The Company’s Policy & The Consolidation of The Bhadralok Castes
Jawhar Sircar
Prof AmalesTripathi Memorial Lecture
Bangiya Itihas Samiti, Kolkata
25th
April, 2019
It may be
interesting to recall the story of a teacher whose students were puzzled to
find him crawling on his knees under the dim light of a lamppost, looking for
something. When his students asked him what he was looking for, he said he had lost the
keys to his house somewhere. So the students also went down on their knees and
palms and started looking for the keys, but after a futile search, they brushed
the dust off their hands and clothes and asked the teacher if he had any idea
where he may have dropped the bunch. The teacher replied immediately that he
had heard the keys jingle in his pocket when he had walked through a dark field
and then they stopped jingling, before he reached the lamppost. His students
naturally asked in unison why he was not searching for the keys along that dark
path that led through the field, the teacher said quite triumphantly: “Oh, but
I can’t see in the darkness there, can I? And besides, there is certainly more
light here!”
This,
in short, explains the predicament of those who try to make sense or try to
interpret the events of 1753 — that led to the first collective empowerment of
what would later be described as the bhadralok castes of Bengal. We come across
a lot material and light on the bhadraloks once we come to the well-lit
nineteenth century, or even shuffle through the records of the post-Plassey
period in the latter half of the eighteenth century — thanks, considerably, to
the British. But we tend to avoid looking into the dark phase just before Plassey
where there are hardly any records regarding the behaviour of social groups or
castes, but without some reliable materials, it is difficult to construct any
meaningful social history. Our interest is, of course, more on the emergence of
the bhadralok identity and we shall study the change in the trading or
investment policy of the British East India Company in 1753 — strictly from the
viewpoint of social history. The events of 1753 when the Company decided to
dispense with their age-old allies, the baniks or merchant castes, for
experimenting with a new class of clerical assistants, the gomostahs,
have been studied in considerable detail in the past. But these were by
economic historians or political commentators, not for the purpose of social
history. Students of modern Indian history may thus be familiar with them, but
we are yet to come across any writing that explains the happenings as a
‘transfer of power’ to the nascent bhadralok conglomerate of Brahmans, Baidyas
and Kayasthas of Bengal.
We submit
that this caste angle is a new path to take, as economic historians have so far
been so focussed on the trade angle that they may not have noticed that these
documents also represent the first written evidence of a major and unique
collaboration between the three so-called upper castes of Bengal. Their coming
together in supporting each other, in writing, has hardly ever been highlighted
by historians in terms of the ‘arrival’ of the bhadralok formation — even
though the names (and castes) of all the actors, big and small, of the 1753
drama in (old) Fort William have been staring at historians and researchers for
several generations. The Fort William Correspondence, the Home Miscellaneous
and the Home Public files as well as the Bengal Public Consultations have been
studied almost threadbare. Historians have pored over the records pertaining to
British affairs in Bengal in the nineteenth century at the India Office in
London, the National Archives (NAI) in New Delhi and the West Bengal State
Archives for many decades and have examined the events of 1753 several times
over to understand political and economic history. They may not have noticed
facets of social history pertaining to the three bhadralok castes that openly ‘cross-supported’
each other and formed an unusual social alliance. This paper seeks to view the
events from this standpoint — the angle of social history.
To social
historians, this ‘act of coming together’ signified that the three castes were
conscious of their collective identity (that was later to be termed as
‘bhadralok’) and that these jatis were capable of transcending ritual barriers and work
together, in their mutual interest. This tripartite formation of jatis,
incidentally, accounted for only 6.4 percent of the population of Bengal
according to the last caste-wise count that was undertaken during the 1931
census operations. 1753 marked the beginning of a long journey of the budding
bhadralok community that ensured thereafter that its social and cultural
hegemony would remain unchallenged, till the present period. The jatis could
convert this unity to monopolise to the extent possible, as long as it was
possible all facilities for English and other superior avenues of profitable
education as well as employment in government and other respectable services of
the time. Since social history deals with identities and attitudes, both of
which take long periods to find acceptance overriding ingrained or embedded
prejudices, the single episode of 1753 also reveals that the three upper castes
of Bengal must have decided over a considerable stretch of time not to contest
or quarrel — unlike upper castes that fought caste-based battles in many other
states of India, in history or even now. The fact that the bonhomie was limited
to just these three castes also indicates that this social pact was, in a way,
meant to keep out other castes and social groups from enjoying benefits that
were monopolised by this triumvirate of castes. The developments that followed this
bonding opened up economic opportunities to the members of the castes that had
joined this confederacy and we shall come to the evidence that supports these
premises of social history as we proceed down the subsequent paragraphs.
It was not
directly against the traditional merchant castes of Bengal that were synonymous
with wealth, then and for at least a century thereafter. It was, in a way, an
alliance between the ambitious bhadraloks or proto-bhadraloks (as the term
bhadralok was not in use before 1821) and their masters who represented the
British Company. It surely proved very beneficial to both. While the trade and
profits for the Company rose considerably with this alliance — this aspect has
been studied ad infinitum — this proximity proved more rewarding to the
Company’s British servants whose own ‘side business’ prospered phenomenally,
with the active assistance of the new class of gomostahs they appointed in
1753. The Brahman-Baidya-Kayastha combine also gained to an unimaginable level,
through this unscrupulous collaboration. We must also note the remarkable
timing — because this alliance between the British and their three comprador
castes, that now appeared to act as one socio-economic group, happened just
four years before the British made their entry as the rising military power and
made it clear that they would supplemented economic gains with guns. The
Company defeated the ruling Muslim gentry of Bengal at Plassey and the winning
combination ensured that both sides gained substantially from every step that
the British advanced — for well over a century and beyond. We may pause here to
note that while term bhadralok has been used
quite frequently and effectively, the
caste composition of the bhadralok sreni has never really been firmed up on any authoritative basis by anyone.
We shall
soon refer to certain astute observers, mainly foreigners, who grasped the
existing social reality of Bengal and had no hesitation in equating the term
bhadralok with the three so-called upper castes — that we do as well, in this
paper. While it is surely a fact that some other castes and social groups in
Bengal have also claims that fit into this nebulous description of ‘bhadralok’,
we cannot be grossly faulted if we may adhere to the postulate that bhadralok
generally refers mainly to the educated and culture loving Brahman, Baidya and
Kayastha of Bengal. Our reasons are very practical, in the sense that:
(a) it is these
three castes that occupy the popular imagination when the word bhadralok is
uttered, and we may remember that we are dealing basically with an ‘identity’
and this is surely governed by perception;
(b) there is
no other befitting term in Bengali that could better describe this
‘conglomerate’ of three castes that is not only a stark reality of Bengal and
a hegemonic force in West Bengal and yet
it is taboo to discuss caste composition;
(c ) despite
the fact that other castes from the banik group or educated subaltern castes could also be deemed, on
certain occasions, to qualify as members of the bhadralok elite in the
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, by the time we reach the twentieth,
the term bhadralok meant only the educated segment of three so-called upper
castes — that had, thus, monopolised the definition.
A
caveat is essential here and this is that while the term bhadralok aptly
describes the educated segment of the three castes, it does not mean
automatically that all others are abhadra or do not fall in the gentleman’s category. We use
the term mainly to delineate the three castes that came together in an
unwritten alliance in 1753 — which is the core of the submission in this paper
— for want of any other ready term. We need a constant term to define this
conglomerate of three castes the continuing hegemony of which in education,
culture and politics cannot be hushed into silence — because it violates the
norms of the genteel. A small but unspoken fact is, for instance, that no chief minister of the state in 72
years since Independence has been from any other castes other than these
three. Academics are, however, still
reticent to compartmentalise caste groupings of Bengal with such finality, but
we reiterate that just as the term banik sampraday covers so satisfactorily all trading and merchant
castes, the term bhadralok does the same to describe the three castes of
Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha — or at least, the educated and cultured layer
within these castes. JH Broomfield, who has researched on the history of the
bhadraloks in the twentieth century has no hesitation in equating the three
castes with the description bhadralok. He is clear that “the term bhadralok was
frequently used in the late nineteenth century as a synonym for high caste”,
which he specifically mentions as ”Brahmin, Baidya and Kayastha” (1968, 6).
SN
Mukherjee deals extensively with the nature of the bhadralok castes and states
that “it would seem that the Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha together formed a
sub-elite group in the power structure of the traditional society and all
rulers of Bengal, the Palas, Senas, Pathans and Mughals had to rely on their
support (p 30). He cites several factors like education and land holding “which
led may scholars, old and new, to believe that the bhadralok was a traditional
elite, consisting of Brahmin, Baidya and Kayastha, which continued to enjoy
high status and exercise power as junior administrators and landowners
throughout the nineteenth century” (p 31). But then, Mukherjee does not agree
that bhadraloks were almost invariably from the three upper castes and he
mentions that in the nineteenth century, self-made men from other castes like
Motilal Seal, a gandhabanik and Gaurchand Basak, a weaver (actually from a
caste of weaver-merchants) were also leaders of the Bhadralok;ok community.
That was in the nineteenth century. Our point is, however, that by the
twentieth century, the term bhadralok was almost synonymous with the three
so-called upper castes.
There
appears little point in further flogging this argument as the term bhadralok is
essentially a social or colloquial one and though historians have been fond of
using it for a long, long time they have not left behind any formal criteria or
definition. Our restricted use of the term bhadralok relates to a phenomenon
that appeared in the early eighteenth century, in the formative years of a
tripartite alliance, for which we feel no other term fits in so well. The term abhijaat or
aristocrat appears quite presumptuous. To understand the events of 1753, we
need to distinguish two distinct conglomerates of castes, one belonging to the
trading castes and the other consisting of the three upper castes. The latter
came together to fulfil certain requirements set forth by the British, for
which the term bhadralok appears quite appropriate. Many other historians have
defined their own bhadraloks in the spatial and temporal contexts of their
studies and two such works that come to mind are Joya
Chatterji’s “The Decline, Revival and Fall of the Bhadralok Influence in the
1940s” (2001) and the latest book by Parimal Ghosh entitled What Happened to the Bhadralok (2016). Those who are still quite averse to defining
the bhadralok conglomerate as consisting of only the three so-called upper
castes are at liberty to view the developments of 1753 by categorising one
class as baniks (there is no dispute here) and the other as the
Brahman, Baidya and Kayastha alliance. The makes the describing of the binary a
bit too large and wordy — that is all.
Anthropologists, who have spent a disproportionately large amount of
time on castes and jatis (as the latter represent the real-life operational
units of castes) just do not recognise the term bhadralok. It is almost
impossible to find any serious anthropological literature on the bhadralok
phenomenon. No respectable directory or dictionary of Indian anthropology deals
with this conglomerate of castes, treating the subject of bhadralok jatis to be
outside the domain of respectable or academic anthropology. We need to
understand that we are dealing with an identity and strong shades of
subjectivity are bound to creep in anyway. The purport of any identity is often
quite open to interpretation, between those who desire or aspire towards that
identity and others who view them from outside — as constituents of the social
conglomerate. And, what is critical to remember, is that an identity is a
social construct that takes quite a while to firm up in the public mind and
requires a longish spell of ‘cultural marination’ to sink in gently into our
social life and find mention in our speech.
We have
mentioned 6.4 percent as the total population of the three upper castes of
Bengal in 1931, while in 1900 it was even less, i.e, 5.1. But we may note that
not every member of the three castes actually belonged to the bhadralok sreni, that
we define, quite telegraphically, in the next paragraph. It is quite possible
that almost half the members of these three castes were either not literate
enough to qualify or that they belonged unequivocally to the stock of peasants
and workers. This places them beyond the core of the term bhadralok — but let
us not open yet another front for debate. Social history is notoriously
subjective but we do need it to supplement the other more precise historical
approaches. We may pick up where we left the definition of the term bhadralok,
with Broomfield and Mukherjee and take up another scholar. Richard P Cronin,
who is quite clear that “while bhadralok
status was generally limited to members of the three highest Bengal castes,
membership in this social elite depended primarily upon the acquisition of
education, both Western and Sanskrit” (1975 pp 99-100). To understand how this small three
percent or so of Bengal monopolised government employment, we may now turn to
numbers provided by Broomfield (1968 10). In 1900, the three bhadralok castes
occupied 80.2 percent of ‘high government appointments’, while Muslims who
constituted 51.2 percent of the population could get only 10.3 percent and the
‘lower caste Hindus’ managed a mere 9.5 percent of these jobs even when they
accounted for 41.8 percent of the population. Though the concept of bracketing
only three upper castes as bhadralok may often appear a bit debatable, all
arguments cease when such a gross reality stares sternly at us. There is
absolutely no problem of amorphousness here, when we grapple with hard socio-economic truths and
theoretical terms like hegemony come out in flesh and blood. We are surely
within our rights to delineate only these three participant jatis as
bhadralok, at least for the purposes of this paper.
There is an
argument that, at a conceptual level, all educated Bengalis could be brought
under the scope of the term bhadralok, but we submit that the bhadralok it is
surely more than just education. J.H.Broomfield defines it elsewhere as “a
socially privileged and consciously superior group, economically dependent upon
landed rents and professional and clerical employment; keeping its distance
from the masses by its acceptance of high-caste proscriptions and its command
of education; sharing a pride in its language, its literate culture and its
history; and maintaining its communal integration through a fairly complex
institutional structure that it had proved remarkably ready to adapt and
augment to extend its social power and political opportunities” ( 2016, 218).
We can dilate on every phrase used in this definition, but let us just absorb
the rest of Broomfield’s well-observed criteria for qualifying as a bhadralok —
other than the membership of the three castes — that every Bengali knows for
sure to be true. While introducing his chapter ‘Bengal and the Bhadralok’,
Broomfield summarises these characteristics as (a) aversion to physical labour
or farming work; (b) an unusual attraction towards owning some land or
zamindari right, mainly to boost one’s social standing; (c ) partaking of
English education at any cost (d) pursuing educational and cultural interests,
often musical, (e) preferring an urban home or habitat and (f) seeking salaried
employment (1968, 6-10). We can, again, agree or debate each point but we need
to move to the core of our argument which is how a set of castes that
constitute the bhadraloks were impacted by the policy of the East India Company
and how this dispensation eventually led to the consolidation of their
collective identity. Tithi Bhattachrya, who studied the bhadralok’s class for
its educational and cultural preferences in the period between 1848 and 1885,
places more weightage to these factors. “In Bengal upper casteness,
unfortunately, came to be naturalized as part of the bhadralok’s
intellectual identity, as did its largely Hindu spirit” (Bhattacharya 2005 4).
At this
stage, let us try to pin down when exactly the term bhadralok came into
circulation. Since Indians outside West Bengal and Tripura are hardly aware of
this peculiarly Bengali classification and the few who do know or have heard of
it are quite content to take it at its face value, we need to move to
Bangladesh where almost two-third of the Bengali speaking people reside. Banglapedia
or the National Encyclopedia of
Bangladesh mentions that “in its
institutional sense, the term was first used in 1823 by Bhabanicharan
Bandyopadhayay (1787-1848) in his literary works. Native clericals and petty
officials serving the British colonial state, the noveau riches, new
zamindars and entrepreneurs were made the themes of satirical works like Kalikata Kamalalaya (1823), Naba Babu Bilas (1825), and Naba Bibi Bilas (1831). Bhavani Charan ridiculed the emergent class
using the term bhadralok.” The Banglapedia also describes it as “an elitist social class that
emerged through the processes of social changes brought under the impact of
British colonial rule. In pre-modern times, the word Bhadra, a Sanskrit term,
denoted several values including property, particularly homestead property. The
homestead granted to a person rent-free was then known as bhadrasan.
The occupant of the bhadrason was bhadra and from that root, bhadralok. The term
bhadralok began to be used later for the behaviourally refined people. From
early nineteenth century, a bhadralok class was emerging as a social category
and became practically an institution in the mid-nineteenth century.”
Banglapedia
then makes a significant distinction between etymology and history and delinks
the bhadralok from the respectability that the term bhadrasan
conferred. It states that “the bhadralok did not really come from bhadrasan
but from the clerical, commercial and the new landed class, who built their
fortune through their association and transactions with the Europeans. They
amassed wealth, according to Bhabanicharan, after coming in contact with the
Europeans, and being influenced by them, they became indifferent about religion
and culture of their forefathers”. We need to read between the lines,
carefully. Scholars also agree that the first person to use this term was
Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, in his Kalikata Kamalalya of 1823. In Kalikata
Kamalalya, there is a short imaginary
description of the bhadralok as basically an educated Bengali who has to put in
long hours in office and return to their city dwellings called basha, which
signifies a temporary nature. In her section on “The Curious Case of the
Bhadralok: Class or Sentiment” (2005, 35-37), Bhattacharya follows Sumit Sarkar
(1997 176-77) in distinguishing this urban ‘house’ or shelter from the real
home or bari of the early generations of bhadraloks in their
ancestral villages — to which they went
back, periodically.
We turn next to the comprehensive Bibartanmulak
Avidhan or the ‘Diachronic
Dictionary of the Bengali language’
that traces the earliest stages of the evolution of words. The Bangla Academy
of Dhaka published these three bulky volumes of the Bibartanmulak
Abhidhan in 2013 the collaborative effort of several
researchers. It further fine tunes the first date when the term bhadralok was
used to 1821, instead of1823. According to this very comprehensive dictionary,
the word first appeared in print in 1821 in the Samachar Darpan Patrika of
Kolkata. The Avidhan, incidentally, mentions the word appeared again in
the same newspaper in 1822. It also traces several other later uses of this
term in colloquial usage and in popular literature. For our purposes, we now have
a definite period when the term is found in use. But this may not be the last word on the subject and we must remember
that a new word or phrase may often take a long time to move from the streets
to the parlour or vice versa. We are, however, yet to come across any reference
to the word bhadralok being in use at the level of the people before it
crept into print. In a sense, therefore, it could be argued that Nabakrishna
Deb and his ilk were not bhadraloks as the term had not yet been conjured, but
these are facile arguments. Sumit Sarkar reminds us, for instance, the
Rabindranath Tagore used the term ‘bhadralok-sampraday’ to convey a similar
meaning (1997 26).
As we
explained in the opening paragraph, in the early eighteenth century, we face the
problem of scarcity of reliable materials on the social history of the Bengalis
— with special reference to emerging formations like bhadraloks. The position
improves a bit as we enter the latter half of the eighteenth century, from
which the ‘modern era’ of Bengal and of India begins. In the nineteenth
century, we get a lot of materials and records thanks to the obsessive
compulsion of the British to keep records all levels of governance, commerce
and economics. The unbounded curiosity of the colonial traders and rulers,
coupled with their incorrigible habit of trying to extract profits out of every
situation or resource, meant that they left behind voluminous correspondence
and tracts describing in detail India’s people, communities, customs, commodities,
nature and minerals. But in the pre-Plassey period, such records had not been
built up or attempted and it is extremely difficult to negotiate social history
of the bhadralok group with the desired precision. Historians can still draw
some materials from sources like the Fort William Correspondence and India
Office Records, disciplines like anthropology could hardly profit at that stage
as colonial ethnography was yet to be born. In other words, we have hardly any
material on the castes of Bengal in the decade that matters most to us — where
the 1750s are concerned and hence we turned to economic and political records
to glean our granules of social history.
We find
the first important grouping of bhadralok castes was prepared by Radhakanta Deb
in 1822 for HT Prinsep, that SN Mukherjee reproduces in his article on “Caste,
Class and Politics in Calcutta, 1815-38” (p 18-19). As we have seen, the term
bhadralok had just about appeared in print in 1821-1822 and Bhabanicharan
Bandyopadhyay’s Kalikata Kamalayaya had not yet been published. It is not surprising that
Deb’s list did not carry the term ‘bhadralok’ but stressed on “respectable and
opulent natives of the Presidency” (Mukherjee 20 ff). We shall have to
encounter this problem of navigating between different formations when
referring to caste composition of the
bhadralok conglomerate. As many as 12 of the 23 top families mentioned
in the list were Kayasthas, 3 were Brahman, one was Baidya — signifying that
the three core castes of bhadraloks accounted for 16 in number or 65 in terms
of percentage. We shall see subsequently how three so called upper castes
became almost synonymous with the term bhadralok and it is interesting to note
that while these three jatis counted for just four to six percent of the
Bengali-speaking population, they constituted 70 percent of the upper strata in
Deb’s list in 1822. Among the other castes that find their names of the list we
have three Subarnabaniks, two weavers (actually Tantubaniks or merchants from
the weavers’ community), one Tili (oil-presser) and one from the caste of
distillers. So skewed is the earliest historic list of caste positions in
Kolkata, that appeared some seventy years after the ‘Company policy’ that we
allude to took its shape in 1753.
Radhakanta
Deb’s list is a not perfect, but it is surely something concrete. It does not include Rammohun Roy — perhaps
because he had settled in Kolkata only eight years before this list was
prepared and was not bonedi (ancient/aristocratic) enough to qualify. Or, his
name was anathema to Radhakanta Deb — because while Deb was an arch
conservative Hindu, Roy was certainly the most iconoclastic reformer. SN
Mukherjee points to more serious omissions like Baidyanath Mukherjee, Motilal
Seal, Ramkamal Sen, Hidaram Banerjee’s family, Biswanath Motilal, Bhabanicharan
Banerjee, Brinaban Mitra and Kalinath Munshi. But, if we analyse these names
with refernce to their castes, we shall see that four are Brahmans, two are
Kayasthas, one is a Baidya and only one is from a caste of merchants. If these
eight were also added to Deb’s list, then the three upper castes would increase
their percentage to seventy five. This is the point that we need to note, i.e,
by the early 1820s, it appears that the Brahman-Baidya-Kayastha combine was
more rich and powerful than the merchant castes which benefitted the most from
British rule and represented wealth in Bengal from the medieval period. They
were settled in Kolkata and other important markets even before Job Charnock
settled in these parts in 1690 and relocated British trade to the east bank of
the Hughli river. What caused this turn of fortunes against the original
trading partners of the British, the merchant castes, and in favour the three castes who would almost monopolise the term bhadralok, from the middle
of the late nineteenth century?
We need
to realise the gravity of the ‘transfer of importance’ in 1753 when the newly
formed Brahman-Baidya-Kayastha alliance replaced the baniks as
the most favoured class where the British were concerned. The trading castes
had, indeed, occupied a prime position in Bengal’s social history if we go by
the most down to earth stories contained in the Mangal Kavyas,
composed mainly from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It is interesting that the target for
conversion from ‘high religion’ to the religion of the folk is usually a
merchant like Chand Saudagar or Dhanapati Saudagar who is held high and there
is hardly any role ascribed from the Brahman or Baidya or Kayastha — despite the
fact that almost all the poets who composed these ballads were from these
castes. In fact, the Kayastha, Bhanru Dutta, is depicted quite pejoratively as a
villain. At the folk level, it was the merchant who counted the most and all
attempts were made therefore by the folk goddesses, Manasa and Chandi, to win
them over — not the Brahman or Baidya or Kayastha. These nuggets gives some
indication of the relative importance of the merchant castes vis a vis the
three upper castes who emerged later, in unison, to become their rivals— from
the middle of the eighteenth century.
But
before we finally come to 1753, the year that we have already mentioned as the
turning point, it may be useful to touch upon the jatis in
question — especially for those who are not familiar with Bengal’s caste
system. Caste, as we realise, is basically a social construct that relies very
heavily on what one would like to believe and how one views the whole social
hierarchy. In the 18th and 19th centuries when the game of the bhadraloks was being
played out, Bengal was quite conscious of caste differences and entitlements.
Anthropologists agree that there is nothing called a ‘pure’ caste, but despite
this reality, all castes invariably claim a ‘high status’, at least in comparison
to some others, and also insist on the purity of their blood. Indigenous blood
has penetrated, without doubt, every social group and the fact that inter
marriages are ritually prohibited even between sub-castes within the same jati
obviously signifies that there are historic suspicions about the so-called
purity claimed by each. Almost all groups of Brahmans claim to have descended
from some legendary ancestors who came to Bengal from some purer stock in the
Gangetic valley. No reference is made to the large indigenous groups of ritual
practitioners that were co-opted into or assimilated by the different
sub-castes of Brahmans in Bengal.
The
Baidyas who are next in terms of ritual standing and next in the caste hierarchy also have their own origin
tales linking them with Ambastha mentioned by Manu. Because they claimed to be
equal in status to Brahmans there were sharp retorts from the latter. The very
Bengali modus of settlement that was finally arrived was that while Brahmans
performed the last rites of their deceased ancestor eleven days after the date
of their death, the upper-grade Kayasthas did this on the thirteenth day, the
Baidyas were entitled to do so on the twelfth. There is no doubt that some
amount of social mobility existed within
the layers of Brahmans and Baidyas, especially in absorbing some indigenous
religious and medicinal practitioners into their fold. But, by the time we come
to these castes, there was a reasonable amount of freezing of status — even
though Risley mentions one and a half centuries later that there existed a
popular saying even in the 1880s: “Rising and falling is the Baidya’s lot,
provided the original stock remainssound (p 48, volume 1). The Baidyas are a
tiny community compared to the other two.
Where the
larger Kayastha caste was concerned, it was more porous. Legends abound about how some enterprising families, clans and sub-castes moved
up the social ladder in pre-modern and modern periods. Kayasthas, are almost
certainly of local origin as this indicates why have no blood or kinship
relationship with any caste outside Bengal, not even those north Indian social
groups that carry the same name. Yet, they too claim they arrived in Bengal in
some mythical past and are ‘superior’. The Anthropological Survey of India’s
authoritative volumes, The People of
India series mention under West
Bengal that the Kayasthas “are supposed to have crystallised into a caste only
in the medieval times” ((volume XXXXIII, part one, p 640). In fact, the bottom
layer of Kayasthas called under different names like the bahattor ghors
(seventy two clans) or Bansaj (Risley 440) were virtually open. Risley gives a few
examples of absorption of other social groups in Kayasthas and, as we are aware
such mobility took place in many castes throughout history with. convenient
Brahmanical genealogies being invented, for appropriate fees. For our purposes,
we note that only the two upper layers of Kayasthas, the kulin consisting of
three, four or just five surnames (depending on which interpretation is
adopted) and the moulik or saat-ghor or aat-ghor (agin, depending on school)
consisting of seven or eight surnames are usually admitted as members of the
bhadralok sreni — provided they fulfilled certain other conditions. The short
submission is that there is a certain open-endedness where Kayasthas were
concerned.
Hitesranjan Sanyal explains the operational mechanics of the caste or jati system
of Bengal and repeats the de jure stand that Brahmans took, that all jatis other
than Brahmans are Sudras, and how the concept of pure and impure was ensured by
the principle of jalchalachal. This latter term delineated which castes could offer
water to which castes and the acceptance or refusal to partake of it was
determined by strict codes of who was higher or roughly equal or positively
inferior. According to him, “in Bengal, the Baidyas.....and Kayastha....... are
the top of the internal hierarchy of the Sudras and occupy the highest position
among the ceremonially clean Sudra jatis’ (1981 19). He iterates that the degree of
Sanskritisation adopted or accepted or adopted by a particular caste determined
its rank in the social hierarchy and he comments that “the Baidyas and
Kayasthas are the most advanced jatis in this respect” (p 20). From the standpoint of
social history what is important for us
to note in this convoluted discussion on
‘purity’ and hierarchy is that these arguments and beliefs helped bring the
three upper castes closer. These justified the entry of the Baidyas and Kayasthas
into the Brahmanical fold, in partial modification of the rigidity that
Brahmans have insisted upon in other parts of India. The real compulsions that
prompted such adjustments and social engineering are explained in the next
paragraph. As Sanyal confesses, “the degree of impurity in a jati is measured
by the attitude of Brahmans towards it ( p 21) — thereby conceding that it is all very subjective. Caste accounts and genealogies are not useful in
tracing the historic development of castes and those that are suspected to have
arisen almost certainly from indigenous roots in Bengal had taken adequate
care to cover their tracks with paid-for accounts and genealogies and purchased
Brahmanical blessings. Let us appreciate the flexibilities that the apparently-rigid
system and hierarchy permitted when the occasion so arose — that is our
submission.
The point
of raising these issues is to highlight the internal differences and inter se
rivalries among the three upper castes that were subsumed as they seized the
opportunity to serve under the British in 1753 and replace the banik or trading
classes thereafter. To understand how the Baidyas and Kayasthas could finally
get together with the Bengali Brahmans in the bhadralok group, we need to
appreciate the basic difference between the culture of this far flung province
and the other north Indian states, where internecine rivalries and battles
between the upper castes are proverbial. While the Brahmans, Bhumihars, Rajputs
and Kayasthas fought it out in the Gangetic heartland and similar inter-caste
wars plagued other states as well, Bengal had no such situation. The pan Indian
scene was that all castes joined in caste contests and rivalries most
seriously, with obviously the depressed and most depressed castes being at the
extreme receiving end — who occasionally rose in revolt. True, inter caste
differences did exist even in Bengal but there were four reasons and special
circumstances that ensured that Bengali Hindus behaved differently and why the
inter caste conflicts did not generate into ugliness. As SN Mukherjee observed,
“the caste structure of Bengal during the pre-colonial period was far less
rigid than it is supposed to have been in other parts of India” (1970, 29).
The
first is that by the late medieval period, most of Bengal swung to Sufism and
Islam, which left the caste Hindus in a minority — as the census results of the
nineteenth century proved. So much so, that at present, only about 34 percent
of the Bengali speaking people profess the Hindu faith — that too, includes a
large percentage from the previously-shunned groups like tribals and dalits.
The Hindus in Bengal appeared to be in a minority which became clear from the
early census operations and within the Hindus, the upper castes were an even
smaller minority that could not afford to be further split into too many caste
formations. This may have accounted for them coming closer but it is not spelt
out so sharply in the sparse materials on which the social history of the Bengali
Hindus rests, but we may infer this from the manner in which social formations
behaved. It is clear from the narrative of the small community of upper caste
Hindus that the three treated the vast masses of the so-called lower caste
Hindus and the overwhelming Muslim agriculturist with equal contempt. The
second reason was that Muslim Bengalis were seen by these castes as hardly
Bengali. This comes out clear from the oft-repeated statement “Amra Bangali Ora Mussalman” — that we are Hindus are Bengalis and they are basically
Mussalmans. In protecting the Bengali Hindu from the impure meant that
everything relating to Muslims considered unacceptable — their lungi, their
onion-garlic food, their chicken/beef diet, their customs. This sort of a
cultural trench that separated the Hindus and Muslims actually resulted in some
amount of bonding within the members of each community and a special bonding
emerged among the five or six percent of the population that comprised of upper
caste Hindus. This s reflected quite strongly within the bhadralok castes. The
third allied reason was that most of the social groups at the vast bottom of
the pyramid of Bengal had walked over to Islam and they had severed whatever
loose or imperfect linkages they had with Brahmanical Hinduism. Conversely
those who did remained within the Hindu fold were less prone to caste-based
acrimonious among themselves — as compared to other states. And the last
circumstance was that since the upper caste Hindus were kept out of
administration and power for the first two centuries of Islamic rule in Bengal,
and admitted only in driblets thereafter until the 18th
century, there were lesser reasons for inter-caste rivalries for political
patronage and strength among the upper castes.
There
is another dimension worth noting, and this is that Baidyas and Kayasthas were
almost at par with Brahmans where education and religion were concerned. No one
has any idea when these two castes appeared on the horizon but we find them as
‘arrived entities’ from the 14th century or thereabouts. We see that the earliest
translators of the Mahabharat or sections thereof from Sanskrit to Bengali were
Kayasthas like Kabindra Parameshwar Das and Srikara Nandy in the 14th/15th
centuries (Sukumar Sen 107 ff). In the same period, we see how Vijay Gupta, a
Baidya, composing the Manasa Mangal, while Maladhar Basu, a Kayastha, produced
his Srikrishna Vijay, between 1473 and 1480. In the 15th
century, we also come across Narayan Deb, again a Kayastha, who composed the Padma Puran,
which is Manasa Mangal by another name. As Dineshchandra Sen notes, some of
Chaitanya’s closest companions and followers in the 16th century
were Baidyas or Kayasthas — Murari Gupta, Paramananda Sen, Narahari Sarkar,
Basudeb Ghosh, Madabananda Ghosh and Raghunath Dasa (DC Sen 1917 100ff). We
may also note other Baidyas and
Kayasthas in this revolutionary religious movement — like Shivananda Sen.
Chaitanya’s hagiographies were composed by Baidyas like Murari Gupta,
Krishnadas Kaviraj, Govindadas Kaviraj and Premananda Sen. In the 17th
century, we see how another Kayastha, Kashiram Das, attained fame for his
translation of the Mahabharat while others from this caste like Narasimha Basu,
Ketakadas Kshemananda and Manik Dutta (S Sen 112ff) carried on the Mangal Kavya
tradition. We repeat the point — that is, in Bengal, these two castes were
considerably at par with the Brahmans where education and religion were
concerned. In fact, they were the biggest gainers from Chaitanya’s inclusivism
— for soon after his death, the ‘six Goswamis’ of Vrindavan who led the Gaudiya Vaishnava
movement reintroduced caste barriers that had been lowered by Chaitanya. But
the Kayasthas and Baidyas were firmly ensconced with the Brahmins as clean
Sudras who were acceptable to the Goswamis and thus bracketed with Brahmans.
Returning
to our main theme, we note that in the early decades of the eighteenth century, the British in Kolkata and Bengal
usually traded through the baniks or the merchant castes, especially the tantubaniks
or weaver-traders, and sourced their cloth and other goods from this class of
brokers. Explaining this in some more detail, NK Sinha says in his Economic History of Bengal, volume 1, that in early eighteenth century Bengal,
the British policy of trade or ‘investment’ (as it was called) was dependant on
Indian brokers and agents and it revolved around a system of making advance
payments to them known as dadni, to book and purchase goods on their behalf. Indian
merchants then paid cash to the weavers and other producers to supply goods for onward
transfer to the East India Company, but quite often, these baniks had
risk their own money as the money
advanced to them by the Company was not enough to cover the total bill. At
times, they were told to pick up goods for direct cash sale to the British
under the ‘ready-money system’. This involvement
of both capital and risks meant that the dadni banians had to be men of some substance. Besides,
transactions involved a lot of haggling over prices at every level and only
those dadni merchants who were solvent men could survive as they also had to be strong enough to bargain with
the British at every step. Sinha says “the most important dadni
merchants were the Seths and Basaks at Sutanati (in Kolkata, who) had
preference over others in this business because they had lived long in Calcutta
and were under the protection of the British” (6). Sinha also refers to a
north Indian trader like Ominchund who was also a prominent dadni
merchant. He mentions that “in 1751-52, the notable dadni
merchants in Calcutta were Gopinath Seth, Ramkrishna Seth, Lakshmi Kanta Seth,
Sobharam Basak, Ominchand and the Cotmahs” (6). SN Mukherjee goes a step ahead
and explains that the “Setts controlled the broker’s office of the Company in
Calcutta until the end of the dadni system in 1753” (p 13). He then links the banians to a
longer timeline of Bengal’s history, when he summaries that “by the beginning
of the nineteenth century, they had become shroffs (money lenders) in
Calcutta and their descendants helped the cause of the modernists in 1820s and
1830s” where knowledge of English education and western Enlightenment was
concerned (p 13).
Shubhra Chakrabarti feels it is not
correct to lump all intermediaries in English trade under one category called banians
and points out to researches that
establish “that their existed a complex hierarchy among the middle, according
to their roles.” They were classified as “banian, dewan,
contractor, gomostah, dalal and pykar” (1994, 107). The banian
was the chief operator and interpreter, who was actually a trading partner who
put his capital into the business while the British provided him the dastak
or document from the officials of the Mughal empire and the Nawab of Bengal
permitting them to purchase and transport goods without the payment of taxes
and duties. PJ Marshall suggests that the banians actually traded under
cover of the dastak and invested their own funds for profits, while the
British official simply offered his name and authority — for a fee (1967, 55).
“Europeans traded on the capital of their banyans or Indian agents, or
to be more exact, the banyans traded on their master’s name and
authority’ (Sinha 1967a 115). One must understand that in the eighteenth
century, British rule in Bengal rested on “Indian junior administrators who
worked more like speculators or contractors than as civil servants” (Mukherjee
14). After the banian came the dewan who did not participate in funding,
but actually supervised the entire operation on behalf of the banian
where the Indian producers and suppliers were concerned and controlled the
subordinate agents like gomostah, dalals and pykars. While
the dalal actually brought the producer-supplier in contact with the purchaser
for a commission, the gomostah was merely a salaried employee and we
find mention of this post as employees of the merchants, such as “Maneekchand’s
Gomostah”, from as early as 2nd February 1707 (India Office
Records, microfilm reel 1, BPC or Bengal Public Consultations, in the National
Archives, the NAI, New Delhi). We shall soon see how this class later gained
the most from the rupture in relations between the main players, the Company
and the banians. He carried the funds given to him by the banian
or the dewan and made the actual payment at the field level, after
checking the goods in term of quality and quantity. The pykar was a mini-banian who
used his capital to purchase on behalf of his employer or supplied goods on a
much smaller scale, for a fee. It was the gomostah who was held
responsible in case goods were not supplied or were of poor quality or
delayed. He knew every producer or
weaver within his beat.
This
system worked well enough in its early days but moved into rough weather from
the early 1750s. Incidentally, the Sinha quotes from British records to surmise
that “the dadni merchants themselves were not very eager to do business with
the English East India Company and considered that the provision of goods for
the French and Dutch more lucrative and more convenient” (7). He also
summarises why the Court of Directors of the East India Company agreed with
their servants in India to dispense with the services of the banians and
these were (a) bad relations with the banians as well as their insolence
(b) their notorious non compliance with contracts (c ) their constant
obstinacy. This part of history has been traversed in the past as well but what
is perhaps new in this examination is the caste character of the players. In short, it is submitted that till 1753 the
Company supported and enriched a class of Indian entrepreneurs in Bengal that
was positively banian and constituted of people from the merchants
castes of tantubaniks and other traders. Many economic historians have studied
this phase — without getting into caste compositions of the ‘winners’ — and we
may pick notes from any of them. Kalikinkar Datta states, for instance, that
the “dadni merchants could not always make good their contracts by
procuring goods to the full amount of the dadni money, and the Court of
Directors (of the Company) sent instructions about the year 1746 to the members
of the Council in Calcutta that they should advance dadni as little as
possible and should encourage them to purchase goods at ready money”.
Obviously, the merchants were unwilling to risk more and more of their own
capital to purchase goods on behalf of the Company and then haggle with the
English about quality and price and finally end up by receiving their payments
rather late (Datta, 1984 85).
Relations were thus quite unsettled from 1746 and there are several
notes and letters on this subject. The Fort William and India Office records contain
blow by blow details. In a long letter dated 30th November 1746
addressed to the Court of Directors in London, the Calcutta Council mentions
how the merchants were informed about the decision of the Court and how they
refused, more or less, with the new term of the English Company. We must remember that, in 1746, the English
were just one more of the three or four European entities that were operating
in Bengal and were vying for the same or similar goods. More important is the
fact that before the Battle of Plassey, Britain had not emerged as the most powerful
player in Bengal and the merchant castes did not obviously look up them as
overlords in the same manner as the Brahman-Baidya-Kayastha gomostahs,
writers and cash keepers employed by the Company a decade later did. In any
case, the banians of Kolkata were so accustomed to treating them as
equal trading partners that they may have failed to grasp the early signs of
the superior strength of this London Company. On the other hand, the gomostahs
and other Indians who sought for and received employment under the Company did
so mainly for their own economic reasons. The fact that they later gained the
most from the new dispensation of 1753 and from the end of the dadni-purchase
does not imply, ipso facto, that they were endowed with extraordinary foresight
to understand the course of history — which is extremely difficult. They may
just have happened to be on the winning side, but whatever be the reason, it
marked the beginning of a great partnership in the acquisition of wealth, never
mind the means.
Returning
to where we left, we may move straight to the two large volumes of records in
the NAI entitled Home Public Proceedings of 1753, volumes 1 (January to June)
and 2 (July to December) where every page bristles with angst about how the banians
of the merchant castes refused to oblige the Company. We have detailed accounts
of how the London office finally agreed to the proposal of the Calcutta Council
in Fort William — which was then located more or less at the site of the
present GPO or General Post Office in Kolkata. And, this proposal was to do
away with the system of advancing money (dadon, dadni) to the banians
for purchase of goods and instead, to engage the Company’s own gomostahs.
To check whether the new proposal of early June 1753 received the approval of
the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London, we see that at that
end an entry is available as late as 3rd September 1753, that says
it all. Before we read the exact quote,
we may appreciate that we have to make allowances for several months of delay
in shipping letters from the Calcutta Council to the Court of Directors of the
East India Company and these finding entries in the records kept at London. We
have, therefore, to be prepared for identical or similar entries on different
dates, in Kolkata and in London, that also depended on which date it was copied
and the authority that ordered it to be copied and preserved. We know for
certain that the Calcutta Council at Fort William finalised its policy to
change the purchase system in the first half of June of that year and now we
see the letter recorded on the 3rd of September 1753 that reads “we
ordered a publick advertisement to be affixed at the first gates, giving notice
that we intended to employ gomostahs at the aurungs on account of
Your Honours (i.e, on behalf of the Company)” (Datta 1958 684).
The
developments leading to this new policy are available from the NAI records of 7th June 1753 where
it is clear that the instructions of the Court of Directors to insist on
reducing the percent of dadni/advance to be given by the Company to the
traditional banians “were placed before the merchants”. It is, further,
recorded that the banians “absolutely refused, insisting that could not
deviate from their own proposals.........(and) demand for 85 percent advance on
Dadney” (p 290, volume 1). The subsequent notes only reiterate the
refusal of the merchants to sign the new contracts (p 291) and also record the
problems created by the Danes and the Marathas (p 293). The novel proposal of
the Company to finally discard the age-old dadni system and “to send
(their own) Gomostahs to the different aurungs (stores in the interior
where cloth procured from weavers were processed) also come out clearly. The
justification given was that the Company’s own gomostahs could “purchase
such goods as are directed by the (Company’s) List of Investment (procurement)
on the best and most reasonable terms”. Not a whisper was made of the private
trade that these newly-appointed Indian servants of the Company were to make on
behalf of the British officials, under the cover of the Nawab’s tax-free and
duty-free dastak or permit that was meant for the Company’s purchases only. Far
from it, the notes make it appear that it was a self righteous and courageous
decision that the Company’s servants knew that they would find obstruction and
sabotage (10 June 1753, p 292 ff).
That this
was given effect to by the middle of the month is clear from another reference
that we come across in volume 1 of 1753 of the NAI that notes that on 20th
June, Roger Drake, Factor, informed the Board in Kolkata that “several persons
had been offered to be employed in the Company’s services as of Gomostahs,
Cash Keepers and Writers to Aurangs” mentioned later. The Board decided
to “make enquiry of their character and substance and if approved, we may
entertain them accordingly” (page 327-28 of volume 1 of the Home (Public)
Proceedings. The same page gives the names of the applicants and their security
or surety, that is, solvent Indians who guaranteed to the local Council that
they would make good if the employed person absconded after causing losses to
the Company. This system of taking security or indemnity before entrusting
government money still exists, in a diluted format even today. The list is
interesting and we reproduce it below, with comments regarding possible castes.
1. Kissendass
Tagore (Brahman), who was to be appointed as Gomostah, with wages of 75
rupees per month, with Govindaram Mitre (Kayastha) as his security.
2. Ramsundar Das (caste not determinable) as Cash
Keeper on wages of 27 rupees per month, with Permanaund Bysack (Tantubanik) as
his security.
3. Sitaram Cor (Kayastha) as Under Gomostah at
30 rupees, security Govindaram Mitre (Kayastha).
4. Ramanand Chuckerbetty (Brahman) as Under Gomostah,
at 30 rupees, security Govindaram Mitre (Kayastha).
5. Ramchurn Gupta (Baidya) as Writer on 20 rupees a
month, with Ranaut Sen (Baidya or Kayastha) as security.
6. Neemoi Paulit (Kayastha) as Gomostah, on 60 rupees a month with
Ramjiban Cubberage (Baidya) and Ramnarain Bose (Kayastha) as security.
7. Chundermohun Bose (Kayastha) as Cash Keeper, at 22
rupees, with Durgaram Mitre and Kissenram Paulit (both Kayasthas) as security.
8. Ram Chunder (most probably Kayastha) as Writer, on
17 rupees a month, with Ramshuner Gose (Kayastha) as his security.
9. Ramnaut Sircar (Kayastha) as Writer on 17 rupees,
with Anandraram Metre (Kayastha) as his security.
10. Bollinut Bose (Kayastha), Gomostah at 50
rupees a month, with his security being a Brahman, Anandakumar Mookerjee.
11. Juggernaut Nundee, Cash Keeper, at 25 rupees a
month, with Kripraum Nundee as his security — both names appear to be Kayastha.
12. Totarand Bose (Kayastha) as Writer on rupees 15,
Nunderam Metre (Kayastha) as his security.
13. Alluma Chund as Gomostah on 70 rupees a
month, with Radhakishen Belleh as his security — the surnames do not reveal
their caste.
14. Sookdeb Majoomdar, Cash Keeper, at 24 rupees a
month, with Chandon Majoomadar as his security. The names are probably Kayastha
or Baidya.
15. Jugut Hazareh as Writer on 15 rupees a month, with
Pratapananda Chowdree as security — both surnames appear quite upper caste.
16. Shunohari Tagore (Brahman) as Writer on 15
rupees a month, with Nufsernan Gose
(Kayastha) as security.
( pages
327-28 of volume 1 of Home- Public, 1753).
There is
another separate entry in the same volume where other appointments are
mentioned, namely:
1. Ramsundar Bose, Cash Keeper, 20 rupees, with some
Bose (the name is smudged) as security — on the 18th of June. Both
are Kayasthas.
2. Kissenchurn Mitre, Writer, 15 rupees, with Nundram
Mitre as security. Again, both are
Kayasthas (both on page 320, vol 1). On
23rd June, the first seven were called from the list mentioned on 20th
June and their ‘security bonds’ executed. We get these names — Chundersoonder
or Chandra Sundar Bose, Raichund Cur or Ray Chand Kar, Ramprasad Sircar or Ram
Prasad Sarkar, Kissendeb Tagore or Krishna Deb Thakur, Ramneddy Chuckerbetty or
Ramnidhi Chakrabarty, Ramsaran or Ramsharan Dass and Ramchurn or Ram Charan
Gupta (Home- Public, 1753, volume 1, page 336).
These prove quite firmly that social considerations mattered most where
the wealthier or better known person who stood as security was concerned. The
‘securities’ came from the three upper castes and they supported only thos
applicants who were from these three castes. It did not matter to a Brahman who
acted as security that the applicant was nor a Brahman, he risked his name and
wealth as long as he belonged to any of the three upper castes. This applied, mutatis
mutandis, for securities from the other two casts as well. Where Bengal wa
or is concerned, such open declaration of caste affinities are rare to come by
— at least at the upper levels. The degree of cross support by the three castes
for candidates who belonged to any of the three castes is really remarkable —
and very rare, indeed. How this was missed out by earlier researchers is rather
strange — but obviously, they were not peering into the caste angle, as we have
done.
The
volumes of the NAI were not always stitched very systematically and we get data from one additional volume, numbered
as 3A, covering July to December 1753. In it we find on page 399, a reference
of advances made to five Gomostahs being approved in a Consultation
meeting on 18th July 1753 that was chaired by Roger Drake. The hand
writing is not fully legible and considerably faded but one can retrieve the
names of the Gomostahs as Hurrananda Paul, Mungalundoo Tagoor, Hirpernan
Sircar, Saun Sircar and Hurrynaunt Tagoor, with Monich Tagoor and one Dutt
standing in as security. From subsequent entries made in these volumes, we come
across advances and payments made to Gomostahs, whose surnames appear to
be typically Brahman, Baidyas or Kayastha. The surnames of the gomostahs
that appear on the accounts of 31st July 1753 (p 568, 570 in vol 3A)
are Roy, Sein, Mookerjay, Paul, Tagoor, Buxy, Mokkerjay again, and Bose. Again,
on 31st October we get these surnames for the 15 gomostahs
listed under the accounts of the East India Company in Bengal for 1753, namely,
Gose, Sircar, Tagoor, Bose, Das, Paulit, Gosaul, Biswas, Saumont and one Jafeir
(p 666, vol 3A).
On the 3rd
of July 1753, we get another list of gomostahs and others who are appointed (p
365-66, volume 1). We get a very similar picture of appointments made almost
entirely of Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas. The details are of appointees,
post, salaries and security are, as follows:
1. Ramchond Mookurjee, Gomostah, Rs 34, Protap
Naran Chowdree
2. Manohar Mitre, Cash Keeper, Rs 22, Connai Mitre
3. Kissen Mozumdar, Writer, Rs 15, Ramjibon Cubberage
4. Roghu Bysack, Writer, Rs 15, Rammohun Tagore
5. Jaggernaut Sen, Gomostah, Rs 20,
Nundokishore Cubberage
6. Nilumber Dass, Cash Keeper, Rs 20, Ramjibon
Cubberage, Ramram Bose
7. Gadadar Bose, Writer, Rs 20, Sasidas Sircar
8. Dullol Dass, Writer, Rs 15, Sam Tagoor
9. Hidaram Bose, Writer, Rs 15, Benode Mitra
We can
locate more such evidence to prove that the newly-appointed gomostahs and allied staff like
cash-keepers and writers were almost all from the three upper castes of Bengal,
namely, Brahman-Baidya-Kayastha. We have already mentioned that we come across
the first known instance in the nineteenth century where a new class appeared
that was strongly conscious of its caste identity. This class devised a unique
method of cross-supporting each other as long as beneficiaries belonged to
their three upper castes. We submit that the British records of trade in Bengal
during the first half of the eighteenth century may now be viewed from this
angle of social history also — now that they have been wrung dry by those who
extracted economic and political history from them. We seem to have finally
located an exact period when the three upper castes coalesced their interests,
in every sense of the term, and came together to become the dominant social
force in Bengal for the next two and a half centuries. But, then, this did not
mean the end of the banik sampraday (community) because they continued
to trade with all the three or four colonial powers and the same records reveal
that they dominated the Company’s import business. All it means is that we now
have a new class of men of very moderate means, all from the three upper castes
of Bengal, who rose to phenomenal heights quite rapidly and benefitted directly
from British rule as few social groups have ever done.
Before the existence of this open avenue
for economic empowerment, for social mobility for collaborating with British
power in India — first in trade and wealth creation and then in administration
— we do not come across such large scale engagement of upper caste Hindus by
previous regimes in Muslim-dominated Bengal — between 1204 and 1757. We find,
for instance, some sparse evidence of a few literate Kayasthas being appointed
to high posts by the Muslim sultans of Bengal, but not many Brahmans, if any at
all. We are not certain what these appointments meant in terms of percentage of
population or in quantum of power and they were rare exceptions rather than the
rule, before Akbar’s (imperfect) conquest of Bengal in 1576. But we come across
a handful of upper caste Bengali Hindus being employed as revenue collectors by Jahangir, called
zamindars and rajas. His rule penetrated deeper into the eastern heartland of
Bengal and his Subhadars subdued much of the countryside, rather effectively.
We see how the first Nawab of Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan also embarked on a
deliberate policy of appointing quite a few high caste Hindu zamindars — who
were men of substance, unlike our gomostahs — and how he encouraged the
consolidation of zamindars into big, compact territorial units. Ratnalekha Ray
mentions how the revenue of Bengal was controlled by fourteen large zamindars
(rajas) in the middle of the eighteenth century, out of which eleven were with
Bengali, Brahmans, Rajputs and Kayasthas (p 26-29). Ray also refers to a class
of Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas all over rural Bengal who were known as the
‘grihasthas’ or respectable people “who, however humble in their
circumstances, consider it derogatory to their honour to hold the plough” (p
30). This prototype of the bhadralok were ranked separately by the nawab’s
regime and clubbed with the Muslim gentry consisting of Ashrafs, Qazis,
Maulavis, Khondakars and the like.
But the
class that emerged in 1753 consisted of men who came from all ranks and this class
was much more open-ended, provided, of course, one belonged to any of the three
select castes. There was no direct mention of this grand alliance within any
the three jatis or how members of any one collaborated with members who did not belong
exactly to one’s own jati. In social history, we have to make inferences
from both acts of omission and of commission. It is clear that though marriage
alliances among the three were yet unimaginable and a discreet social distance
maintained between them in terms of ritual purity, there was mutual regard and
respect that was to the exclusion of other jatis beyond the select
three. This alliance proved to be the
foundation of an unwritten partnership between the three for the next two centuries and more. This is
the point to note, as we hardly ever come across such protracted inter-jati
collaboration with so much recorded evidence. The complete silence that was
maintained thereafter by both the players themselves and those who observed the
phenomenon is what makes social history so challenging to construct, and so
fascinating to behold. This exclusive middle class continued to swell its ranks
with every passing decade and continued to benefit from every twitch and turn
made by British policy in India, while the old landed gentry, also from the
three upper castes, lurched from crisis
to crisis. By the end of the century most of the original zamindar families
were gone and they were replaced by brash adventurers from the new tri-jati
brotherhood. The mutual assistance rendered by the three castes revealed a new
consciousness in a common identity that we have designated as bhadralok, a few
decades before the term actually appeared.
Let
us now take a look at their operational techniques. We begin by NK Sinha’s
reiteration that the appointment of gomostahs “enabled them to mix up
private trade (of the Company’s servants) with the Company’s own investment in
a more efficacious manner... (whereby the gomostahs) could cover this
trade in return for valuable considerations in a much more far-flung manner
than before” (1967b, 9). Sinha and other historians have pointed out that it
was this gross misuse of the tax-free permits, the dastaks, that
contributed to the misunderstanding between Nawab Siraz-ud-daula and the
British, that led to the capture of Calcutta by Siraz and the Battle of Plassey
thereafter. Talboys Wheeler also attributes the Battle of Plassey indirectly to
the appointment of gomostahs which meant that banians like
“Ominchand lost a lucrative branch of his business and was vexed beyond
measure” (p 225). This, he claims, goaded him to him to foment trouble between
the Nawab and the British, which led to Plassey.
The new gomostah system soon resulted
in its rampant misuse and illicit enrichment of both the gomostahs and
their masters. Bangladeshi historian Muin-ud-din Ahmad Khan mentions that “a
special police report of 1762 states that the whole country was overrun by the gumastahs,
who monopolised markets, compelled people under duress of flogging and
confinement to purchase their goods at a high price, bought up local products
at a low price, forced the primary producers to receive dadni or advance
money and to enter into utterly disadvantageous contracts with them for
supplying goods to them at the end of the season, arbitrated disputes like
judges and perpetrated many other forms of oppression” (p 52). Earlier,
Mazharul Haq had also mentioned that the Company’s Resident at Maldah described
the gomostahs in 1764 as “a set of rascals......who lord it over the
country, imprisoning the riots and merchants, and writing and talking in the
most insolent manner” (p 229). Haq quotes a report of 1794 from the Company’s Chief
at Qasimbazar addressed to the government that he was “receiving an amazing
number of complaints of grave excesses committed by the gomostahs all
over the country” (p 227). In fact, Shubhra Chakrabarti mentions how in the
period between 1868 and 1874, the gomostahs were deactivated and dadni
merchants appointed once again, for a while (1994 112-113). In fact, NK Sinha
corroborates how “banians and gomostahs compelled merchants and
shopkeepers to take goods at 30, 40 or 50 percent above the market price” (1956
12). Sinha also mentioned the methods utilised by the Company’s servants who
“remitted their ill-gotten wealth home”. We get a fair idea of the depredations
let loose by the colonial power in Bengal in the form of the gomostahs
belonging almost entirely to the three upper castes of Bengal. We have no
corresponding records of the castes or religious affiliation of those who
suffered — but there is every chance that the poorer members of the three upper
castes were not spared either.
We are
aware of how those sections of this new class that served as Munshis or Banians
to individual officials of the East India Company in Kolkata made their huge
fortunes, quite openly. Bhattacharya mentions that Nabakrishna Deb’s official
salary was just 60 rupees in the early 1760s, when he spent a fabulous amount
of nine lakh (900,000) rupees on the funeral of his mother. When he was
elevated to the rank of a raja and awarded a salary of 2000 rupees, he declined
most politely, and accepted only 200 rupees (p 46), obviously because his
fortunes came from other illegitimate earnings. It is this group of bhadraloks
who actively participated in bidding during the settlement of land and
zamindaris, even while they carried on money lending or other businesses. Land
was considered as safe investment. By the second half of the eighteenth
century, “most zamindars were Kayasthas, Brahmans and Kshatriyas” says Rajat
Datta (2000 135). It is this same group who worked not only as powerful albeit
unscrupulous agents of British colonial power as gomostahs, munshis,
dewans and money lenders and invested in land as well in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, it also monopolised English education through the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. It had an overwhelming presence in
government employment and later in the professions of law and medicine but,
more important, it is the same social group that inspired the national movement
against British rule and had to suffer a lot even as it finally succeeded in
ending British rule in India. We have traversed a lot of material to lead to
the developments that took place in and around 1753 and 1757, to explain the
circumstances that revealed for the first time (and maybe the last) when caste
and economic considerations converged to create a new class — for which
evidence is available in black and white. It is, indeed, rare to find an
instance like the documents of 1753 that clear narrate an aspect of social
history that has remained snowed under mountains of materials on economic and
political history — for so long. We end with an observation made by Sumit
Sarkar more than two decades ago that’s “social history of a kind had received
considerable attention from nationalist intellectuals working on the ‘Hindu’
period, but much less so far for the ‘Muslim’ or ‘British’ centuries. Caste,
for instance, can hardly be avoided in studies of ancient Indian history,
whereas it is only very recently that caste has started to figure significantly
in historical works in the colonial era” (p 38). This small contribution is in
that direction.
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