The other backward classes in Bengal

Abstract

The term caste has become a sensitive and controversial issue in modern India where caste-based reservation in employment and education has become the norm. Undoubtedly, the caste system of social stratification has exploited and marginalized those people who comprise the majority. In West Bengal, upper-caste hegemony is still very strong and the “liberalism” exceptionality of the state is more artificial than real. West Bengal’s political culture, historically, has been hostile to the idea of political autonomy for Dalits. Since West Bengal has not seen the caste-based mobilizations witnessed elsewhere, and much less the centrality of caste-related issues in legislative politics, it is commonly believed that in the state somehow the caste-based animosities of the past were dissolved by the exceptional Bengali. Even as the upper castes proclaimed that caste did not matter, they monopolized the state’s political, social and cultural domains. It is true that from the 1950s onwards, Dalits were drawn to the rising Communist tide which, it is argued, was able to channel their class-based grievances and retain their loyalty. At the same time, there was also the gradual empowerment from below. In West Bengal there is an underlying presence of casteism everywhere. There is a long way to go before equality becomes a reality.