Abstract

The present essay investigates how the monolithic and mono-dimensional aspect of the Bengal-Renaissance which was pioneered and vanguarded by the so called upper-caste people somehow failed to address and attest crucial issues and multiple voices of the lower castes and other depressed and dispossessed people of Bengal province. One of the central postulates of this article is to foreground and put forward countless measures initiated by the Namasudra community in colonial Bengal through their socio-political and cultural assertions. It further critically engages with an investigative reading of existing archives and historiographies of Bengal that tend to explicate Namasudras’ ideological aspiration and identity consciousness as inseparable and integrative within the hegemonic dominance of upper-castes’ framework. Hence, it intends to provide a counter analysis against this approach by mapping countless Dalit political imaginative manifestos embedded within Namasudra movement during the latter half of the nineteenth century in undivided colonial Bengal province. The primary concern of this article, therefore, is to locate their sociocultural reform movement and other perceptions by tracing their fundamental texts— Sri Sri Harileelamrita and Sri Sri Guruchand Charita, Namasudras’ tracts, booklets, and their festivities, kabigaan, Harisangeet, and so on.

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