The Mahishyas of Bengal: A caste in conflict

Indian Express

3 days ago

Seated on a wooden chair, facing a shelf overflowing with literature on the Mahishyas, Madhusudan Jana is busy planning his weekly Sunday meeting. A placard on his desk reads 'Vice-President,' his official role at the Bangiya Mahishya Samiti, a 124-year-old organisation in Kolkata established for the upliftment of the Mahishya caste. Now retired, Jana spends his time attending to Mahishyas seeking financial and other assistance.
Earlier known as Kaibartas, the Mahishyas are a farming community concentrated in the southern districts of West Bengal, predominantly, Midnapore, Howrah, and Hooghly. Believed to be the largest caste group in the state, Mahishyas began migrating to urban centres in the 19th century in search of better education and employment.
In the early 2000s, a section of this community, known as Chasi Kaibartas, was granted the OBC status. However, the other section, which identifies itself as Mahishyas, was denied the same due to their educational qualification and material possessions. 'The truth is, many among the Mahishyas are economically backward and could benefit from reservation,' says Jana.
Beyond the debate over OBC status, the community is also divided over their Aryan origin. We look at the history and growth of the Mahishyas, one of Bengal's largest, most complex caste groups.
The Mahishyas, also known by the names Halik, Hele, or Kaibarta, dominate the southern districts of West Bengal. Until the 1901 census, Mahishyas were called Kaibartas.
In his journal article Caste-ing Aspersions: Popular Literature and Cinema in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal, academic Anirban Bandyopadhyay notes: 'The root word Ka referred to water in Sanskrit, and probably alluded to the fact that many Kaibartas lived by boating and fishing.'
Historian Hitesranjan Sanyal says that between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the community transformed after one section adopted farming. Subsequently, the farming households came to be known as Chasi (cultivator) Kaibarta, while the fishing community was referred to as Jelia (fisherman) Kaibarta. While the former made for a relatively prosperous group of academics, professionals, and landed gentry, Jelia Kaibartas continued with fishing and 'lived at the margins of respectability.' Over time, the division would become a cause of conflict and a defining feature of the caste.
The arrival of the British and their drive to enumerate castes for administrative reasons fuelled discord. The British believed that a record of the social and religious traditions of Indians could help them govern better. However, caste groups in the subcontinent perceived the census as an opportunity to reclaim lost status. According to Bandyopadhyay, hundreds of petitions were sent to the government, 'beseeching changes in names, arguing for a higher rank in order of social precedence and underlining affiliation to one of the regenerate castes.' This fuelled both competition and conflict.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Chasi Kaibartas began to claim a separate origin from that of the Jelia Kaibartas. They cited passages from texts such as the Brahmavaivartta Purana and Padma Purana to support their claim. 'Moreover, leaders of almost every caste, including the upper caste Kayasthas and Baidyas, perceived the census as an opportunity to secure formal recognition,' says Bandyopadhyay in an interview with indianexpress.com. In 1901, Chasi Kaibartas appealed to the colonial state to recognise this distinction and coined a separate name for themselves — the Mahishyas.
Mahishyas, according to scholars, referred to a mixed caste: typically those born out of a legitimate wedlock between a Kshatriya man and a Vaishya woman. The Chasi Kaibartas hoped that this new nomenclature would free them from the impurity associated with the fishing community of Jelia Kaibartas. In the early 1900s, in a letter to the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, cited by publicist Gopalchandra Sarkar in a pamphlet Mahishya-Namodharer Itibritta, a group of Mahishyas regretted that their classification as Kaibarta 'has considerably lowered them in the estimation of the other castes among the Hindus and created grave erroneous notions with regard to their social position.'
Meanwhile, the caste grew in strength, with 25 lakh members by the early nineteenth century, according to the 1921 census. 'Although by 1921 the name Mahishya was widely recognised, there was a great deal of ambiguity about their status,' says Bandyopadhyay.
Bandyopadhyay adds that by the early twentieth century, Mahishyas and Jelia Kaibartas constituted half the population of undivided Midnapore, the single largest caste in Howrah and Hooghly, and had a considerable presence in Kolkata. While subsequent official data has not enumerated individual castes, Bandyopadhyay estimates they range between two and three crore today. Yet, he argues, the combined population of Mahishyas and Jelia Kaibartas failed at emerging as a consolidated electoral bloc, owing to differences in 'university education and professional profile.'
Until 1931, the Mahishyas were considered a 'depressed class' (a category later termed Scheduled Castes), along with the Namasudra and Rajbangshi castes of Bengal. The university graduates and landed gentry among Mahishyas opposed being classified as depressed classes and, in 1931, wrote to Census authorities asking to be excluded from the list. While this movement signified some level of parity with the upper castes for the elite Mahishyas, it offered liberation from menial domestic labour for the poorer sections of the community.
The bhadralok literati like Nripendra Kumar Datta rejected Mahishya claims to an upper caste status and classified them as a 'non-Aryan' community. This both frustrated and outraged them, making them wary of any public discussion of their origin. A ray of hope was the historiography of scholars such as RC Mazumdar and DC Ganguly, who, by the mid-twentieth century, proclaimed that Mahishyas had long ago merged into the 'Aryan society,' and cut across their tribal roots.
Yet, letters cited by Sarkar reflect the obstacles faced by Mahishyas in their pursuit of social mobility and recognition. A letter from July 1903, written by members of the Mahishya community and addressed to the Census Commissioner of India, criticised 'a few irresponsible newspaper correspondents… [for describing Mahishyas] as being of the same origin as the Jaliya Kaivarttas.'
In another letter dated February 1911, addressed to the Superintendent of Census Operations of Bengal, Narendra Nath Das, the Secretary of the Central Mahishya Samity of Bengal, wrote: 'We strongly protest against the request…to return all Kaibarttas under the one general heading Mahishya, which will be highly prejudicial, objectionable and will deeply wound the feelings of the Mahishya community formerly known as Chasi Kaibarttas.'
Several other authors supported the narrative of discrimination faced by Mahishyas. Author Satya Ranjan Biswas, in his book Mahishya Andoloner Itihas, for instance, describes a horrifying experience of being ragged at Kumar Hostel in Berhampore in 1926, because he belonged to the Mahishya caste.
This discrimination, however, was not without protest. Bandyopadhyay details how Bengali novelist Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay was targeted by 200 Mahishyas on April 10, 1949, for his 'unjust characterization of their caste in a recent movie based on one of his novels.' The mob felt that the movie, Sandipan Pathsala, would amplify the cultural perception that Mahishyas were subordinate.
The decade of the 1940s was a period when the Mahishyas were central to the ruling faction of the Bengal Congress. The state Congress president, Atulya Ghosh, arranged for an arbitration meeting wherein the novelist agreed to remove the disputed observations from the subsequent editions of his book. Still, the movie did jeopardise the image of the Mahishyas. 'They were shown as farmers or fishermen with some means but no interest in education for their children beyond basic literacy,' says Bandyopadhyay. Further, the author made no distinction between the Chashi and Jelia Kaibartas.
On this, anthropologist Kenneth Bo Nielsen says: 'The Mahishyas are originally a fisherman and peasant caste who have made their way in life as intermediate farmers and who have benefited from many of the agrarian reforms going back to the communist days and so on.' Nielsen adds that they've also pursued education, including higher education. However, he believes that, until recently, they lacked the kind of cultural capital of the urban bhadralok – 'urban manners and access to polished English and education at the best universities.'
As far as the Partition of India is concerned, scholars agree that it did not negatively impact the Mahishyas since most belonged to West Bengal. Instead, Badhyopadhyay suggests, 'The Mahishyas became a sort of natural beneficiary of the post-partition redistribution of power and political authority along with the upper castes, what author Joya Chatterji calls the 'loaves and fishes' of Partition.'
Subsequently, they made strides in academia and entrepreneurship. A 1967-69 study, cited by Ashis Nandy in his article Entrepreneurial Cultures and Entrepreneurial Men in the Economic & Political Weekly (1973), found that Mahishyas owned between 60 and 70 per cent of the small-industrial units, while constituting only about 25 per cent of the population. 'Prima facie, they… have given entrepreneurship, formerly the occupation of the low castes in Bengal, a new status within the community,' opines Nandy. Agreeing, Bandyopadhyay adds, 'Alamohan Das, for instance, was one of the top five industrialists in 20th-century Bengal and belonged to the Mahishya caste.'
This success also translated into political power. Until the 1970s, Mahishyas actively participated in Bengal politics. 'Birendranath Sasmal was a Mahishya who led the non-cooperation movement in Midnapore and had been a rival of Subhas Chandra Bose for the position of Mayor of Calcutta in the 1920s,' says Bandyopadhyay. They also formed the 'backbone' of the Bengal Congress in the 1940s and led the Quit India Movement from Midnapore as both leaders and soldiers.
In post-independent India, we see the Mahishyas drawn to the Left – the Communist Party of India. They were also present in the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Bandyopadhyay notes: 'The communists, however, did not recruit too many Mahishyas in the leadership position.' He says that the top political leadership in Bengal has almost always been of a Brahman background, and if there is a Mahishya, 'they refrain from acknowledging their identity in public.'
To put it simply, all Mahishyas are Kaibartas, but all Kaibartas are not Mahishyas. Bandyopadhyay remarks, 'Mahishyas acknowledge the historical attachment to land, they acknowledge their past as agriculturalists, they acknowledge the hard work of the community, but consciously reject an association with a fishing past, which the term Jelia Kaibarta brings in its wake.'
The Mandal Commission Report, submitted in 1980, listed the Chasi Kaibarta community as a Backward Caste in West Bengal, while excluding Mahishyas. Prasenjit Biswas, Associate Professor at Bhairab Ganguly College in North 24 Parganas, criticised the report. In an email interview with indianexpress.com, he said, 'In the colonial period, as per the census reports, all Chasi Kaibartas were enumerated as the Mahishyas since 1901. After 1947, no caste census was done on the Mahishyas… I am not sure how these 'Chasi Kaibartas,' then, were awarded OBC status.'
Bandyopadhyay explains, 'Well, Chasi Kaibarta was the former name of Mahishyas, they are essentially the same community, and that is a fact.' He refers to a case at the Calcutta High Court, where two sections of the Mahishyas were at odds about whether they should seek OBC status or not. One section wanted the OBC status, whereas the other group of Mahishyas opposed this classification since it impacts their social standing. 'By 2010s, the caste association had come around the position that Mahishyas and Chasi Kaibartas are the same people and that there is no harm in seeking OBC status for anyone who can prove their Chasi Kaibarta past with legally valid documents,' says Bandyopadhyay. The case has since been withdrawn.
Yet, at the Samiti office, Jana disapproves of the situation. He reiterates that the Mahishyas are a diverse group of people, many among whom have poor material conditions and need reservation benefits.
One reason for excluding Mahishyas from the OBC list, according to Bandyopadhyay, could be their population. He says, 'If added to the OBC list, they would become the most influential backward caste and marginalise other OBC groups.'
Today, Mahishyas have a considerable presence in several pockets of Kolkata, including Bhowanipore, Beleghata, and Phoolbagan. However, there is little dialogue about them in mainstream media or public discourse. Bandyopadhyay believes that had they not withdrawn themselves from the depressed classes list in 1931, many would have resigned to discussion. Biswas adds to this: 'The Matuas (mostly Namasudras) sometimes are spoken of due to electoral politics. As the Mahishyas belong to general castes and they do not comprise an electoral block, they are not spoken of in mainstream media/ general public discussion.'
'If they manage somehow to rediscover a common identity,' says Bandyopadhyay, 'there's a very good chance that they will make a very powerful electoral bloc which amounts to close to 100 seats in South Bengal. They are about 20-25% larger in number than Namasudras.'
Further reading
Caste in Bengal: Histories of Hierarchy, Exclusion and Resistance edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Tanika Sarkar
Caste-ing Aspersions: Popular Literature and Cinema in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bengal by Anirban Bandyopadhyay
Seeking New Identity: The Mahishya Caste Movement in Midnapore, 1896-1921 by Partha Mukherjee
Entrepreneurial Cultures and Entrepreneurial Men by Ashis Nandy
Continuities of Social Mobility in Traditional and Modern Society in India: Two Case Studies of Caste Mobility in Bengal by Hitesranjan Sanyal
Nikita writes for the Research Section of IndianExpress.com, focusing on the intersections between colonial history and contemporary issues, especially in gender, culture, and sport.
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