6 families per year. This meant that of the around

300 eligible households in the village, ones statistical chance o f re­
ceiving a loan was quite small and the chance of gening another one
(that is, causing one to remain loyal to a party in the hope o f a repeti­
tion of the act of patronage) was minimal. And let us compare the
sum of Rs 9000 with the sums paid in dowry. Dowry as an example
not only visualizes the sum but also constitutes a very appropriate
context for relating to an IRDP loan, since many such loans were
used exactly for that purpose. The dowry for a girl of a moderately well-
off family often amounted to 7-10 times the sum of an IRDP loan,
that is, between Rs 70,000 and Rs 1 lakh. Landless or nearly landless
households would often pay in the range of Rs 20,000—40,000 be­
sides the expenses of the arrangements and the presents. Even in such
cases the IRDP loan could cover only part o f the cost. Naturally, an
IRDP loan would be a most welcome contribution, but the main
expenses would have to be raised from elsewhere.
The IRDP loans or similar schemes were not sufficient to explain the
enduring support for the CPM in the countryside. Distribution of public
funds offered little incentive to villages to remain loyal to the party. Besides,
much of the patronage needed by a landless labourer had to be secured in
other ways than through money alone. I believe this suggests that we need
to look for reasons other than material strategic considerations to under­
stand the continued strength of the CPM in the villages of West Bengal.
Let us briefly consider the state institutions* capacity for direct
involvement in daily affairs. Under the reformed Panchayat system,
each village, depending on its size, had one or two representatives in
the Gram Panchayat. Udaynala had two, and Gopinathpur had one
until 1993, after which they had two. The Gram Panchayat was the
lowest tier of the system and normally covered some 10-15 villages.
In other words, the Gram Panchayat was not a body at the level o f
each individual village, but one that covered a number of villages.
The Gram Panchayat covers an area {anchat) that is too large for
everyday involvement in each village. From the other perspective,
each village had one or two persons only who were invested with the
authority of the Gram Panchayat.
The Gram Panchayat representatives were not paid full-time work­
ers, although they were compensated for the time spent in meetings.

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Landowners or schoolteachers with spare time and secure income could

more easily afford to be involved than poorer villagers, who spend
most of their time earning a livelihood. The number o f quite poor or
very poor Panchayat representatives has been increasing substantially
over the last few periods (Lietcn 1994). This may have a detrimental
effect on representative democracy in West Bengal’s village council
system, because the further down the economic ladder one goes, the
less time the individual representative has for politics— that is for
meeting voters, engaging in deliberations, or attending meetings. This
‘representation part is often more carried out by party activists. These
structural constraints clearly reduced the capacity of these bodies to
be involved in the everyday affairs o f each village.
Lasdy, we may note that the administrative apparatus o f rural West
Bengal was equally constrained by its limited number o f decision-%
making bureaucrats. In each block there is but a handful of bureaucrats
for often close to 10,000 inhabitants. The administration involved
itself only reluctandy in petty issues such as theft, local quarrels, or
disputes over water rights, land, inheritance etc., accusations of immoral
conduct and any other business for the regulation o f local society.
The police was even less inclined towards getting involved in affairs
that could be handled locally. Nor were they expected to. A small
incident may suffice as an example. A thief was at one point in 1993
caught in Udaynala. He had stolen a number o f items about a year
earlier, when working in Udaynala as a casual labourer. At this point,
he had been foolish enough to return. From the previous occasion,
people knew who he was, and knew of his family and background in a
village at some distance from Udaynala. They knew him as a notorious
but petty thief, who supplemented his income as a labourer with petty
thieving. On being caught he was severely beaten up, interrogated, and
made to confess. He was threatened with the police and finally locked
up for the night. The villagers debated briefly about whether or not to
hand him over to the police, but decided that imprisonment would
affect his wife more than him. The next morning they released him
with a stern warning and a farewell beating. The villagers decided it
was not a police case and that the simple logic employed by the police
was inappropriate to the situation at hand. Similar cases abound, and
they are interesting because they tell us how the police was conceived

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as an additional or potential punishment, not as the body that had a

right to be there. The police was not strong enough to be regarded as
the arm of the law-bound state.
Having dismissed almost the entire spectrum of formal institu­
tions as o f little importance or capacity, the only institution that
remains to be discussed is the party itself. The party, however, had far
greater presence in village society than the Panchayats or the admin­
istration. It normally had more than one card-holding member or
senior party worker in each village (quite often the Panchayat member
was not a senior party worker). In addition there were a large number
of lesser activists, volunteers, and ‘wannabes’. As such, the party was
much more widespread, visible, and influential in village society than
either Panchayats or the government administration.
However, as we shall see in the following examples, certain inter­
esting nuances point to the continued relevance o f village-style
personalized politics. The party as such did not normally let itself
become direcdy involved in local issues of contention until they reached
proportions with wider implications. This was partly a matter of
capacity and convenience. To get involved in all petty disputes in a
village would consume the party completely. Such disputes were
instead ‘handled’ by local activists to the best of their abilities with­
out being raised for discussion in the party’s formal organs. And this
deliberate distance from the daily affairs o f a village left a large sphere
of social action outside the bounds of formal institutions or organiza­
tions, a sphere that was largely unaffected by growth in the bureau­
cracy, the emergence of formal institutionalized politics, or the politi­
cized and empowered Panchayat system. This sphere o f informal vil­
lage politics had a number of institutions, the most important of
which was the bichar.

BICHAR—AN INFORMAL IN STITU TIO N

A bichar is village society’s court.MIt consists o f any number o f male

villagers that care to be present and pass judgement in any case of
dispute brought to them. Anybody can ask his or her fellow villagers
to pass judgement in a dispute they may have, be it with neighbours,
kin, employers, creditors, or anyone else. The fellow villagers may or

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may not agree to the bichar, and, in any case, no bichar will be held
unless someone important has agreed to be present.
T he manner in which the bichars functioned in Udaynala was
that the senior-most or most powerful individual present was first
appointed as ‘chairman*. Then the assembled people would listen to
the plaintiff, defendant, and anyone else who may have anything
relevant to add. Those assembled would ask questions to plaintiff,
defendant and any witnesses, after which a general discussion took
place. This account may sound all too structured to anyone who has
observed these generally quite disorganized and often heated pro­
ceedings, but these were the basic elements.
In the first example here, which took place in 1992, a son accused
his father of having tried to cheat him of his inheritance. The father
was a moderately well off owner-cultivator, who had only one son,
whose mother had long since passed away. W ith his second wife, the
father had three daughters. Under Muslim law o f inheritance, the
son would receive twice as much land as each o f the daughters. In
this case, since he was his mother s only child, he would also receive
the part of his fathers land that had originally come to the father
from the sons maternal grandfather. The son was thus sole inheritor
o f that part of the land, plus two fifths of the remainder— in all more
than half of the land. The father, in the interest of his three daugh­
ters, had been convinced that this was unjust (village gossip had it
that he was under the spell of his scheming second wife). Under the
pretext of concentrating his holdings, he sold off his many plots and
bought new ones closer to home. But he registered the new plots
under his second wifes name, not his own. Hence his son would lose
the right of inheritance to these plots, and would be left only with the
land of his maternal grandfather. Under the law, the courts accepted
the deeds of registration as legal documents on landownership. The
courts also accepted Muslim conventions of inheritance under the
Muslim Code.
When the son discovered what was happening, and after much
shouting and quarrelling, he asked influential villagers to hold bichar.
Many people assembled and the discussion was heated. The father
was heard, then the son, then a maternal uncle of the son (who testified
that a certain plot of land had been inherited by the sons mother).

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The dispute aroused much passion and the deliberations took hours.
In particular younger men or men of lesser stature, engaged eagerly
in the discussion, and argued individually with the father, the son,
and with others present. The father held that it was his land and he
could do with it as he well pleased. His second wife participated from
the outskirts by shouting arguments, comments, and insults and also
by weeping loudly.
Finally some of the more senior people present, including Kajisaheb,
the respected Abdul Mandal and the eldest o f the large family o f nine
brothers, engaged themselves in the debate. In the end it was Kajisaheb
who hushed the assembled gathering, raised his voice, and went through
all arguments. He ended with a proposed judgement, which held that
it was not right to deprive a son of his rightful inheritance, particularly
not in such a deceitful manner. One third o f the land was to be handed
over to the son immediately, and the remainder o f his original in­
heritance on the death of his father. The assembly agreed that the
judgement was right (thik-i hayechhe). The father protested vehemendy
but was ignored. ‘Right or wrong*, Kajisaheb held, ‘this is the judge­
ment of society [samaj]\ The following week the father, his son, and
a few witnesses went to the fields and demarcated the one third to be
given to the son. The father, although backed by the power o f docu­
ments and of the law of the country, had to give up one third o f his
land to his son.
There is a typical pattern in this, common to most types o f infor­
mal meetings, which shows how village affairs were regulated outside
the confines of formal institutions, and at the same time how village
leaders maintained their status. At first the elders typically ‘scanned*
the general mood by listening to the less important, letting them
talk, and only then did they pronounce a ‘verdict*— one in line with
the commonly held opinion. Mayer noted that ‘[t]he most influen­
tial men say nothing at first* in village meetings. They leave the floor
to the less influential (Mayer I960: 257). A bichar discussion could
last for hours, with a large number of those present participating in
the debate, including the younger ones and the less powerful men.
O nly women did not participate, unless they were implicated,
although a number o f women were usually present in the outskirts
of the bichar site and threw in remarks and arguments.

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Finally, the responsibility for the decision was laid on all those
assembled. It did not rest with a village leader, a Panchayat mem­
ber, or any other individual. It was the decision of all assembled,
and its implementation was their responsibility. This was a major
reason for the importance given to consensus and unanimity.15 It
was only by agreeing on a decision that such a forum could be
efficient. Every now and then the proposed verdict would be
controversial and not acceptable to a vocal section o f the assembly,
in which case a judgement would not be passed and the case left
unresolved.
Bichars were normally held at the rate o f two a month in Udaynala,
but were entirely ad hoc. Other types of informal meetings were also
called with some frequency, at which different types o f problems
were discussed and resolutions sought. The aspect of such informal
meetings that particularly interests us here is that these were infor­
mal gatherings, where people came together voluntarily with the
object o f solving a problem of common interest. In such meetings,
any person, ideally, was as responsible as anyone else. Even if this
was not true in practice, it was still the case that no one had a pre­
ordained right to more decisive power than anyone else. There was
no permanent bicharok (deliberator in bichars) office, for instance,
only the senior-most person present appointed chairman* for the
duration of the meeting. Moreover, the bichar had no enforcement
department. The efficacy of the ruling relied entirely on the will
and decision of those present and the acceptability of the decision
among those not present.
These informal gatherings, meetings and/or courts also constituted
an important arena for the making of leaders. Even if the bichar or
any other meeting ideally allowed each and every one present equal
influence, the deliberations in fact contributed towards the making
of leaders through their ability to perform and to reach verdicts that
were generally acceptable. But there were other forms o f activity, too,
that contributed towards the selection of leaders. In the following
sections, we shall see how the ability to act as a middleman consti­
tuted a crucial constitutive element in the making of the local leader.
An interesting aspect of this phenomenon was that it also applied to
local party leaders.

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INFORMAL POLITICS AND MIDDLEMEN

There was no automatic connection between political contacts (party

or Panchayats) and a position of influence in the villages. The need
to build and maintain informal influence was most readily observable
in the actual practice of those already filling formal posts or otherwise
enjoying the support of formal institutions. The role of informal
politics had shrunk under the increased importance o f the formal
institutions, but it had far from vanished. W hat I have termed
inform al politics consisted o f subtle m echanism s by which
relationships of (however unequal) mutuality and trust were created
and maintained, in which bonds of reciprocity of a particular kind
were created between non-leaders and leaders. The informal remained
an important arena for the making of authority and the legitimate
claim to rule.
The nature and importance of informal politics— the brittle bonds
that were created between villagers and community leaders— become
dearer as we look at the requests or supplications made to village
leaders with the intention of involving them as middle men or go-
betweens, as fixers or power-brokers, for a great variety o f problems.
Being a middle man was one of the main tools-of-trade for Indian
politicians. In a study of how the Congress functioned, Weiner
suggested that one of the main roles performed by Congress politi­
cians vis-k-vis the electorate was that o f‘expediting’: ‘expediting work—
or “doing service” as many Congressmen say—involves helping citizens,
both farmers and merchants, obtain assistance from government and
unravel the maze of governmental regulations, *nd, in general, link
individuals to local administration.16This observation continued to
be o f relevance in the villages of Udaynala and Gopinathpur in the
early 1990s. If an individual had influence, he was expected to use it
to help his supporters, dependants, and constituents. If he did
not, he would risk his ability to sway opinion, to command respect
and attention, to be heard and heeded when he presided over meet­
ings and bichars in the numerous petty quarrels and administrative
problems that made up the daily life of village politics and where the
formal mechanisms o f government were not involved. People turned
to prominent individuals for advice on the right step to take in a

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dispute, for advice on the dowry negotiations for the marriage of

their daughter, or for dealing with the authorities. Seeking advice was
likely to be a disguised form of request for assistance, which might or
might not be declined. Other and quite typical requests concerned
relations to outside people or powers such as the police, the adminis­
tration, political authorities, or the legal system. Sometimes a bu­
reaucrat or an office refused to accept a deed, for no apparent reason,
and advice might be sought. Sometimes a petitioner was required to
obtain a particular officials signature in order to get a bank loan,
entry to a school, or some permission, and such signatures were not
necessarily best obtained by directly approaching the official in ques­
tion. The presence o f an influential person to mediate in a quarrel
might also be desired. O r prominent individuals were asked to inter­
vene between different villages or between individuals of different
villages.
In all these cases the individual approached would be expected to
use his contacts and general knowledge (about how the administra­
tion works, for instance) to protect and forward the interests of
fellow-villagers. A large number of such supplications concerned intra­
village disputes or misunderstandings: the distribution of irrigation
water, a quarrel between heirs, allegations o f malicious rum our­
mongering, illicit love affairs, the sharing of a harvest or a dispute
over rent, pay or interest— the list was unending. Issues such as these
were commonly and constantly brought to the attention o f leaders.
They were expected to intervene, act as mediators who could settle
the dispute by using their authority and clout.
These requests were not just occasional events. They formed the
core of any local politicians daily agenda. They formed the crux of
local politics. This can be seen from a small time-use survey I
conducted one week in the autumn o f 1992. It was aimed at finding
out how seven village leaders .of Udaynala and Gopinathpur spent
their time. The individuals selected were the most prominent and
active villagers at the time: Kajisaheb (formally Panchayat member
for Udaynala North, but not reelected); Taleb (de facto Panchayat
member to-be for Udaynala North and an important party activist);
Dasarathi (Panchayat member for Udaynala South, but with declining
power and on his way out); Sakti (Panchayat member to-be for

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Udaynala South); Shyamsundar Porel (Panchayat member for

Gopinathpur and an important party member of the area, since 1993
Jela Parishad Member); Angsuman (secretary o f the cooperative soci­
ety, party activist and brother of Shyamsundar Porel); and finally Kesto
Sarkar (prominent but ailing party activist in Gopinathpur). It is
worth noting that at the time of the survey, only four of them had
formal positions. People who might have been interesting but for
various reasons were left out were Gopinathpur s Congress leader,
Sukumar Mandal, and the CPM member of Udaynala, Najir Hak—
both respected and occasionally sought out for advice, but not active
in day-to-day affairs. Gopinathpur s very active BJP leader, Uday
Majumdar, declined to participate. The remaining seven were inter­
viewed every day about what they had been doing since the last inter­
view.
The survey took place at a time when the paddy was ripening and
the villagers, therefore, had little cultivation-related work except to
wait and prepare for the harvesting, and so there was much time to
engage in village affairs. There are noticeable and natural fluctuations
in political activity in correlation with the intensity of the agricul­
tural processes. At the time of the survey there was some anxiety in
Udaynala, where insects appeared on the paddy straws. But pesticides
were applied and only a minor proportion of the harvest was lost.
Several meetings were held on this issue. There was also a problem of
potential labour shortage that had to be sorted out: not enough
migrant labourers had been secured and an arrangement had to be
worked out so that crops were not lost. Another topic of much interest
in Udaynala at the time was the upcoming general meeting o f the
cooperative society about which it was known that one group (the
Hitus) were planning a take-over bid. In Gopinathpur conversations
revolved around an upcoming Gram Committee meeting,17and, above
all, the annual large baroari (public) puja to be held towards the end
of the harvesting season with the staging of jatras, visiting relatives
and general festivities.18 A summary o f the findings is given below.

Kajisaheb: Little time spent on his fields, only three short visits
over the entire week. Mornings spent at home, visited
by three to five individuals or groups. Before noon:

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field visits, shopping for pesticides (in Bajarpur), two

meetings with Taleb concerning the village coopera­
tive, three trips to the local party office in nearby
village (presumably in connection with the proposed
takeover bid to come in the cooperative, but as an avid
chess-player he also spent much time in games with
another m ajor activist there), two meetings with
fellow-villagers over the distribution o f man-power (a
shortage o f hired-in hands threatened to become a
problem). Afternoons: largely the same activities with
the addition of one bichar. Evenings: engaged in gos­
siping and card-games every evening till late except
once.
TaUb: Little time spent on the fields (he owns very little).
Mornings: at home, visited by up to seven individuals
or groups. Before noon: two meetings with Kajisaheb
on the cooperative society bid, every day except one to
local party office on various issues (cooperative society
bid, Gram Committee meetings in the region, general
party matters), one visit to a nearby village in connec­
tion with party affairs. Afternoons: once with his wife
to a Panchayat meeting (in nearby village), discussions
and meetings in Udaynala over the insects and the
distribution o f hired labourers. N ot to the bichar.
Evenings: more meetings at various places but mostly
at home where he was called upon by people wanting
advice or assistance (in all six groups or individuals), or
around in para for gossip.
Dasarathi: Mornings spent in the para, not at home but at various
neighbours. Before noon: tending the family fields,
weeding, or spraying pesticides. Around noon at least
two hours every day spent gossiping and fishing in the
namasudra-para, near Sakti s house. Four afternoons
spent in the fields or in cultivation-related activities,
one largely spent at home quarrelling with his elder
brother, once to the party office, one discussion with
Sakti on the upcoming meeting in the cooperative

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society, and once a secret meeting with H itu (that

everybody soon learned about). Two evenings spent in
the home-para, the other five in the namasudra-para,
each evening in card-games.
Sakti: Mornings visited by people, from two to five groups or
individuals. Before noon: mainly engaged in agricul­
tural activities, three trips to party office for meetings,
brought back pesticides for his own and two other fami­
lies on his bicycle. Afternoons and evenings: minimal
agricultural activities, mainly meetings o f various sorts:
the cooperative bid, the shortage of hired labourers,
one Gram Committee meeting and one with the vol­
unteer teachers of the literacy campaign over lack o f
kerosene, and conducting a survey of IRDP-eligibles.
Home very late into the night, no card-games.
Shyamsundar. Mornings: three to seven visitors at his home. Midday.
busy teaching six days a week between 10 am and 2.30
p.m. (Saturdays till 1 p.m.) except the two days he went
for meetings. Afternoons: more meetings and party-
related work, visited three other villages plus two
evenings to the party office. Remaining two evenings
around in the village, talking and gossiping, planning
the upcoming Gram Committee meeting.
Angsuman: Mornings: saw visitors together with his brother at their
joint household. Midday: attended to the cooperative
society at the office in Bajarpur, once to another
village, once to Burdwan town. Evenings: one large
meeting on dispute on the baroari puja, plus planning
the puja. Two evenings at home (visited by neighbours,
relatives, mainly for gossiping), five evenings going
around village visiting, gossiping, planning.
Kesto Sarkar. Because he was too ill to do any cultivation on the
small amount of land he owned, he spent most of his
days engaged in various village activities. Over the week
he was on an average of four times a day approached
by individuals or groups who sought his assistance or
advice. Did not leave the village except once to the

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field. One afternoon-evening to the weekly Satsangha

meeting, other evenings to the other meetings in the
village (the planning o f the Gram Committee meet­
ing, the big baroari meeting, the meetings to plan the
puja).

The number of meetings these seven leaders attended appears very

high, although, according to their own assessments, it was not. In
Udaynala three major meetings were held, besides a number of mi­
nor meetings. In Gopinathpur two major meetings were held. The
‘meetings' were of different types. Some were quite formal like that of
the village cooperative. Others were less formal though they too took
place within a fixed framework (such as the baroari committee meet­
ings in Gopinathpur). A third kind of meeting took place on an ad
hoc basis, though with a chairman (sabhapati, assembly-leader) and
initially at least some order. These would include bichars. Lasdy, there
were entirely informal meetings, where a few interested individuals
came together to discuss or plan an upcoming event or a problem,
such as the question of hired labour in Udaynala.
Although much time was spent planning, discussing and execut­
ing various public or party-related activities, many of the meetings
were relatively brief, and the informants were often at a loss to explain
their activities since our last interview. Gram Committee meetings,
the semi-informal cooperative society meetings, discussion-meetings
on issues such as the insects or the division of labourers, and bichars,
were usually over within one to three hours. Occasionally they dragged
on, but as a rule much of the time was spent in small group discus­
sions over a wide range of issues before and after the actual meeting.
Apart from the meetings, there were the personal encounters.
Individuals or groups of villagers visited six of the interviewees— the
seventh being Dasarathi— at home every morning, for consultations
or assistance. Later during the day, but particularly in the evenings,
both major and minor village leaders— irrespective of formal positions
and including Dasarathi— spent their time visiting people, gossiping,
attending meetings, or, in Udaynala, engaging in card-games. They
spent most of their time ‘being around', being available, and getting
involved. The formal ‘power' enjoyed by Shyamsundar Porel and his

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brother, by Dasarathi, Kajisaheb and indireedy by Taleb, did not make

a difference. The role of village leader and the expectations bestowed
upon formal Panchayat members were in no way different from those
bestowed on informal village leaders: a community leader was expected
to take a personal interest in issues far removed from the confines
defined by formal offices.
Two or three decades ago, many villagers may have come to local
leaders to ask for material assistance. Most people were much poorer
then, and many sought loans (in grain or cash), charity, or donations
to cover expenses for a daughter’s wedding feast. These material pleas
for assistance may have made the relationship between village leaders
and commoners appear as purely materialistic, in which the wealthy
exploited the poor, even in face of evidence o f occasional requests for
non-material assistance. The fact that the pleas for assistance contin­
ued into the 1990s, and that only a portion o f these requests now
concerned grain or money, suggests that the relationship had always
been more than a simple and direct trading o f political support for
material benefits.
It was in recognition of its inability to make sufficient inroads
into the affairs at the village level that the CPM, in 1988, initiated
the Gram Sabha (Village assembly, commonly known as Gram Com­
mittee). These were village level bodies with no statutory powers or
official recognition. However, they were informally invested with the
party’s authority, together with such power the individuals manning
it were willing to vest in it. The Gram Committees were nominally
open to anyone but in reality restricted to CPM supporters. ‘Every­
body’ was called upon to come to the meetings, and the speakers
talked about the whole community. In effect the meetings were called
and organized by local CPM activists, chaired by important local
party activists and other invitees, either closely connected to the party
or prestigious but politically insignificant individuals.19 The Gram
Committees formed part of the party’s efforts to bring its policies to
the villages and have been involved in various projects, the largest
being the organizing and mobilization of instructors for the mass
literacy programme. But their success varied considerably. The Gram
Committees are interesting however because they represent one man­
ner in which the party, in recognition of the importance o f local level

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affairs, has sought to bridge the gap between the village and its own
form al institutions or those o f the Panchayats.
A nother common method used by the party to bridge that gap
was through its affiliated mass-organizations. In order to achieve a
position within the mother party and a membership card, long-term
w o rk in one o f the affiliated organizations was required. These would
norm ally be either the Krishak Samiti (or Kisan Sabha, the affiliated
peasant organization), the Democratic Youth Federation o f India
(DYFI), the Student Federation of India (SFI), or the Mahila Samiti
(wom ens organization). Party membership was quite difficult to ob­
ta in and depended to a considerable extent on the degree o f involve­
m en t in a mass organization or a very sustained commitment to the
party and its objectives. Evidence o f such commitment was through
being active locally, organizing meetings and demonstrations, and
building a local support base by helping people, spending time with
them , explaining the party programme to them, telling them how to
get hospital treatment, etc. Such involvement, I was told by senior
party workers in the Dakshin Damodar Zonal Branch, constituted
exposure to popular concerns, arguments, and a wider section o f so­
ciety which served several purposes: It prepared activists for politics
and the demands upon their energy and time; it helped the party
broaden its base by translating its theoretical pro-poor programme into
tangible activities for the poor where this was needed; and it singled
out in the process those ambitious people who were not willing or
inclined to work with ‘the poor, the lower castes, and the sick*.

SYMBOLIC CAPITAL AND LEN -D EN

At issue were relations between the organized party and its more or
less organized activists, on the one hand, and the rest, on the other.
Ultimately it was the ‘image’ people had o f a leader, or his reputation,
and the confidence created continuously, day-by-day, that made the
village leaders position legitimate and acceptable. It is necessary for
the village leader to be able to inspire confidence, to ensure that
people trusted him and his judgements. Such a confidence constituted
something similar to what Pierre Bourdieu termed ‘symbolic capital’.
The term refers to social obligations and reciprocity, in other words

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the bonds to other people, families or clans that enables one to call
upon them for assistance (for harvests, or feuds). Symbolic capital is,
wrote Bourdieu, credit, in the widest sense of the word, i.e. a sort o f
advance that the group alone can grant those who give it the best
material and symbolic guarantees’ and ensures networks o f allies
(Bourdieu 1977: 181). Bourdieu s outline o f how symbolic capital is
typically created, is quite indicative of how Bengal village leaders
approach their fellow villagers, and deserves to be quoted in extenso.
Wastage of money, energy, time, and ingenuity is the very essence of the
social alchemy through which an interested relationship is transmuted into
a disinterested, gratuitous relationship, overt domination into misrecognized,
‘socially recognized' domination, in other words, legitimate authority. The
active principle is the labour, time, care, attention and savoir-faire which
must be squandered to produce a personal gift irreducible to its equivalent
in money, a present in which what counts is not so much what you give as
the way you give it, the seemingly gratuitous' surrender not only of goods
or women but of things that arc even more personal and therefore more
precious, because, as the Kabyles say, they can ‘neither be borrowed nor
lent', such as time—the time that has been taken to do the things that
‘won’t be forgotten', because they are done the right way at the right time—
marks of appreciation, gestures’, ‘kindnesses’, and ‘considerations' (Bourdieu
1977: 192-93, italics in original).

This form of authority is based on fides, an inherendy personal

quality, the ability to inspire confidence or trust, or a sense of protective
authority. Such authority, pace Bourdieu, ‘is neither officially declared
nor institutionally guaranteed’ (Bourdieu 1977: 193), and it has to
be continuously maintained.
In the case of Bengal village leaders, the expectation o f interven­
tion on behalf of dependants or would-be dependants was the concrete
tangible aspect of the relationship, exemplifying its content and
strength. Not that everybody at all times needed the intervention o f
somebody influential, but such intervention was an important way
in which relationships were formed because they entailed reciprocation—
for instance in the form of informal (political) support.
The old Indian or at least Bengali practice of len-den (the term
suggests ‘taking and giving’) constituted a close parallel to symbolic
capital, albeit more manifest. It involved the gratuitous giving o f fish

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to neighbours after a catch in ones pond, lending a good shirt or a

particularly fine shawl to someone off on an important errand, or
immediately and voluntarily sending over eggs, fish, vegetables, or
other items to the neighbour who had just received important guests. Len-
den created trust, confidence, and mutuality. It ensured reciprocation—
when you needed a shirt or some fish yourself—and support when
disputes arose, or when extra money or labour was needed. To lend or
gift created credit*; to receive was ‘debt* that at one point would have
to be reciprocated. Reciprocation both paid off debt and created new
symbolic capital, and hence closer ties between the actors. A proper
act o f reciprocation was a statement of acceptance of the relationship
and o f a willingness to extend and maintain it.
In len-den practice there was no point in returning the fish the
very next day. It was not a loan and should not be shown to have been
conceived as such. It should be forthcoming when needed, that is,
when a need of some kind arose. In Bourdieu s study, symbolic capital
was greatly based on gift-giving. A proper reciprocation should not
come too soon, nor be the same ‘gift* though it should be somehow
equivalent. It should indicate the quality of the relationship rather
than constitute a repayment of debt. In Bengali len-den practice,
gifting was not important. It was about assistance— assistance when
needed. For instance, if your neighbour gave you fish when you had
none, you could actively support him when he needs support in a
dispute. But you might also give him fish when he had visitors, lend
him a hatch when he needed one, put him in contact with someone
who would pay a good price for his sal-tree. It was a relationship of
sharing rather than just exchanges of gifts. It evoked the norms of
mutuality and the norms o f reciprocity among relatives— however
broadly understood. Such relationships were not mechanical or sol^y
material. They were based on confidence and extended to all spheres
of life.20
Although the practice of len-den had been much reduced in scope
and importance over the decades, there was a parallel practice in the
relations between village leaders and commoners. Village leaders were
still expected to assist fellow villagers when required. There was a
strong sense of expectation, almost of demand, to assist. If the leader
did involve himself, then this assistance was ‘exchanged’—or reciprocated—

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with political support and a willingness to be associated with the

particular leader, by refraining from talking badly about him, by
implicitly or actively supporting him in village meetings, by appearing
for meetings called him, by being part of his entourage—all o f course
in accordance with ones status and means. This was why involvement
in everyday affairs was so important to the politician. It is what even­
tually translated into broader support, more influence derived from
the implicit support of a large number of people, their willingness to
accept his authority, and his implicit claim to rule. In spite o f the
differences between Bengal’s political len-den and Bourdieus symbolic
capital, I shall continue to use the latter term as it conveys how
tangible acts might translate into something else— a symbolic act
translating into a symbolic repayment which is a latent type o f credit
that in the long run may foster enduring bonds.

FORMAL AND INFORMAL POLITICS: TW O

INTERLOCKED GAMES
This chapter has sought to argue that trust or confidence were basic
elements in the building of an individual village leader, the trust or
confidence he was able to generate between himself and potential
followers. As noted in Chapter Three, leaders were hubs o f wheels,
devoid of power without the spokes and the rim, relying sometimes
on involuntary support but mosdy on voluntary support or support
that appeared to be voluntary. Leaders relied on the creation and
maintenance of a sense of mutuality and personal interest and
confidence. Support was extended to those leaders who were seen to
be working for others, taking them seriously, treating them with
appropriate respect, and spending time and energy on their welfare.
Leaders were bestowed with that Fingerspitzengcfiihl or contextual
sensitivity’ which allowed them to ‘know* how to treat each according
to rank and status in a given context. Where such confidence existed,
we may talk about relationships or alliances. But these were not explicit
or formalized in any way. In the context o f Bengali village politics,
‘alliances’ were implicit, they were merely ‘there’, inspired by a previous
record, by an expectation that family or other relationships matter.
To disregard such relationships would be detrimental to one’s symbolic

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capital, to ones name* or reputation. Village leaders and future village

leaders spent time and energy on their co-villagers because by doing
so they established their ability and legitimacy.
Formal politics, comprising formal institutions, obligations, and
tasks, could only be effective if correlated with activities o f informal
politics. In other words, the formal powers o f an office had to be
extended in favour of local people extended on a variety o f issues in
order to achieve legitimacy to its claim to command and lead. Only
such involvement could create long-term loyalty. Formal offices
possessed powers and com m anded resources, which alone were im­
portant and established submission. But formal powers not exercised
with sensitivity did not translate into informal power, into influence
in local society, into an ability to sway the opinion in meetings.
These observations relate to Adrian Mayers implicit suggestion
that statutory powers of formal office do not necessarily spill over
into informal influence. He argued that the inform al and par­
ticularistic decreased in importance, and that the role o f specific
and government-related institutions increased. In the village o f
Ramkheri, he found that the powers of traditional village headmen 'in
unofficial contexts have diminished’ (Mayer I960: 113). His mate­
rial suggests nonetheless that although the headmans position had
diminished in importance, its particularistic aspects had not. Important
villagers of Ramkheri felt dissatisfied with the statutory institutions
and set up their own un-elected body, which they called the
'Comprehensive Committee’. This body soon came to be the real
centre of power to the exclusion o f the formal offices with their
statutory powers (Mayer I960: 114-23). From his material it seems
clear that statutory bodies without the backing o f major resources
cannot compete against the local clout o f local big-men, unless the
individuals filling these bodies simultaneously play a role in and
derive local influence from the informal and particularistic. This
suggestion finds support in Oommen’s statement that 'Power reservoirs
may not be in the formal power bodies, such as the Gram Sabha
executive committee’ but in people outside o f such formal bodies
who nonetheless 'count in community affairs and may run the entire
business from behind’ (Oommen 1966: 103). Andr^ B&eille argued
that 'functionally diffuse’ bodies such as groups o f elders ‘have to

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compete increasingly with functionally specific structures of power

(Bdteille 1970: 260-61).
To distinguish the two types of local governance in terms o f formal
or informal bodies may seem unnecessary. Alternatively, we may
understand formal office as one form o f ‘power’, comparable in
village politics to those already encountered: a general clout or agility
(what villagers termed khamata), considerateness, intelligence,
wealth, and high status. Formal office commanded certain addi­
tional means, and created contacts outside o f the village polity. Yet
it did not entirely replace the other sources o f local influence. The
politician and the political system to a considerable extent still
depended on the explicit or implicit support o f all those for whom
subordination did not come naturally or was not necessary. This is
particularly so in the context of India’s democratic system, where
politicians and political parties depend on continued electoral support
and need to make policies appear acceptable to a majority o f the
population. The limited reach of government offices and the limited
amount of money controlled by the local government has not helped
alter this picture.
I do not wish to argue that modern-type political institutions,
are irrelevant, but only suggest that their direction is still far from
clear and that the role of formalized politics is easily overrated. In
the 1990s, in Burdwan, formal politics percolated into the daily
affairs of villages more than before but remained limited. In the
next chapter, we will investigate further how the two spheres interlocked
and influenced one another, how the more informal, personalized
tools-of-trade sustained actors in formal politics, and how even formal
actors such as representatives of political parties— and ultimately the
parties themselves— bargained with local interests and values in order
to garner support.

NOTES
1 The Krishak Samiti is an independent peasant organization (the all-India
name is Kisan Sabha) closely affiliated to the CPM; the Mahila Samiti is
the womens organisation of the CPM, the DYFI the youth wing, and the
SFI the students wing.

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2 Although the terms ‘the Panchayats’ or ‘the Panchayat system* refer to the
whole system from the Gram Panchayat to the Jela Parishad, in most of this
chapter these terms refer to the lowest level only, as shorthand for the Gram
Panchayat, as this level is more important in a village context.
3 For a full history of the Panchayats in West Bengal as well as a detailed
outline of its functions, see Webster 1992; cf. Licten 1988 and 1992.
4 The most well-known exponent of this view is Brass 1965. Weiner 1967
presents a thorough study of the ‘expediting* functioning of the Congress
party in power. Franda 1970 has applied it io West Bengal. The theory is
criticized by Hardiman 1982. For a more recent example see Robinson 1988.
5 The next tier was the Panchayat Samiti, comprising the Block, and then the
Jela (or Zilla) Parishad at the district level. The West Bengal Panchayat Act
was passed in 1957, but (s-)elections in many cases were held years later.
6 Political repression started much earlier in West Bengal than in most states.
Communists were targetted from as early as 1971-72 and the 1972 elections
rigged in many constituencies.
7 The police prefer to raid at night; otherwise they may be spotted from far away.
8 A dharmagola is a communal paddy storage for times of crisis.
9 One’s neighbours’ assistance is an absolute requirement when food for
possibly several hundred people is to be cooked, seating arrangements
prepared, and the food served. Besides, the presence of a large number of
relatives and neighbours during the festivities is obligatory to make any
wedding feast a success. Kajisaheb’s rationale for intervening and saving the
occasion was that the girl was not to be blamed for her father’s faulty ways.
10 The case does resemble, in several aspects, how Ranjan Mandal was squeezed
out of village politics many years earlier (Chapter Three). That case was
also caused by someone else—his cousin Bhaskar—appearing to be more
promising as a leader who would fulfill the aspirations of important actors
and interests in the village.
11 Elections have been held regularly, in 1978, 1983, 1987, 1993 and 1998.
12 IRDP * Integrated Rural Development Programme, NREP = National Rural
Employment Programme, RLEGP = Rural Landless Employment Guarantee
Programme.
13 Lieten 1988. Rs 175 is slightly more that one full week’s minimum pay for
an agricultural labourer. Considering that the sum refers to ‘per capita of
the rural population’, i.e. including women and children, it appears that the
Panchayats control quite substantial sums of money.
14 Samsad Bengali-English Dictionary gives bichar as ‘consideration, deliberation;
argument; discussion; decision; inference; a (judicial) trial; judgement,

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15 The importance laid on consensus in Indian village councils is outlined in

Bailey 1968.
16 Weiner 1967:465. Reddy and Haragopal 1985 also point out the importance
of 'the fixer’ or middleman in transactions between the village population
and the state.
17 The Gram Committee (or Gram Sabha) is a village-level body. It will be
presented in more detail below.
18 The timing of the Gopinathpur baroari puja was awkward and unusual;
most baroari pujas were held well after the harvesting between late January
and early April.
19 Such as the visiting anthropologist, but more commonly a locally famous
writer or poet, or a village ‘son’ well-established elsewhere and out of touch
with local affairs.
20 These considerations make len-den different ffom the gift-giving so crucial
to pre-colonial (and colonial period) kingly models and network building
(and even post-colonial politics). See in particular Dirks 1987 and Price
1996.

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7
Gossip and Reputation:
The Making of Village Leaders

T H E IMPORTANCE OF GOSSIP
n a village people spend much time gossiping. Gossip— adda— is
I rural Bengal’s favourite pastime. Women visit one another during
the day to exchange views and news. Men meet in the fields or,
preferably, in the evening, at one another’s home, where they discuss
and smoke bins (country cigarettes) together. Younger people meet
in the alleys, at street corners, or in shaded meeting-places, to tell
stories, jokes, play cards, and sing the latest hit-songs. They all
gossip— about people they know, about people o f the village in
general, or about recent events. Rumours (gujab) arise and thrive,
and people’s reputations for this or that are constantly under
construction. Nicknames and suggestive couplets are invented by
the more daring and creative, and old incriminating rumours or stories
retold and relished.
Gossip is an important social mechanism because everyone is ‘in
the know’. Everyone is informed and all contribute with their own
information towards a dispersed communal body o f knowledge and
opinion. Gossip is particularly important for village leaders because
leadership naturally means being in the forefront, exposed to village
gossip. Their actions, motives, and personalities are chatted about,
argued over, subject to reflection, and eventually evaluated against
popular sentiments and shared values. It is crucial to a village leader
to have a good reputation because otherwise people will find it difficult
to associate with him and heed him at village meetings. Taken
together, gossip, rumours, nicknames, jokes, and suggestive couplets,

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constitute a semi-public realm for the making and unmaking o f indi­

viduals’ names’ (nam) or reputations, with a bearing on individual
leaders’ political capability. This realm is not public, it is free from
the constraints of public life— the show of respect, the rules o f address,
seniority— because it takes place in private, between intimates.
It is not the gossip in itself that is interesting for us here, but what
it reveals about the relationship between commoners and village lead­
ers, and the restraints it poses on the actions of the latter. At issue
here is the relationship between a small number o f villagers and the
rest. Are the few— in spite of the superior ‘powers’ at their disposal—
capable of swaying the population in the desired direction if it goes
against a majority sentiment? Are they able to force decisions? I will
suggest below that they are severely constrained because much dis­
cussion, evaluation, value judgement, and transmission of relevant
but undesired’ information goes on outside the purview or control
of leaders. Authority rests in this realm, is made here, and unmade.
Responses and attitudes to particular issues or persons are formed in
this realm, so as to constitute ‘what people feel’, the popular senti­
ments that form the environment within which leaders have to act.
If we consider only the structural criteria that create influence— land,
ritual status, formal office, or political contacts— we lose the dynam­
ics of village politics, because we do not see how authority is made
and how it changes. We lose sight of the intimate and circumstantial
in small-scale societies, and as a result the environment in which
social change takes place, because we do not see how ‘powerful’ indi­
viduals can cease to be leaders. The fickle nature o f the quality we
call authority is what makes one person and not someone else a leader.
This realm in which authority is created is constituted by people
talking together, exchanging views and opinions and indulging in
that activity we derogatorily refer to as gossip but which is an important
social mechanism.
Max Gluckman (1963) makes the very interesting observation
that gossip ultimately refers to and sustains group values. Groups, as
moral entities, are maintained through gossip. It is these shared values
that people, in gossip, refer to when standard codes o f behaviour are
broken. Errant members of (small-scale) communities are brought
in line by being whispered about.

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This view is in contrast to what James Scott suggested. He sees

gossip as one of the ‘weapons of the weak’, although not a particularly
effective one. The weak gain leverage but above all express them­
selves through this semi-public and danger-free realm, where the rich
can be talked about in disrespectful and satirical ways that would not
be possible in public. ‘[G]ossip is a kind of democratic “voice” in
conditions where power and possible repression make open acts of
disrespect dangerous’ (Scott 1985: 282). Together with other weapons’,
gossip represents a pardy unarticulated poor man’s discourse, according
to Scott. Gluckman’s ‘shared values’ are here divided between the
ideological hegemony of the rich and the alternative values o f the
poor. In gossip, argues Scott, is found a perspective on labour or
social relations often different from the ‘official’ public one presented
by the rich. ‘Gossip’, he writes, ‘is never ‘disinterested’; it is a partisan
effort (by class, faction, family) to advance its claims and interests
against those of others’ (ibid.). Gossip, like other forms o f everyday
resistance, refers back to a shared value-system but contests the
interpretations of the rich. Theft, for instance, may be interpreted by
some poor as ‘a kind of self-help zakat [Islamic tithe] gift’ (Scott
1985: 291).
Udaynala and Gopinathpur seem to have been very different from
the society studied by Scott. As seen in Chapter Three, there was a
large degree of rivalry among village leaders, which does not appear
prominent or relevant in Scott’s Marayan village. Furthermore, although
village society was very far from egalitarian, there was nonetheless a
severe limit on the ‘powers’ enjoyed by the village leaders. Rather, broad
support was a sine qua non of village leadership. In situations o f ri­
valry, the support of broader groups, whether of poor or rich, was
crucial to leadership positions. This does not seem to have been rel­
evant in Scott’s village. Besides village leaders, when engaged as judges
or deliberators in issues ranging from family disputes to allegations of
theft, could hope for a decision to be effective only if based on popular
sentiment and on broad acceptance.
In respect of the emphasis laid on consensus in decision-making
and the importance of gossip on individual leaders’ capabilities,
Udaynala and Gopinathpur seem more akin to the egalitarian village
society Studied by Karen Brison. She makes two points of interest here.

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First, she shows that community leaders are particularly exposed to the
dangers of gossip and rumour. In relatively egalitarian societies, where
leaders stand out, she says, command and respect are based on and
ruined by hints, unsubstantiated interpretations, and suggestions. Gos­
sip and rumour ‘aie essential both to constituting, and, ultimately,
destroying the position o f leaders1 (Brison 1992: 3). But leaders also
make use of these themselves, to destroy their rivals or prop up their
own position.
Udaynala and Gopinathpur were not egalitarian societies. Yet we
still find the same mechanism at work— gossip and more or less
substantiated rumours severely affecting the effectiveness of individual
village leaders. Brisons second point of interest is that this realm of
gossip and rumour is not dominated by either (would-be) leaders—
who may be attacked in gossip but who likewise manipulate names
and reputations—o r by ‘commoners1—who may use the realm in much
the same way as rival leaders but usually less intensely. Rather than
being dominated by one or the other, says Brison, sustained rumours
reflect social values or perceptions, and contribute towards making sense
of events (Brison 1992: 23). In her study, gossip appears as a realm
where everybody can participate, and eventually, gossip and rumours
‘comprise a sort of oral history and come to constitute the ‘map1 of
events, relationships, and personalities1(Brison 1992: 4).
From Udaynala it will be observed that not only did gossip play
an important role in village politics, it could direcdy affect a village
leaders effectiveness. As shown in the previous chapter, village lead­
ers spent much of their time ‘being around1talking to people or seeing
people at home. Leaders w ith statutory powers, such as Panchayat
members, were not excused from such time-consuming activities.
Engagement on behalf of villagers constituted a crucial element in
what people expected o f leaders. More importantly, such engage­
m ent created relationships of mutual trust and confidence, and an
obligation to reciprocate— ties of obligation that the village leader
depended on. The role of supplications in reputation-building was
double-barrelled— receiving requests alone made it possible for some­
one to show his concern for fellow villagers, but only a successful inter­
vention helped to create the reputation of a potential or actual village
leader. The ambitious village leader was thus very preoccupied by

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what was going on in the village, what this or that person was up to,
and particularly by what was being said*.
The role of gossip and the informal, semi-public realm in consti­
tuting both the reputations of village leaders and the village political
agenda, is explored below through the history o f groups, alliances,
and conflicts in Udaynala. It will show the workings o f village poli­
tics: how prestige and reputations, gossip and rumours were part of
subtle political struggles— struggles that did not take place openly,
that were not expressed, and that were hidden in silences in some
cases and in arguments in others. This history suggests the implica­
tions o f rumours and gossip on the village agenda, and on village
leaders and their reputations. More profoundly, it will indicate how
limited the village leader s own capacity was to form the agenda or to
follow his own preferred strategy.
In this situation, gossip was not only a weapon o f the weak’— a
largely ineffectual counter-hegemonic discourse— but the village
discourse. Gossip was integral to village politics and formed its agenda
and the reputation and thus effectiveness o f individual leaders.
Because it referred to commonly held beliefs and to individual
characters, gossip ultimately concerned the relationship between
villagers, the confidence that tied them together, or the suspicion
that divided them. It affected the ability of village leaders to be heeded,
to sway the opinion at village meetings, and to remain leaders. It
should also be noted that gossip should not be taken as the entirely
negative phenomenon it is often made out to be. It constituted a
serious effort by many people to get a grasp on what went on in
matters o f interest to them and in situations where not all relevant
information was openly available.
Most of the material here refers to Udaynala, with only an occa­
sional reference to Gopinathpur. Furthermore, most of the material
draws on the activities of one community only, that o f the sekhs.
O ther jatis appear only in a limited manner. However, there is no
reason to believe that the social mechanisms outlined here vary mark­
edly from one jati to another.

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T H E MAKING AND UNMAKING OF INDIVIDUAL

REPUTATIONS

Public displays of respect— more rarely of disrespect— were made

before an audience and in the presence of the person concerned.
Semi-public displays of respect or disrespect were made in the persons
absence, among a group of friends. Rumours, allegations, suggestive
couplets, and nicknames thrived outside the confines o f formality
such as public meetings where rules of address, respect, seniority, etc.
applied. Gossip in private company was largely danger-free because
of the stigma attached to squealing, and because in a general merry
situation of intense exchange it was often impossible to pinpoint the
original source of the slander. Typically the ultimate evasive source
for sensitive information in Bengali is ‘It is being said among people’
(loke bale). This refers to gossip, where one is talked about and
evaluated. In gossip, a person’s motives and intentions are interpreted
and potentially given unintended meaning, his influence is questioned,
and his behaviour commented upon and evaluated. Furthermore,
liaisons between different individuals can and are suggested and may
raise questions about the person’s honesty and integrity. It is a
semi-public realm, but it is public enough— because everyone is ‘in
the know*— to be important to individual reputations.
Consider nicknames such as ‘Dairy-Anuar*, whose dairy project
flopped 15 years ago due to a cow disease; or ‘Mad-Chaudhuri’ who
was considered more than a bit eccentric; ‘Goat-Sakti’ (or, more point­
edly, ‘Stud-Sakti’) whose young wife ran away with a lover; or the
small, dark and energetic but generally disliked Manik Mandal who
was known as ‘Manki-Mandal’ (i.e. Monkey). There were other more
subtle ways of making fun, as in referring to Bhadu Rahman—
although known to all— not by his name but as ‘khet majur neta
(leader of agricultural labourers), a satirical twist implying that he
was not quite what he wanted to be. O f a more serious sort, often
with implications for their political ambitions, were rumours o f love
affairs. The former Panchayat member for Udaynala South, Dasarathi,
was ‘known’ to be involved with an attractive married woman, and
this contributed to his poor reputation, his inability to be considered
a potential all-village leader, and his inability to command attention

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at meetings (even when he was a Panchayat member). If someone

outside his immediate kin-group came to be associated with him, he
too exposed himself to the allegation that he was flouting common
decency in order to pursue a strategic goal. There was also a tendency
to associate certain individuals with incrim inating or ridiculing
incidents. Such stories were plentiful and well-known, and a brief
reference was often enough to arouse anger or laughter. ‘Dairy-Anuar
is a case in point. Although he was pious, moderately well-off, and
untarnished by the failure of his dairy project, his nickname made it
difficult for ‘Dairy-Anuar’ to be taken seriously as a man with
leadership qualities.
Reputations could be ‘made* through public displays o f respect,
by accommodating individuals, and by attributing to them their ‘due
prestige. Dignitaries of all sorts were expected to be given proper
seating at meetings and an opportunity to address the assembly.
Meetings with microphones were notoriously long-drawn (even lesser
leaders valued the respect suggested in the opportunity to address an
assembly), and I have witnessed several meetings in which the number
o f speakers was as large or larger than the number o f spectators.
Im portant people were also expected to be served tea, the most
senior in the best cups, the lesser ones in glasses.
The public and the semi-public thrive on each other: The public
realm is very often a reflection of the semi-public but not necessarily
so. The public realm may also contradict the semi-public perception.
The semi-public, on the other hand, gains substance from the public.
However, credentials, statements, and names— as displayed in the
public realm— translate into village influence only if corroborated by
general consensus in the semi-public realm. O nes ‘name* depends
on the respect others are prepared to show and on how they evaluate
the public display of respect. It is based on socially created opinions
and can be made or unmade through social processes.
Below I will follow a case where gossip came to have a decisive
impact on the course of village politics and on the actions o f village
leaders. It points to the close interrelationship between village leaders
and commoners, particularly to village leaders’ preoccupation with
their ‘name’ and the impact of gossip on this— a gossip dominated
by non-leaders.

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TOWARDS MANIKBHATS BICHAR

In this section we shall see how a string of bichars (Village courts’, see
Chapter Six) and meetings held in Udaynala in 1992-93, on widely
different issues, became connected to one another and to other
incidents and developments in peoples perception (as expressed in
their gossip). We shall see how these unintended interpretations (for
the main actors) gained a momentum o f their own, with severe
implications on their political effectiveness. It was a struggle over
influence, name, reputation, and prestige where motives were read
into actions, conspiracies suggested, and actors and actions interpreted.
The two main protagonists in this string of events were Kajisaheb
and Taleb. Kajisaheb was a dominant figure in the village and his record
and position were unassailable: Panchayat member for Udaynala for thirty
years,2 member of the CPM since the mid-1970s, one of the main
leaders of the village since the 1960s a position only strengthened by the
installation of the CPM-led government in 1977. The Panchayat
members for Udaynala South, both of the low-caste bagdi jati, were
chosen by him until 1993. In the village, Kajisaheb was supported in
particular by the middle-para families, of which his own family was one.
This group was united, backed Kajisaheb in meetings and provided him
with volunteers. Particularly the youth of these families, led by his wife’s
nephew Ajam Hosen, were active supporters of Kajisaheb. His personal
position was such that he was rarely, and never seriously, challenged
between 1977 and 1992. He was also a very prominent figure in the
wider area, with extensive contacts beyond the village.
However, the year after his re-election as Panchayat member in
1988 he relinquished his party membership card due to ‘differences’
with the party. He also stopped attending Panchayat meetings. He
was not re-appointed to run as the party’s Panchayat candidate in
1993, the seat being reserved for women.3 In spite o f this loss of
institutionalized influence, he retained his informal position in
Udaynala where he continued to hold various positions. He was
always made chairman in village meetings and was consulted on, or
involved in, all significant events. He continued to be the major
village leader, about whom it was said that ‘W ithout Kajisaheb there
will be no bichar’.

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In about early 1992 Kajisahebs position started to decline. The

decline was not immediately obvious, but was evident in small
incidents. These could have been seen as stray incidents in which
case they do not add up to much. But they were interpreted— in the
semi-public realm— in light o f a growing opposition to him by
younger would-be leaders. A number o f them were among the first
lot o f college-educated youth in the village, all active during the 1980s,
and mainly from non-middle-para families: Taleb, Wasel, Sakti, Hitu,
Dasarathi, and others. Taleb was the most important. A low-key,
cerebral organiser, he rose in the party over the years and always
sought collaboration not disruption. H e remained second to
Kajisaheb, but that seemed only natural given their differences in
age and experience. However, in 1993 his wife, Milon, a political
novice, was chosen as the party’s candidate for Panchayat member in
Udaynala North— the post previously held by Kajisaheb. Due to her
lack of political experience, Taleb became the de facto Panchayat
member. It was ‘known’ in the village that Milon was appointed by
the party so that Taleb could become the de facto Panchayat member
for a seat reserved for women. However, this did not necessarily
reflect the party’s preference for Taleb over Kajisaheb since only a
litde earlier Kajisahebs daughter had been approached. She, however,
had declined.
After this election the long-standing and continued dominance in
village affairs by the middle-para group and Kajisaheb started to be
an irritant to Taleb. He himself was from the north-para. The disso­
nance between him and Kajisaheb increased and became increas­
ingly evident and ‘known’, although Taleb did not express any dis­
satisfaction and continued to work closely with Kajisaheb, meeting
him practically every day at Kajisahebs house. Taleb also kept his
distance from the more open ‘opposition, which included his cousin
Wasel.
The fact that it was Kajisahebs Panchayat seat, Udaynala North,
that was reserved for women, and that the party selected Taleb’s wife
Milon, as its candidate contributed to the gossip about why Kajisaheb
had left the party in the first place—whether he had been rejected or
had himself declined a fourth term. Four months after the election,
Kajisahebs position as secretary of the cooperative society came

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under severe criticism at the annual general assembly of the cooperative.

He had been elevated to that position by the party, without any
formal election, because the party wished to clean up the mess left by
the former secretary— the highly corrupt Panchayat member for
Udaynala South, Dasarathi. Kajisahebs detractors pointed out that
his elevation had been undemocratic. There had been no protests at
earlier meetings, and the party’s role in Kajisahebs elevation had
surprised no one. W hat was surprising was that Kajisaheb was now
publicly attacked, and that the attack was lead by H itu and his brother
Raja, both of whom had ‘secretly met Dasarathi a few days earlier.
Dasarathi was ‘known’ to be quite close to Sakti, the new Panchayat
member o f Udaynala South and a favourite o f the party. These
‘connections’ gave gossipers a field-day. At the cooperative society
meeting itself, debates were long and at one point quite heated. But
Kajisaheb defended himself well and the whole affair blew over.
Some months later Kajisahebs 17-year-old son was beaten up by
some youngsters from a neighbouring village. The immediate cause
o f the beating was a quarrel over a kabaddi-game4 a few weeks ear­
lier. But— again— the fact that someone dared beat Kajisahebs son
was to him and others a sign of his declining prestige and reputa­
tion. He sought to have the culprits subjected to a bichar in Udaynala,
a bichar that would have vindicated and reasserted his authority and
influence. But the party did not support his demand and declined to
. get involved in the matter.
The major threat to his prestige and influence, however, came in
connection with Manikbhai, a poor labourer often employed by
Kajisaheb and considered his protlgl. Manikbhai’s family had a long
standing dispute over some land and money with their immediate
neighbours, particularly with Sandha, a young woman o f that family
‘known’ to be extremely quarrelsome. The dispute resulted in a
dramatic night-time police raid in the village in 1992, in which a
police party came to arrest M anikbhai and his brother for the
attem pted m urder of Sandha. It was Sandha who had filed the
complaint, but the charge was unlikely to be true (though she may
have been beaten by them). In spite of the unsubstantiated nature of
the allegation and the fact that the police rarely act on such unsub­
stantiated reports, the police nonetheless came to arrest Manikbhai.

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And chat too without consulting Kajisaheb, Panchayat member and

Manikbhai’s patron. Kajisaheb was caught off-guard, and although
on the following day he did manage to secure permission from the
police for Manikbhai to remain in the village for the time being, he
could not prevent the case from proceeding to court.
The police, it was argued in village gossip, were unlikely to have
raided or persisted without some political pressure. They would not
have reacted to Sandha’s allegations without consulting someone
influential and knowledgeable in the village. In a grand conspiracy
theory that invoked power balances and struggles within the party
and the local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA),5 it was
alleged that Taleb had manipulated the whole thing.
A few weeks later Kajisaheb called a bichar to setde the dispute
between Manikbhai and Sandha. At the bichar the middle-para group
was in the majority, and Kajisaheb presided together with Panchu
Kabir and Abdul Mandal. Abdul Mandal was a generally respected
cultivator but had been uninterested in politics. He headed the family
traditionally considered to be descendants of the village headmans
lineage.6 Panchu Kabir was head of the ‘nine-brothers’ family-—some
of whom were well-off landowners, and others who had become rich
doing business in Calcutta. The father of the nine was poor, and so
their financial success gave them self-confidence and ultimately
created problems in the village. They had generally been shunned by
the middle-para youth because of their role in the downfall of the
123 Club ten years earlier (see below). However, Kajisaheb always
sought to pacify them, assist them when needed, and had included
Kabir in his circle. This was eventually to the benefit of Kabir, who—
middle-aged and modesdy ambitious— sought to present himself as
a reliable and responsible member of society in spite of the reputation
of his more erratic younger brothers.
The bichar was a disaster. It was dominated by the middle-para
people but Sandha refused to accept their authority. She refused to
comply with the compromise reached, and kept calling for ‘her
Panchayat member’ to be present, by whom she meant Taleb. As was
his habit, Taleb had not come. A younger brother-in-law o f Sandha
worked for the Taleb household as a labourer, and hence Taleb was
associated with this family, even if somewhat reluctantly. Sandha also

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probably knew about the rift that had developed between Kajisaheb
and Taleb. Her calls for Taleb were ignored by those present; he was
not informed or sent for. At the time of the bichar Milon had been
elected but not formally installed, and Kajisaheb was still offi­
cially the village Panchayat member. But that was probably quite
irrelevant. Her refusal to accept Kajisaheb and the assembly’s authority
was a slap in the face for the veteran Panchayat member, village leader,
and head of the middle-para families. She was accused o f contempt
o f the authority of those present and of having committed anyaya or
‘injustice’ to their authority. Eventually Sandha’s mama (maternal
uncle, her ‘guardian’ since her husband worked in Delhi) declined to
get further involved and went home. But as judge (or deliberaton
bicharok) Abdul Mandal insisted on a solution. He went to bring
back Sandha’s mama, but they started to quarrel. To the utter
hum iliation of Abdul Mandal they ended up fighting in the mud,
where they were soon joined by others.
Afterwards the large group of middle-para youth vigorously cam­
paigned for the ultimate social weapon, ostracism (ekghare rakha)— an
aim that seems to have been implicidy accepted by the elders. The next
day the youth went around the village collecting signatures for Sandha’s
ostracizadon. The endeavour flopped, however, and the reason seems
to have been that people saw this not just as a conflict between Sandha
and Manikbhai but increasingly as a dispute between the two sides
over influence in the village. They were unwilling to take sides.
Normally such an endeavour promoted by the middle-para group
would have been largely unopposed. But their influence was diminish­
ing because of the connections made in village gossip.
To Kajisaheb’s opponents, the Sandha-bichar was a painful
example of how the middle-para group sought to dominate and had
dominated village affairs for too long. The group had ignored Sandha’s
calls for Taleb’s mediation and proceeded to have her ostracized. A
few days later a party meeting was held at the local party office in
Bajarpur. Here Taleb vented his frustration for the first time. ‘Rule
\sasan] in Udaynala’, he said, ‘is all done by Ajam [Hosen, of the
middle-para] and his friends, they are all Kajisaheb’s boys. W hat
right [adhikar] do these households have to run things?’ His
com plaint was supported by others from Udaynala at the meeting,

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particularly by Dasarathi, former Panchayat member for Udaynala

South and increasingly an opponent of Kajisaheb. Dasarathi made
sure the party’s reluctance to support Kajisaheb was made known in
the village.
It was at this time that Wasel decided to arrange a cultural
function’. His cousin Taleb was also involved in the preparations,
although the two had so far not been on speaking terms. Taleb was
prominendy seated during the function itself together with a number
o f other outside invitees, and he also participated in a small play
staged during the function. Kajisaheb, however, was not invited, and
when he appeared nonetheless, he was not requested to sit among
the prominent invitees. Wasel waited until Kajisaheb had left before
he ‘invited’ him to address the assembly. These not-so-subde insults
and the implications of Taleb’s role were lost on no one.
It was also ‘heard’ at this time in Udaynala that the village imam
had been seen with a woman in a shed by the mosque very late at
night. It was Manikbhai who had seen them, and who alleged that
the woman in question was a sister-in-law of Sandha, Manikbhai s
long-standing enemy. He gave a precise date of the sighting, and this
lent additional credence to an already existing rumour that the imam-
saheb was indeed having an affair with her. That rumour had been
around for some time, sustained with particular glee by the middle-
para families. They had but scant respect for the imam who was
active in the Muslim layman organisation, Tabligh Jamat. A number
o f villagers had long wanted to stop the rumours, but because they
had been very vague it had not been possible to confront the power­
ful middle-para families directly on such flimsy grounds. When
Manikbhai started spreading the rumour, however, the allegations
became very specific and at the same time the middle-para group’s
influence was seen to be diminishing. The imam’s associates demanded
a bichar and pardy because of the weakened position of the middle-
para families, the bichar demand was not ignored.
A week or so before the bichar scheduled against Manikbhai— in
the context of a prolonged ‘nibbling away’ on Kajisaheb’s and the
middle-para families’ prestige and their historical claim on respect—
the middle-para group decided to re-launch their once famous 123
Club. The 123 Club had been active in Udaynala from 1976 to

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1984. It was headed by a number o f prominent villagers (Kajisaheb,

Selimmaster, Fajlul Hosen, the last two later died), but the driving
force behind it were a fairly large number o f youth in their late teens.
They were the first large group in the village to have been college
educated. Among them dominated the sons o f the four or five tradi­
tionally prominent middle-para families: Ajam Hosen (Fajlul Hosen’s
eldest son), three o f Kajisaheb’s sons, and four or five from the Sekh
and Munsi families. In addition to these, there were some younger
members of the ‘nine-brothers’ family (also middle-para). Lastly there
were the cousins Taleb and Wasel (Selimmaster s son, a school teacher
as was his father) from the north-para, besides the future Panchayat
members Dasarathi and Sakti.
The club was particularly active and efficient after the installation
of the CPM and the Left Front Government in 1977 when the first
years of communist rule created a euphoric atmosphere of cooperation
and social work. The 123 activists were all associated with the CPM.
The club was a major and efficient organizer o f various communal
activities: the rakh (guarding the ripe paddy), football matches and
other games, economic assistance to poor households, the extension
o f electricity to the village, and the digging of pipes under the road
(to prevent flooding). It also organized a library and various cultural
functions, especially poetry readings and theatre (jatra) performances.
It enjoyed enormous prestige.
The club ceased to function in about 1984 for a number of reasons.
W ith their elder brothers’ increasing business success in Calcutta,
the younger ‘nine-brothers’ sought a more prominent position within
the village and refused to bow to the will o f the youngsters from the
historically dominant families. There were two indecisive fist fights
over this. When Wasel opposed the middle-para youth’s dominance
by starting his own theatre group, he was supported by the ‘nine-
brothers’. The rift was severe and the club barely lingered on. The
final blow was delivered by Fajlul Hosen, secretary of the club, who
had registered in his own name four bighas of land intended for the
123 to sharecrop. When this was discovered by other members of the
club much hue and cry was raised. But the club did not attract the
same enthusiasm anymore and its claim to the plot was not defended
with sufficient vigour. Instead the club just ceased to function. And

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Fajlul Hoscn kept the land. After this, Wasel, the ‘nine-brothers and
Fajlul Hosen (whose younger sister was married to Kajisaheb) were
all prevented from any major role in village affairs by the group of
middle-para families which saw them as enemies and disruptive
elements. T he clubs demise created a cleavage in the village—
cutting local CPM support in two—that was to last for a long time.
The middle-para families who grouped around Kajisaheb, came to
enjoy a pre-eminent position in the village.
The 123 Club remained a glorious memory until 1993. Kajisaheb
ahd his supporters saw their political clout rapidly decline and de­
cided that innovative action was called for. It was Ajam who formally
called for a re-launch meeting as son of previous secretary Fajlul
Hosen—-who had misappropriated the four bighas. Wasel, who had
been prominent in the old 123 Club but had contributed to its down­
fall was not invited, and his cousin Taleb, who had been prominent
but not disruptive, was also left out. The ‘nine-brothers’, how­
ever, despite their terrific reputation for disruption, were invited.
Also invited was Abdul Mandal, who had not been part o f the old
123 Club. He was invited by Kajisaheb and Ajam in a special depu­
tation to his home. The list of invitees reflected the new political
divisions rather than old enmities.
The re-launch was a success. Forty to fifty people were present,
and a full-fledged organization was established with a board of twenty-
two from which a secretariat was elected. Ajam was made secretary,
Abdul Mandal President, and Kajisaheb chairman o f an ‘Advisory
Committee*. The only dissonance was the issue of the four bighas
misappropriated by Ajam’s father. But after a short discussion it was
dismissed by Kajisaheb with a ‘W hat’s done is done’, and ‘Let us
start afresh’. He then proceeded to donate Rs 100 towards a new
fond and Ajam donated Rs 50 (the cheapest four bighas in the his­
tory of the village, it was later murmured). In the following week the
new 123 Club initiated guarding the ripe paddy, football and kabaddi
matches, and various other activities. The organizational force
behind these initiatives was Ajam, and they were welcomed by many
people who remembred the old 123 Club and its many good activities.
It was in light of these developments that Manikbhai’s bichar was
held the following week. At the bichar itself there was relatively little

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argument. The imam saheb’s supporters continuously pressed on

Manikbhai, who was questioned by Kajisaheb as chairman of the
meeting and seniormost deliberator. Kajisahebs opponents, such as
Taleb or Wasel, Dasarathi or Sakti, were all absent. The extended
middle-para group (Panchu Kabir, Ajam, Abdul Mandal and others)
was present but quiet. The case, they told me later, was lost in
advance. There was no defence for Manikbhai, only his word against
that o f the imam. They did not seek to dominate this bichar as they
had with Sandhas. They were weakened, but they were present in
large numbers, showing that they had strength enough to take the
blow.

GOSSIP AND T H E VILLAGE AGENDA

Manikbhai had gone too far by claiming to all and sundry that he
had seen the imam and the woman. However, the bichar could
probably not have been called without the negative developments in
Kajisahebs position and the implicit support o f his opponents. W ith
the Sandha-bichar fresh in mind, the Manikbhai-bichar could have
become an indictment o f the entire group. It is in this light that the
re-launch of the 123 Club gains importance. The choice of 123 Club
instead of a new name was seen as an uncamouflaged slight at Wasel
and by extension Taleb. In the re-launch o f the 123 Club, the middle-
para group headed by Kajisaheb showed its size, cohesion, and
influence by pulling off a major meeting and organizing a club that
took care of important activities.7Their sphere o f influence had been
expanded by including the respected Abdul Mandal. He was politically
inexperienced and could no doubt be manipulated in the hands o f
the experienced Kajisaheb. His own motives for joining may be related
to the incident in which he had been deeply humiliated by being
dragged into a fight in the mud by Sandhas uncle.
Gossip contributes towards the creation of the village agenda.
Through gossip, events and actions are associated and interpreted in
the context o f previous events, rumours, and known facts. Together
this leads to a setting in which positions, goals, links, and relative
strengths are perceived. More importantly, these popularly held
interpretations or perceptions lead to expectations o f courses o f

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action— expectations that must be acted upon because failure to

do so leads to the corrosion of reputations. This is what happened
immediately before o f the Manikbhai-bichar. The bichar itself
concerned the imam, Manikbhai, the woman, and village social
standards. However, the circumstances surrounding it— the linking
o f those involved to the previous Sandha-bichar, the Sandha family’s
association with Taleb, the increased tension between Taleb and
Kajisaheb, and Kajisaheb’s increasingly difficult relationship with the
party—created an environment in which Kajisaheb’s authority was
severely threatened. In order to retain it, actions were necessary that
would impress the villagers with his (continued) capacity—his khamata.
The whole history between Manikbhai s first and second bichar
concerned disputes and quarrels that ended up being perceived as
(increasingly also by those involved) part o f a power struggle
between the two major village leaders and their groups over influ­
ence in the village. The pace was set by village gossip. Protagonists,
important incidents, and relevant factors were identified and inter­
preted through what was ‘being said’. Notably, neither the final
struggle nor the many quarrels that occurred before it were concerned
remotely with issues o f ‘real power. There was no land involved, no
wealth (except the four bighas belonging to 123 Club but that was
history and easily ignored), and no positions o f statutory powers (the
Panchayat election was held before Sandha’s bichar). Instead, the
burning issues centred around the prestige of a village club, a rumour
about the imam-saheb, ostracization of a quarrelsome woman, and
the beating up of a young boy. These incidents were interpreted as
insults, challenges, and feuds, and reflected on individuals’ reputa­
tions as well as their reputation for being influential. Ultimately gossip
affected the ability of individuals to influence village affairs.
Gossip— a seemingly never-ending waste o f time— sets the village
agenda, the expectations and limitations for village leaders, and also
the very frame within which they have to operate. The ‘name’ or
image the leader needs— in order to be eligible and to proceed in his
endeavours— is created within this informal realm o f gossip. Though
village leaders no doubt have their own agendas, their ultimate
dependence on general goodwill nonetheless require that they stay
within the confines of popularly held sentiments.

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Slander, rumour-mongering, and gossip are not the weapons of

the weak exclusively; they are the weapons’ o f the whole community,
imperfect but far from ineffectual safeguards against faltering village
leaders. There are times when the position o f a village leader is so
strong that it prevents opposition and even prevents public rebuke
when something obviously wrong has been done. (Manikbhai might
not have been tried under other conditions.) But even a strong
village leader needs to build relationships with a large number o f
villagers and retain their confidence in him; and even a strong leader
is exposed to malicious gossip if he does not conform to expecta­
tions. In an Indian village gossip cannot be stopped. There is no way
of effectively controlling what people say to one another in private.
Dissatisfaction immediately translates into comments, arguments and
opinions in the form of loose, informal, and danger-free talk. Such
dissatisfaction may not directly translate into rejection o f the leader,
but it undermines his authority and his ability to put decisions into
practice.

MANIPULATION

The informal realm may be difficult to control, but it can be

manipulated. It represents opportunities rather than restrictions for
the discerning. As the above narratives illustrate, ‘timing’ (Bourdieu’s
tempo), manipulation, and the ever-changing village rumours, are
elements in a field of possibilities for the willing and able player.
Take for instance Kajisaheb’s little m anipulation at the end o f
Manikbhai’s bichar.
After it was agreed that Manikbhai was guilty of spreading malicious
rumours about the imam, a lively discussion continued on the ques­
tion of appropriate punishment. Many suggestions and arguments
were launched— he should pay a fine; the fine should go to the
mosque; no, the fine should go to a village fund; the imam is not
from our village, he is our guest, so the punishment must be severe;
Manikbhai should work for the mosque; he should walk from house
to house and apologise.
‘Listen, listen!’ Kajisaheb cut the discussion short at the last
suggestion and asked people to be quiet. The comments became

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muffled As the senior-most villager present he reiterated the arguments

against Manikbhai and ended by saying that the bichar had reached
the conclusion that Manikbhai should walk from house to house to
apologise. ‘A m I right? Is this a fair verdict? Is this the verdict of the
bichar?’ ‘Yes, yes! T hat is our decision agreed those around him.
They included the man who had suggested the punishment, and his
friends. Other voices got drowned in the immediate relapse into general
debate. The verdict they suddenly agreed upon was perhaps the least
severe or disadvantageous for M anikbhai. Eventually someone
disagreed, ‘He should walk barefoot!’. This was dismissed by
Kajisaheb with reference to a principle beyond dispute: ‘The verdict
has been pronounced and we must stand by it.’ Amendments to a
collective sentence after it had been passed were out o f the question.
By means o f a little manipulation Kajisaheb had reduced a poten­
tially severe punishment of manifest financial consequences to merely
an awkward embarrassment o f two nights’ duration. In the end,
Manikbhai visited only a few households, mostly o f sympathisers
and met with only a few of the main detractors. There were some
protests at this, but they were muffled. Kajisaheb’s manipulation was
relatively obvious, but he was supported by other heavyweights
present, such as Kabir and Abdul Mandal— whose support he had
secured and made manifest only the week before. This small piece of
m anipulation was very interesting. It pointed to the degree o f
manoeuvrability village leaders have. No single village leader would
have been able to assert his own preference against the will of the
majority without losing respect and influence in the long term or
dividing the village. But Kajisaheb was ‘allowed’ some recompense
after Manikbhai’s opponents had been vindicated. They had won
their main point. To Kajisaheb and his supporters, and perhaps even
to the audience in general, there was little point in letting the imam
saheb’s friends get more than their main point. The manipulation
did not severely affect the general consensus and did not offend popular
sentiments. If anything, it contributed towards Kajisaheb’s standing
as both an able judge and protector of Manikbhai at the same time.
Above all, it showed his ‘feel’ of the situation, his understanding or
rather sensitivity of how far he could go and what would be acceptable,
given his own position, the circumstances o f the bichar and popular

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views o f Manikbhai, Abdul Mandal and others. He overruled protest,

gambling his reputation built over the preceding week, and won.
W ithout the re-launch of the 123 Club, he might have lost, and
suffered a severe blemish on his reputation.
We may recall from Chapter Three the concepts contextual sensi­
tivity' (or Fingerspitzengcfuht) and khamata— the concept of power
which includes knowledge and agility. Much o f Kajisaheb's influence
lay in his ‘feel* of the situation, his knowledge o f how to exploit it,
how to stay on top. He was an able player in the game o f village
politics, manoeuvring between gossip and facts o f life, gaining
support, showing respect, acquiring knowledge of others' reputa­
tions and how these were affected, of whom to be surrounded by and
how to attract them, how comments, arguments, circumstances were
or would be interpreted. His coup of relaunching the 123 Club was
evidence of this. Personally Kajisaheb owned only 22 bighas of land
and was not a major employer, and, during the developments
described above, he had no position with statutory powers. He coun­
tered a challenge— successfully, in the general village perception—
by playing the game', a game he could play because o f his intimate
knowledge of the village, its people and their personal enmities and
friendships, of episodes from recent and not-so-recent village history,
o f groups and alliances and local concerns, o f the here-and-now
gossip, of what was permissible and what was not. This ‘feel' was also
crucial to understanding how ‘alliances’ could be formed, as personal
intimate relationships stemming from particular circumstances, such
as that recendy formed between himself and Abdul Mandal: Abdul
personal concerns, his recent humiliation in the mud, the effort it
would take to coax him into village politics, the effect his presence
would have, all these were elements with which Kajisaheb skillfully
played.
His performance took place on the background of popular opinion,
or rather his own reputation among co-villagers. The above story has
shown the importance of popular opinion, gossip, and slander in
creating the position of the village leader. The ability to manipulate
and survive in this informal sphere of politics constitutes the leader's
khamata> his agility. But he must not be caught in the act, should
not be seen to be overtly manipulative. T he fine line between

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m anipulating but not being seen as manipulative, at least not

beyond acceptable limits, is never definable or precise. O n the
contrary it is very vague. And one may only have a hunch about
how much manipulation would be acceptable under the circumstances
to a majority of those present. But by knowing what goes on in the
village, and what is the subject of village gossip, one can gauge that
fine borderline and acquire contextual sensitivity.
T he fate o f Kajisaheb’s reputation in the afterm ath o f the
Manikbhai vs. Sandha bichar shows that the effect o f gossip on
village leaders was not a democratic mechanism. People did not
object to the move to ostracize Sandha because they felt it was un­
just. Rather, it was a result of compounded rumours suggesting that
Kajisaheb no longer enjoyed the support of the party and other im­
portant actors, and that he was losing his influence. People did not
want to take sides in a petty conflict (between Manikbhai and Sandha)
when this conflict involved (so the gossip went) larger issues and
more important actors. The effect of gossip, then, on village politics,
comes across as a very undemocratic mechanism which compelled
ordinary villagers into non-action.
However, the important point to note is that this was not a one-way
flow of influence. The relationship of village leaders to ordinary
villagers was dialectical. We have seen how popular perception was
important to the village leader— both in the short run, as in the
ability to sway an opinion, and in the long run, in the capacity to
retain ones position. It is because of this that there was substantial
accommodation to popular opinion. In bichars for instance, a leader
could not command the community and so he had to rely on his
ability to interpret the general sentiment and pass a judgement in
accordance with that sentiment. Gossip was no fault-free mechanism
regulating individual behaviour, be it that of an ordinary villager or
a leader. But it was a mechanism nonetheless, and an ability to play
that game, to display a contextual sensitivity, was as important to the
individual leaders sum total of khamata as his land, his contacts, or
his family's prestige.

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NOTES
1 I was myself once informed that according to what ‘loke bale’ my ‘respect’
was going down. It was made known to me by a friend so that I could act
upon it and correct my ways. It concerned my somewhat excessively ethnic*
dress code.
2 As mentioned previously, the 1964 Panchayat system had four tiers, the
1978 one has three. Kajisaheb was in the Anchal Panchayat under the old
system and the Gram Panchayat under the new system; i.e. he was always
in the level that covered the anchal (10-15 villages).
3 About one third of all Panchayat seats in West Bengal were reserved for
women with effect from the 1993 election.
4 A popular rough teanvgame.
5 The main internal division in the CPM, it is popularly known, is between
the pragmatists’ and the ‘ideologues’, although rivalries are often interpreted
in terms of individual ambitions and animosities.
6 The post had no significance any longer except for one or two ritual occasions,
although it lent the family some prestige.
7 That the re-launch was a strategic political manoeuvre became evident soon
after, when after a few months the club again ceased to function.

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8
Conclusion

arshall Sahlins uses the term ‘mytho-praxis’ to describe the

M Maoris ability to select from a body of traditions the one most
appropriate to defend a current interest (Sahlins 1985: 55). Although
villages in West Bengal were not ‘traditional’ in the sense o f being
time-warped, the situation thirty to forty years ago was nonetheless
experienced as one of bringing change to a society embraced ‘in the
ways o f old’. In a sense we can understand cultural change as related
to praxis— to the initiatives and actions of individuals and to the
application of available norms to current situations and individual
or group interests. The situation in West Bengal after Independence
was experienced as one of contending normative systems where one
normative system dominated local society and another outside. The
values o f local society— its discussion houses and untouchability for
instance— were challenged by urban society (‘the modern tradition,
Bengali flavoured’), where values had been honed from a century-
old interaction with a European culture and had been given a new
impetus with the progessivist optimism of the Nehruvian age. Change
was so to speak ‘in the air’.
This did not result in a matter-of-course historical development.
There is no automatic process by which value-systems overtake one
another. Nor can the modern tradition be regarded as a bearer of
universal and objective truths that will somehow dawn on the peas­
antry. Rather, the gap had to be somehow bridged before there could
be ideological clashes and cultural change. In the class-structured soci­
ety of post-Independence rural West Bengal, the ‘modern tradition’ was
not equally available to all. The bridging of this gap was done by crafty
young men, ‘political entrepreneurs’ who tried out a new ideology in a

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206 POETICS OF VILLAGE POLITICS

home setting, trying it out in different fields of village activity, in various

spheres of life. As actors in a drama of their own creation they were
there partly for reasons of conviction, pardy for the desired political
effect. Their praxis should not be seen as a subconscious manipulation
of available ideological material to suit current interests, but as an in­
novative appropriation and the introduction of a new, partly alien,
ideology to local society. Their status made the effort easier, possibly
making them more confident. At the least, their background made it
possible for them to even consider toying with the symbols of the
urban elite. But this in itself did not suffice, as not everybody partici­
pated. The effect of their willingness to engage new symbols, their
innovations, and their agility came in relation to the the village scene.
For all their conviction and sense of moral superiority they could
still have failed. To be successful in village politics they had to exercise
their contextual sensitivity’, their political Fingerspitzengcfiihl, in the
local community where they lived and sought support. They continued
to rely on information about what was going on in the village and on
intimate personal relationships and ‘alliances’. They were not ‘leaders’
because of their landholdings or inherited status, and remained
vulnerable to shifing alliances, gossip, and conflicting interests. Here
they differed from their fictional heroes: they continued employing
the tools of village politics, but at the same time helped introduce
new institutions that functioned as arenas for contest where the rules
were to their advantage.
While they exercised their political acumen and pursued individual
political goals, they also engaged in various reformist, even radical,
endeavours. As political entrepreneurs they may not appear to have
achieved much until other changes were brought about through the
party’s ‘call for mobilization’ in the late 1960s, but they had created
an environment in which leading the lower castes into a field to
occupy a plot of land belonging to someone powerful and presti­
gious had become thinkable. The impact o f ‘mobilization’ had
primarily been among their own kind— the middle class peasants—
but this was a crucial village segment that could take up the mantle
of leadership.
The relationship of village leaders to village lower castes is another
element that comes across as important to the changes that were brought

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about. W hat is interesting is that for all their sensitivity and local
political clout, the village leaders were not fully able to control the
movement they themselves launched. W ith the lower castes the drama
changed. Contrary to common interpretations o f events, the lower
castes or the poor, did not willy-nilly follow the dictates o f a political
party that interpreted for them their objective interests. Nor were
they followers o f 'traditional’ leaders— their local employers and
patrons. Although initiatives were taken by the village leadership,
the mobilization gained its own momentum in which it was difficult
to distinguish the leader from the led. A clue, I have argued, can be
found in the circumstantial evidence, where members o f some castes
participated more eagerly than others.
The movement was interpreted with reference to existing values
and typical traits that social groups proudly identified themselves
with. Since these sets of values varied from one group to another— in
this case between two jatis— the groups also varied in their response
to the willingness to participate in the movement. Both sets of values
ultimately referred to Indian cosmology’s overarching theme o f hier­
archy, but differed greatly in their application o f this theme to an
everyday reality.
In spite of the overarching theme of hierarchy, culture is best
analyzed as a complex intertwined picture o f nuances and open
interpretations, varying in the degree to which people are aware of
the norms that guide their behaviour.1 However, openness does not
entail the absence of patterns. Amidst the complexity there were some
enduring themes. One such enduring theme consisted of two varia­
tions on the theme of hierarchy: the subordinate village servant with
a right to protection, and the rebellious, uncivilized half-tribal often
considered outside’ ordered society. These enduring themes also func­
tioned as strong identity-markers with clear notions of pride, worth,
and shame attached. As such they contributed towards regulating
the life of its members, while also giving them a sense o f belonging
and some emotional satisfaction.
I have referred to the more or less articulated sets o f values as
ideologies, which suggests that they have coherence and positive
connotations which the individual and group identify with. To be
sure, this does not rule out frustration, even anger, at being poor and

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shunned. Even insubordinate bagdis needed food, and however

satisfying it may have been to be rebellious, they would need to
somehow find work. Both these two experiences— poverty and
dependence, rebelliousness and pride—were part o f being bagdi (other
groups represented other constellations) and influenced behaviour,
perception o f interests, and sense of value. Moreover, individuals or
even large subsections within each group, may well have had differ­
ing interpretations of what it meant or should mean to belong to this
or that group (jati, kin-group, class, whatever). An open denial o f
the values attached to a particular identity and an effort to reform
these (e.g. sanskritization processes) are but one way in which change
takes place. Another way is a reconstellation o f markers, whole or
partial, as when the Udaynala group of bagdis became communists
for a while in the late 1960s.
The influence o f ‘the masses’ does not go away as we move to
more recent times, to the politics of the mature CPM raj. Here we
continue to find a large degree o f adaptation by the dom inant
organized political force in the state to the realities on the ground.
The relatively limited resources available to the state apparatus— be
it the dominant party, the administration, or the law-enforcing au­
thority—are an important factor in the distance maintained by these
institutions to the everyday workings of village society. Only insiders
could understand the intricacies of relationships, o f implicit alliances,
of past history kept alive in gossip and continuously added to by
more recent rumours, and many other factors that may influence an
issue. The party has, I believe, understood this point (politicians
may not always be good administrators, but they are normally quite
lucid as politicians). It is because of this that the party mainly stays
aloof from local (village) issues and leave these to be solved by its
local activists in com petition w ith other local wannabes. If the
activists fail they can be cut off. Besides it is a very good school for
its more highly placed workers of the future. N ot that the two ‘spheres’
of politics— the formal and the informal— are entirely disconnected.
But an important part in bridging the gap is made consciously by
individuals who are active in both spheres— the local politicians, the
village leaders, the wannabes and the middle-men. A crucial role is
also played by the simultaneous presence of two normative systems— the

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 Conclusion 209

more particularistic of village society and the more universalistic of

the formal polity.
This leads us to a more general consideration concerning the
relationship o f village politics to the larger polity o f which it is pan.
O ur starting point was the CPM ’s relationship to its supporters, i.e.
the reasons for the party’s success, both in winning support and in
retaining it. The CPM did not infiltrate itself in village politics. The
specific features and nature o f the movement, to a considerable
extent, grew out of village politics. The mobilization of middle class
leaders and poor low caste masses’ was caused as much by historical
circumstances and the particularities of politics and relationships in
villages as it was an outcome of the party leadership’s ‘call for
mobilization’.
Certainly, such an argument has its own shortcomings. History is
not w ithout actors, it does not consist only o f ‘cultural trends’
moving forward. One significant historical element that cannot be
explained in terms of culture was the CPM ’s ‘discovery’ o f the rural
scene and its call for mobilization of peasants. That event proved
decisive in the history of West Bengal. The party also gave direction
and more than a semblance of cohesion to the movement. My point
is that it would have been another futile call had there not been an
environment that could respond positively and intelligendy. The re­
sponse was to mobilize along the lines which the lower castes and
classes identified with, abandoning the ways and mores o f the
bhadralok for a while.

A SPACE FOR CHANGE?

In the beginning of this book I referred to the debate on the nature of

the Indian polity. At issue was the dichotomy between the modernizing
Indian state and its values on the one hand, and, village communities
or the subaltern cultures that seemed incompatible with the former,
on the other. This study has sought to address this issue. From an
investigation of political mechanisms and change over time, it is possible
to -extract an understanding of the interplay o f these sets of values.
- It is an obvious point, perhaps, that the dichotomy of elite-subaltern
oversimplifies the history of political change. There is no histoiy of a

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210 POETICS OF VILLAGE POLITICS

state-centred elite culture vs. a recalcitrant subaltern village culture. By

disaggregating village community it becomes clear that village society
consisted of many layers and groups. They related to the modern
ideology of the state and the elite in different ways. Their reaction and/
or ability to appropriate the symbols or values of the modem ideology
varied considerably. (I have not dealt with gender differences.) They had
different perceptions about what was good or bad, they held different
values and norms, and were in different ways able to see the usefulness of
what was becoming a dominant ideology.
The division between the elite and the subaltern, then, is not as
sharp in a village society as it is in literature. On the contrary, the
distinction between the harbourers o f m odern values and the
harbourers of traditional values is gradual. It is undefined or ‘fuzzy.
The dichotomy model leaves us litte room for understanding the
sequences o f change and the dynamics of this change.
In practice, at least in the history told here, there was a distinct
group of people who formed the bridge. This group could relate in
both directions, to their cultural ‘superiors* and to their co-villagers.
They were, to borrow a term from Antonio Gramsci, ‘organic intel­
lectuals. But they were more than the occasional schoolteacher or
village gum. The main characters in the history told here were not
the lone heroes of twentieth century Bengali novels. In the 1960s,
the college-educated sons of the middle or upper strata o f village
society were numerous. They found support in e^ch other, in
government officials, in emerging political organizations and in the
language and rhetoric of the state. They were taken up not so much
by Marx as by Saratchandra and other Bengali novelists. They were
inspired by important developments in Bengali elite society and
Bengali politics. In this respect they represented another stage in the
history of what Atul Kohli has termed ‘Bengal’s exceptionalism’. It
seems to this student, however, that if the rural middle class had not
adopted the ideas and values of the radical urban class, little would
have come out of Bengal’s exceptionalism. The bhadralok would have
been confined to an interesting, but minor section in Bengal’s intel­
lectual history. The locus for the political and cultural transforma­
tion was the village middle class. Bengal’s exceptionalism was a rural
phenomenon and not merely an urban one.

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 Conclusion 211

Is then our story only a Bengali story? Is it o f little relevance to

other parts o f India? The thrust o f my argument is that the ideas o f
modern ideology were never fully disseminated, nor fully adopted
village society. They were introduced into a society that was already
occupied by values, identities and contesting ideas. This was not a
fixed, totalitarian, and uncompromising universe, but one that was
fluid and open to contestations. To understand the process o f change
and the adaptation o f the ideas o f modernity in village society it is
necessary to appreciate the manner in which local politics functioned
and the interplay o f the different ideas. ‘The modern ideology’ was
introduced into an existing praxis where it was moulded and adapted.
And it is here we see ‘elite’ and ‘subaltern cultures meet and create
change. New ideas were adapted in a long sequence o f events and
applied in a number o f contexts. External political events were also
important, to which village societies had to adapt, but in which they
also played a part. In the process, village politics was transformed,
but it is crucial to realise that the change was not complete and it did
not exclude other concerns. The mechanisms o f old— alliances,
khamata, gossip— continued to play a defining role in the making or
unmaking o f leadership and authority. Even in West Bengal the
development towards a peasant Gemeinschaft has been limited. Even
here the peasant community has not developed into something that
could function as the state’s counterpart.
The story tells us that there is a great liminal expanse where
conflicting ideas may live side by side, where signs are fluid, and
interpretations contested. In this realm change and adaptation is
possible, although the change may be incomplete and the adaptation
half-hearted.

N O TE
1 An argument on this is presented in Ruud 1999b.

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Index

123 Club 195-7, 198, 199,202 Baniya 16

agrarian relations 13-4, 23, 30; and benami 27, 111
poverty 24-28 Bengal: communal clashes 74;
aguris 16, 37, 38-40, 55, 89 famine 1942-43 74
Alivardi Khan, Nawab 42 Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885 24
All India Kisan Sabha See Krishak Bengali renaissance 91
Samiti bhadralok 29, 72-5, 84-5, 87, 94-
alliances 46, 62, 65, 67, 178, 187, 5, 99, 102, 131, 135; see also
202, 206, 208, 211; shifting Middle class and
alliances 6 exceptionalism’
Anchal Panchayat, 156; See also bhakti-cult 96
Panchayat system Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 170
assertion; ‘assertion-within- Bichar 164-6, 190-201
deference 8, 145 Bose, Subhashchandra 74
authority 4 ,4 8 ,6 4 , 168, 184, 178, Bourdieu, Pierre 175-8
192,211 Brahmin 16, 55, 73, 84
colonialism 9, 24, 73
bagdis 16,37,38-43,45,59-61, Burdwan, West Bengal, 13-5;
83, 110, 112, 141, 147, 158, formal politics 180; illegal land
208; and assertion as identity occupation 112; land
and source of influence 134-7, redistribution 116; local dialect,
145; dacoity 118-20, 122; life shift 100; muchis 137;
style 123-6; radical activities Panchayat system/panchayats
132, 133, 136; shifting alliances 155, 161; political
130-3; in village affairs 128-30; radicalization 18-9, 22
women 123-4, 126 bureaucracy 163-4; corrupt 27
bamuns; See Brahmin
bandha lok (‘bonded people') 56-8 caste 3, 5, 24, 25, 54, 64; bias/
Bandopadhyaya, Manik 93 discrimination 37, 63, 70-1,
Bandopadhyaya, Tarashankar 91-2,126 73; and class 115-8; conflict

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37-41; dominance 5-6, 16, mobilizations 136; shifting

46, 51, 54, 55, 85; and access alliances 130
to education, 101 daladali See factionalism
caste mobility 25, 73 Damodar Valley Corporation
Chaitnya 96 (DVC) 17
charisma 48 demographic features 15-7
chasis 126-8; women 127 dependents and allies, relationship
Chatterjee, Bankimchandra 73 62, 208
Chattopadhyay, Saratchandra 90-1, development efforts 74, 76, 77, 80
92, 93,210 dissatisfaction 10, 11, 24, 159, 200
chhotolok 135 dominance, dominant 8, 10, 11,
Chowdhuri, Benoy 109-10 12, 34, 49, 67, 95, 101, 102
Communist Party of India (CPI) dominant caste See caste dominance
75, 107, 154, 156 dominant ideology 146, 210
Communist Party of India [Marxist-
(CPM)] 1 3 ,1 8 -9 ,2 1 ,2 2 ,2 8 - economic changes 30; dependency
9, 35, 53, 54, 75, 84, 98, 105, 62; development 79, 94;
107-13, 115, 118, 130, 131-3, inequalities 27; power, lack of
134-5, 136, 143, 148, 153, 147; relationships 58
160, 162, 170, 190, 196, 208- education 84-8, 90, 134; the
9 hallmark of bhadralok 73;
‘Comprehensive Committee 179 medium 101
confidence, fides 33, 65, 178, 186, egalitarian society 185-6
187, 200 elite and subaltern, dichotomy 9
Congress 1 9 ,2 1 ,2 3 ,4 1 -5 ,5 4 ,8 4 , Emergency 130-1, 157
88, 109, 130, 154, 156-7, 159, equality, sense of 38, 102, 134
168; split 19 ‘exceptionalism* 13, 74-5, 210
Congress (O) 21
considerateness 64, 180 factionalism factions, see Group,
‘Contextual sensitivity’ 67, 178 groupism
‘contradictory consciousness* 10 family 25
cooperation 34, 35, 45, 65, 77, 94, fides, see confidence
102 Fingerpizengefbhl 66, 178, 206
credit and employment 61-2 food movement 1965-66 28
crop tenancy 26 food scarcity 109
culture 9-12; change 4; and Forward Bloc 74
ideology, division 2; orientation
101 Ganadebata, by Tarashankar
Bandopadhyaya 91
Dakshin Damodar, West Bengal 18; Gandhi, Indira 130
bagdis 123; dacoity 118; Gandhi, M.K. 74

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Gcmcinschaft 211 relationship 4; ranking 63-4;

gossip 206, 208, 211; a democratic individualism 10
voice 185; important social inequality, inequalities 8, 11, 54,
mechanism 183; influence on 119; See also caste dominance
village affairs 198-200, 203 influence 2, 48, 54, 63-7, 102,
Gram Committee 153,170,172, 180, 184, 198,202-3
173, 174 injustice 121
Gram Panchayat 155, 156, 162 institution building 77, 95
Gramsci, Antonio 210 Integrated Rural Development
%

Group, groupism 5, 35, 49, 55, 76-7, Programme (IRDP) loans 161;
83, 152, 187; cohesion 11; iden­ utilized for dowry 162
tities 30; values, gossip and 184 integrity intelligence, see
knowledge
Hansuli Banker Upakatha, by interests, perception 208
Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya intermediary rights 24
91, 127 intimidation 131, 158, 160
hegemony 10, 11 intra-village disputes 168
hierarchy, hierarchical system 5, 8,
10, 11, 12, 33, 56, 63-4, 94, Jan Sangh 21
146-7, 207 Janata Dal 21
Hindu, Hindus 16, 43, 64, 70, 71, jatis 16, 49-50, 54, 58; land
88, 137; cosmology 138-9; ownership 53, 115
hierarchical system 138; and Jatra 95-100, 107-8, 118, 134,
Muslim divide 89 135, 170
hospitality, see confidence jotedars 24-5
humanism 91
humiliation 11,37 Kayastha 55, 73, 84
humility 33 khamata 64-5, 67, 101, 180, 202,
203,211
identity 72, 207; intrinsic nature King, special relationship with
11 Brahmin-priest 6
ideological: affinity 3; clashes, 205; kinship 6, 84, 144
hegemony 185; opponent 83 Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP)
Indian National Army (INA) 74 20,21
Indian National Congress, see knowledge 48, 64, 101-2, 180, 188
Congress Konar, Harekrishna 104«, 105,
Indian National Democratic Front 106-7, 111, 114, 117
(INDF) 21 Krishak Samiti 106, 109, 153;See
Indian People s Theatre Association also Communist Party oflndia
(IPTA) 96-7, 108 (Marxist)
individual (s) and groups, Kulturkampf-'in-spc 79

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labour force 25; vulnerability and money lending 76, 77-8, 94, 98
dependency 26 morality, moral considerations 4,
land: ceilings 79, 106; occupation 66, 128
105, 110, 111-4, 117, 136;— morol 35-6
reversal 130, 147; owners and muchis 16-7, 42, 49, 70, 136, 137-
labourers, conflict 37-8, 49, 42; patronage-seeking role,
56-8, 133; ownership patterns 140, 142; ritual occupation
49-53, 115-7;— rights, 24; 137; in village public affairs
reforms 27; redistribution 22, 142-6
26, 106, 116-7, 132, see also Muslim League 89
benami Muslims 70, 73, 88, 126, 137; law
landholdings 25, 54, 27 of inheritance 164
landlessness 25, 128 mutuality 11, 56, 135, 168, 178
language and status 99-103 mytho-praxis, 205
leaders 59-62; ideals and practices
65; and commoners, namasudra 16,42,60,133
relationships 61-2, 178, 184, Naxalites 28-9
206-7; symbolic capital 175-8 Nehru, Jawaharlal 72
leadership 33-4, 36, 46, 54, 66-7, norms, normative system 1,5, 11,
79, 83, 206,211 67, 109, 205, 207; awareness 9
Left Front Government (LFG) 13,
22, 154, 160, 196 obligation 6, 8
literary tradition and dominance Operation Barga 22
72-3 ‘organic intellectuals 210
orthodoxy 93
Mahila Samiti 153 ostracism 194
manipulation 48, 200-3, 206
Marxist ideology 94, 210 Padma Nadir Majhi, by Manik
middle class 9, 13, 29, 30, 108; Bandopadhyaya 93
radicalism, see ‘exceptionalism’ Palli Samajy by Saratchandra
middleman, informal politics and, Chattopadhyay 90-1, 93, 95
168-75 Panchagram, by Tarashankar
mistakes and excesses 106-8, 117, Bandopadhyaya 91, 92, 95
148 Panchayats, Panchayat system 22,
mobilization, of peasants 108, 146— 34, 40; four tier 155-6, 175;
7, 206-7 reformed 160-4
‘mobilized vote* 19-20, 22 participation 1, 2, 29, 30, 83
modernity, ‘modern tradition 75-6, patnidar 24
78-84,210 patronage 7, 23, 24, 27, 61, 64,
money lenders as political leaders 135, 138, 140, 142, 145, 147,
55-9 162

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‘Patronage by submission 145 128;dacoity 119, 121; land

patron-client relationship 5, 6-7, occupations 118; looting due
46, 58, 59-63, 154 to food scarcity 109-10;
peasant mobilization 1,3, 13, 23, muchis 137; political
27, 28, 106, 209 rajdharma 8, 11, 147
‘peasant smallholding-demesne Ramkheri 179
labour complex’ 25 rank, rankings 33, 63-4; and rivalry
Permanent Settlement, 1793 24 63; and status 63
personal qualities 66 Ray, Siddharth Shankar 130
persuasion 48 reading material, sources 88-9;
‘poaching* 10 habits 89
police, role in village affairs 163-4,
192-3 rebelliousness 208
political, politics, 27, 54, 180; reciprocity 4, 11, 168, 175-8, 186
allegiance, shift 22; bonds 5, religious-ritual order 147
56; change 13, 209-11; repression 54, 130-1
conflicts 44-5, 47, 48; reputation 179, 199, 202; role of
effectiveness 190; formal and gossip 183-4, 186-9; of
informal 178-80; influence 56, individual 188-9
83-4; and caste, 35—47; resistance 9, 10, 11,47, 185
liability 62; and middlemen Revolutionary Socialist Party, 74
168-75; mobilization 2, 108; ritual, rituals 54; hierarchy 137-9;
organizations, modes of 30; in piety 150 n; purity 70; society
relationship with Panchayat 147
and administration 164; rivalry 2, 5, 63, 185
radicalization 18-23, 29, 72, rulers and the ruled, mutuality 10
92; see also leaders rumours 135, 183, 186, 187, 188,
politicians and dacoits 135 195, 198, 199-200, 203; see
pollution, ritual 6, 71, 138 also gossip
poverty 28, 76, 98, 119, 121, 208 rural communism 23
power, notions 4, 9, 101, 185; rusticities of local language 99-100
\

relationships 67 193, 199

Praja Socialist Party (PSP) 20, 21, Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) 20
109, 156 Sanskritization 208
prestige 62, 64 Santals 16
pride 11,207,208 Satsangha 39, 52, 142, 173
progress, ideology of 72, 94 Scheduled Castes 16
Putulnacher itikatha, by Manik sekhs 16, 43, 50, 84, 120, 134, 158,
Bandopadhyaya 93 187
self-abnegation 33, 34; see also
Raina, West Bengal: bagdis 122-3, leaders

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sharecropping 26, 58-9, 82; intra­ 22, 105, 106, 109-15, 116,
village 59 117, 118, 130, 143
social: distances 3; evaluation 67; untouchability 71, 205
groups 3, 30, 94, 207-8; upper social strata 71-2
hierarchy 137; identity 101; urban-rural divide 29
interaction 152; mechanisms 4,
56; obligations and reciprocity Vaishnavite movement 96
175-8; power 67; pre-eminence values value system 3, 4, 9, 11, 67,
5; propriety 72; roles 11; status 94, 109, 180, 185, 186, 205,
54, 65; strata 95; See also 207-10; and beliefs 10, 66;
norms, normative system conflicting 9; and norms,
Socialist Party (SP) 20, 21 difference 10; See abo norms,
Socialist Unity Centre 74 normative system
socio-cultural change 9, 12 village : economy, 17; state
socio-economic structures 4 ,2 8 ,3 4 relationship 1-4, 154
Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB) villagers: and community leaders
99-101 168, relationships 56, 65, 67,
status 64, 95, 99-103 178, 187; See abo power
Subaltern Studies school 7-8, 29 relationships, social
subordinate, subordination 8,180; relationships, leader and
perception o f 6-7, 180 commoner, relationship
support, supporters 64, 178; See violence 8, 106, 117, 122, 130, 134,
abo leader, leadership 158
symbols 4, 11, 206; appropriation 3 Vivekananda 73

Tabligh Jamat 158, 195 West Bengal Bargadar Act of 1953

Tagore, Rabindranath 73, 89, 91 26
Tah, Dasarathi 21, 109 West Bengal Estate Abolition Act of
tenancy rights 25 1955 26
tenants, revolts 24 West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1957
trust 56, 168, 178, 186; see also 181 n
confidence women 58, 76, 80; access to
education 80; freedom
unanimity 167 movement 78
United Front 19, 23, 28, 45, 98,
107, 134, 136, 147, 148 zamindar, zamindari system 24, 26,
United Front government (UFG) 84, 85; abolition 79

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