Skip to main content

“Revolt” of Bengal’s lumpen bhadrolok against Muslims, Bahujanised lower castes

By Kuriakose Mathew
From famines to partition violence to political killings to colonial witch-hunt to confessional riots, millions of Bengalis have died unnaturally. The famines of 1770 and 1942 killed around 1.3 crore people. Preventable diseases and poverty too have killed millions of Bengalis. One does not even know how many have died in the partition of Bengal. One also does not know how many have been killed in Mughal, Maratha, and British wars! Natural death has been a luxury in lower Gangetic plains.
Is there any other people in the world that has been subjected to periodic waves of this many unnatural deaths? The spectre of unnatural deaths haunts the brains of the living in Bengal.
However, the tiniest ruling class of the world, the Bengali Brahmins and their Kayasta and Baidya associates, composed perhaps of less than 1,000 extended families of inner Kolkata, has seemingly not learnt any lessons from this torturous history. Maximalising political power and monopolizing resources are their soulless motto.
Uncompromising and unaccommodating, the ruling families of inner Kolkata are utterly exclusive, crassly classist, and cheaply condescending even towards the non-governing sections of the Bhadrolok elites, forget the lower castes and Muslims.
The systematically excluded non-governing bhadrolok elites have been thoroughly lumpenised and all too ready to resort to violence at the slightest provocation. Since the fruits of the famed Kolkata education is reserved for the members these inner Kolkata governing elites, the lumpen Bhadrolok has escaped quality education, trapping them in ideological impoverishment and economic immobility.
Unemployed, unemployable or underemployed, the lumpen bhadrolok are in an inescapable contradictory caste location, their Brahmin supremacism gets daily punctured by the bitterness of (peri)-urban lower middle class life. But they share the caste capital of the governing bhadrolok elites but without getting a proportional share of educational, economic and political resources; this perpetual secondary position as non-governing elites, with no scope of an effective bargain with their governing caste brethren, all they have to blame for are the Muslims and the lower castes.
Lumpen bhadrolok are major supporters of merit (all they want is good jobs with no work) but they know they won’t even get a clerical job in Kolkata without being part of the ruling bhadrolok network. But, rather than challenging the caste network of fellow bhadrolok, they blame the unimplemented Bahujan reservation and imagined Muslim appeasement for all their misfortune.
Every attempt of the lumpen bhadrolok to make the governing elites to share power and resources until now has miserably failed. The lumpen bhadrolok have tried Brahmo Samaj, Indian freedom struggle- all varieties of it ranging from terrorism to Azad Hind Fauj, humanism, Marxism, Naxalism and Maoism to mend the monopolistic ways of their caste brethren. In other words, every form of political mobilization except of caste!
Mamata Banerjee
This is what puts the lumpen bhadrolok in a contradictory caste location; they’re so close to the ruling elites caste-wise, but, as a class, so far from the corridors of economic and political power. With the rise of Mamata, they hoped for political and economic ascendancy.
And Mamata’s rule did encourage the inclusion of lumpen bhadrolk into the ruling class, though with too little, but she also did the unthinkable. She shared power and resources with the lower castes and Muslims, too, to the great horror of both sections of the bhadrolok.
The lumpen bhadrolok wants to do fratricide without hurting Brahmin supremacism and without letting the Bengali Bahujans rise. They want regime change without social and economic change in favour of Bahujans.
After decades of failed political experiments, the lumpen bhadrolok has finally found their rightful political platform, i.e. Hindu Nazism. With BJP, they hope to unseat the governing elites based on a Hindu unity ideology, that would untouchablise Muslims and hegemonies the lower castes. They have mobilized sizable sections of Hinduised ‘chotolok’ invoking Muslim-hatred.
But the hegemony of the ruling bhadrolk elites is such that they will not give up an inch. They consider themselves as the divine priests of universities, media, judiciary, politburos, legislature, puja pandals and so on. In other words, it is a complete socio-politico-economic dictatorship of bhadrolok elites. They are trying their best to keep the lumpen bhadrolok as foot soldiers against lower castes and Muslims.
Nevertheless, the revolt of the lumpen bhadrolok is triple-edged; it is simultaneously against Muslims, Bahujanised lower castes and the dictatorship of their caste brethren. The lumpen bhadrolok hardly care about Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay or Tagore -- the icons of the ruling bhadrolok, their busts will be broken. Many more to follow!
This caste dictatorship too shall fall, but unfortunately not without a civil war. It is inevitable. Let the bhadroloks kill each other, but who will save Muslims and lower castes from their fratricidal intra-caste war?
---
Source: Author’s Facebook timeline

Comments

TRENDING

Importance of Bangladesh for India amidst 'growing might' of China in South Asia

By Samara Ashrat*  The basic key factor behind the geopolitical importance of Bangladesh is its geographical location. The country shares land borders with Myanmar and India. Due to its geographical position, Bangladesh is a natural link between South Asia and Southeast Asia.  The country is also a vital geopolitical ally to India, in that it has the potential to facilitate greater integration between Northeast India and Mainland India. Not only that, due to its open access to the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh has become significant to both China and the US.

Unlike other revolutionaries, Hindutva icon wrote 5 mercy petitions to British masters

By Shamsul Islam*  The Hindutva icon VD Savarkar of the RSS-BJP rulers of India submitted not one, two,or three but five mercy petitions to the British masters! Savarkarites argue: “There are no evidences to prove that Savarkar collaborated with the British for his release from jail. In fact, his appeal for release was a ruse. He was well aware of the political developments outside and wanted to be part of it. So he kept requesting for his release. But the British authorities did not trust him a bit” (YD Phadke, ‘A complex Hero’, "The Indian Expres"s, August 31, 2004)

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

'A disaster in the making': Expansion of oil palm plantations in Northeast India

By Rupa Chinai, Ravi Chellam*  Until a few decades ago, India was nearly 100% self-sufficient in edible oils, with a diverse variety of oilseeds that were grown and consumed sustainably in keeping with the ecological and climatic conditions of different regions in the country. Today, India is highly reliant on palm oil imports to meet its vegetable oil demands. 

'BBC film shows only tip of iceberg': Sanjiv Bhatt's daughter speaks at top US press club

By Our Representative   The United States' premier journalists' organisation, the National Press Club (NPC), has come down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for recent "attacks on journalists in India." Speaking at the screening of an episode of the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question,” banned in India, in the club premises, NPC President Eileen O’Reilly said, “Since Modi came to power we have watched with frustration and disappointment as his regime has suppressed the rights of its citizens to a free and independent news media."

Chinese pressure? Left stateless, Rohingya crisis result of Myanmar citizenship law

By Dr Shakuntala Bhabani*  A 22-member team of Myanmar immigration officials visited Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar to verify more than 400 Rohingya refugees as part of a pilot repatriation project. Does it hold out any hope for the forcibly displaced people to return to their ancestral homes in the Rakhine state of Myanmar? Only time will tell.

China ties up with India, Bangladesh to repatriate Rohingyas; Myanmar unwilling

By Harunur Rasid*  We now have a new hope, thanks to news reports that were published in the Bangladeshi dailies recently. Myanmar has suddenly taken initiatives to repatriate Rohingyas. As part of this initiative, diplomats from eight countries posted in Yangon were flown to Rakhine last week. Among them were diplomats from Bangladesh, India and China.

40,000 Odisha adolescent girls ask CM: Why is scheme to fight malnutrition on paper?

By Our Representative  In unique a postcard campaign to combat malnutrition, aimed at providing dietary diversity, considered crucial during adolescence, especially among girls, signed by about 40,000 adolescent girls from over 10,000 villages, have reminded Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik that his government's Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG), which converged with Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman  ( POSHAN ) 2.0 in 2021, is not being implemented in the State.

Natural farming: Hamirpur leads the way to 'huge improvement' in nutrition, livelihood

By Bharat Dogra*  Santosh is a dedicated farmer who along with his wife Chunni Devi worked very hard in recent months to convert a small patch of unproductive land into a lush green, multi-layer vegetable garden. This has ensured year-round supply of organically grown vegetables to his family as well as fetched several thousand rupees in cash sales.