This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the changing dynamics of politics of caste in colonial and postcolonial West Bengal. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship and using an interdisciplinary approach, it examines why caste continues to be neglected in the politics of the state, as also how caste relations have permeated the politics of the region.

Acknowledgements. List of Illustrations and Figures. List of Tables. List of Abbreviations. Glossary. INTRODUCTION Uday Chandra, Geir Heierstad and Kenneth Bo Nielsen Part I: CASTE AND COLONIALISM 1. Kol, Coolie, Colonial Subject: A Hidden History of Caste and the Making of Modern Bengal Uday Chandra 2. Another History: Bhadralok Responses to Dalit Political Assertion in Colonial Bengal Sarbani Bandyopadhyay Part II: PARTITION AND THE MAKING OF A MODERN CASTE SOCIETY 3. Partition, Displacement and the Decline of the Scheduled Caste Movement in West Bengal Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury 4. Partition and the Mysterious Disappearance of Caste in Bengal Partha Chatterjee 5. An Absent-Minded Casteism? Dwaipayan Sen Part III: CASTE AND POPULAR POLITICS 6. The Politics of Caste and Class in Singur’s Anti-Land Acquisition Struggle Kenneth Bo Nielsen 7. Building up the Harichand-Guruchand Movement: The Politics of the Matua Mahasangha Praskanva Sinharay 8. Transformative Politics: The Imaginary of the Mulnibasi in West Bengal Indrajit Roy Part IV: CASTE, STRATIFICATION AND THE ECONOMY 9. From Client to Supporter: Economic Change and the Slow Change of Social Identity in Rural West Bengal Arild Engelsen Ruud 10. Craft, Identity, Hierarchy: The Kumbhakars of Bengal Moumita Sen 11. The Commodification of Caste and Politics in Kolkata’s Kumartuli Geir Heierstad. About the Editors. Notes on Contributors

This important volume imaginatively unravels heterogeneous, subterranean, and formative histories . . . of caste. — Saurabh Dube, Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de MéxicoThis timely, provocative and scholarly book . . . [wi]th its rich ethnography and fine-tuned political sense . . . challenges the comfortable assumptions of Bengal as a society in which class relations have trumped traditional inequities and hierarchies . . . [T]he authors put caste centrally on the agenda of social theory in South Asia. — Dilip Menon, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand