The visible 'caste gaps' amid an 'invisible' caste system in West Bengal, India: a study of discrimination in Bengali Society

Abstract

The invisibility of the caste system in Bengal is so firmly ingrained in the psyche of the upper-caste Bengali Hindu population that any acknowledgement of the same by the bhadralok class appears to be a pipe dream. This moral high ground of the bhadralok directly stands antithetical to the rampant cases of caste-based discrimination in the aforementioned state on a regular basis. However, this very inconspicuous nature of the caste system in Bengal has been hogging the centre stage of academic attention in recent years and has become a well-studied phenomenon in the process. Several scholars have catapulted fresh discussions on the visibly strong undercurrents of the caste system in Bengal and accorded a new legitimacy to the different ways in which caste caters to exclusion and discrimination on socioeconomic lines. Still, Bengal’s caste system remains relatively mild and lenient in popular perceptions compared to other states, owing to its strong pedigree as a cultural hotbed. Amid this invisibility of caste in public understanding, the economic (and occupational), religious, ideological and cultural gaps exuding from the allegedly ‘invisible’ caste system between the ‘bhadralok’ class and the marginalised communities are ironically very visible. Nevertheless, such existing caste gaps in several fields have remained relatively unexplored as there is not a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the tangible presence of these gaps. Therefore, I have, in my article, attempted to analyse these patent apertures and the lack of reciprocity in occupational, cultural and ideological transactions between the bhadralok and the so-called ‘chotolok’ as the byproducts of the deeply ossified caste hierarchy in Bengal that has gradually whittled away the human agency of the state’s severely disadvantaged marginalised groups.