Caste and Socio-cultural Mobility in West Bengal: A Hybrid Cultural Elocution of Matua Reforms Movement

Abstract

Anthropologists and social historians have considered the caste system to be the most unique feature of Indian social organization. In traditional Bengali Hindu Society, the Namasudras, an untouchable caste, were numerically large but economically deprived and socially discriminated against by the higher castes. Under the leadership of Harichand Thakur (1812–1878) and his son Guruchand Thakur (1847–1937), the ‘Matua’ religious sect developed in the late nineteenth century in eastern part of Bengal to meet certain social needs of the upwardly mobile peasant community of the Namasudras who gained solidarity and self-confidence through the help of the Matua socio-religious identities. The real significance of the Matua sect lies in the fact that a downtrodden community sought to set up an alternative religious conception in an oppositional form and in resistance to the ideology which assigns an independent identity to the downtrodden for their uplift in the high caste elite-dominated society and a reworking of the relation of power within local society which they believed would lead to all-round human development. In this article, I would like to show the evidences which would give an undertaking that the Matua socio-cultural reform movement is continuing against the orthodox scriptural and Brahmanical rituals, customs and culture and resulting in an alternative hybrid cultural identity by reflecting on their own indigenous oral literatures and folk culture which are very much humanitarian, liberal, progressive and rational in outlook.