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Return of the Bhadralok: Ecology and Agrarian Relations in Eastern Bengal, c. 1905–19471

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

IFTEKHAR IQBAL
IFTEKHAR IQBAL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since the late 1970s, historical studies of colonial Bengal have been dominated by the recurrent theme of the ‘return of the peasant’, generally set against the previously predominant notion that British-created landlords were omnipotent agents of agrarian relations. Although the new historiography restores agency to the peasant, it seeks to attribute the agrarian decline in the late colonial Eastern Bengal, roughly Bangladesh, to the ‘rich peasant’. It is argued that the rich peasant wielded hegemonic authority on their poor fellow co-religionists by forging a ‘communal bond’, while exploiting them from within. Such development is often considered linked to the separatist idea that offered a ‘peasant utopia’ in the form of Pakistan against perceived Hindu domination. This article, while not altogether denying the role of the rich peasant, argues that the bhadralok, or the non-cultivating middle-class gentry, were far more powerful as a catalyst in agrarian relations in Eastern Bengal than is conceded in contemporary historical debates. In so arguing, this article re-examines the post-structuralist turn that appeared to replace the classical Marxist paradigm of class by that of culture and consciousness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 6 , November 2009 , pp. 1325 - 1353
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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13 Baden-Powell noted in the late nineteenth century that agriculture was ‘positively abhorred’ by the Brahmans and Kshatriyas, who comprised bulk of the bhadralok, although the third castes or Vaisya (common people) became ‘to some extent an agricultural class’. See B. H. Baden-Powell, The origin and growth of village communities in India (London: Sonnenschein & Co., 1899), 52.

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24 NAB, Government of Bengal, Rev Dept (Land), no. 6, Apr. 1922, 6; coincidentally, in a famous Bangla novel, there is such a character, Balaram Kaviraj, who was settled in a coastal island. He was depicted in the novel in the following words: ‘In this . . . char, he has created his own world. There is not much anxiety for patients. There are plenty of lands in the char. There are ponds of saline water as well as gardens of betel nuts. He also owns about fifty buffalos—he can be regarded as a little zamindar. Therefore, Kaviraji (medical practice) may be regarded as his nesha (obsession) rather than pesha (profession)’. See Narayan Gangopadhaya, ‘Narayan Gangopadhaya Rachanabali: Upanibesh (The Colony)’, vol. 2, 2nd edn. (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghose Publishers, 1386 Bangla year (1979)), 227.

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26 BLCP, 41, 3 (1933), 63–64.

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30 The Bengal waste lands manual 1919 (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1919), 2.

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32 The Bengal waste lands manual 1936 (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1936), 1.

33 Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings (henceforth BLAP), 54, 2 (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1940), 131.

34 Pomode Ranjan Das Gupta, Faridpur revisional settlement final report, part-1—survey and settlement operations 1940–4 (Dacca: Government of East Bengal, 1954), 5.

35 Quoted in Radharomon Mookerjee, History and incidents of occupancy right (Delhi: Neeraj Publishing House, 1919, reprinted 1984), 10.

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38 Mukeerji, ‘The transferability of occupancy holding’, 266.

39 NAB, Rev (Land) ‘A’ Progs (confidential), bundle 1, list 124D, 1939, 2: ‘Memorial of landholders in the matter of the Bengal Tenancy Act, 1938’.

40 NAB, ‘A’ Progs, wooden bundle 26, list 17, Mis—Collection, XIV, no. N100–101, Aug. 1889: C.E. Buckland, offg Secy to BoR, Lower Provinces. to Secy to GoB, no. 5414, 3 Jul. 1889.

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42 NAB, Progs of Rev Dept (Land), Apr.–Jun. 1916, 96: Babu Ambica Charan Mazumdar, Pleader of Faridpur to Collector of Fardipur, 14 Nov. 1914.

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44 NAB, Rev Dept (Land), ‘A’ Progs, bundle 76, list 17, Jun. 1921, file L.R. 2-A—4(1) of 1925, in Progs nos. 7–8, 64; see also NAB, Government of East Bengal (Land Rev), confidential, ‘A’ Progs, bundle I, list 124, file no. L.R. 1-A—54, serial 1, Rev Dept (Land) 1938.

45 Bose, Peasant labour, 124.

46 NAB, Government of East Bengal (Land Rev), confidential, ‘A’ Progs, bundle 1, list 124B: Note by Sir F. Sachse on the ‘Report of the rent law commission, 1880, and its draft bill section 20 recommended transferability for raiyats’, p. 5 in confidential file no. L.R. 1-A—54, serial 1, GoB, Rev Dept (Land) 1938.

47 Bengal Tenancy Act of 1939 ‘facilitated the transfer of under-raiyati holdings and enabled these rights also to be purchased by non-agriculturists’; see Cooper, Adrienne, Sharecropping and sharecroppers’ struggles in Bengal 1930–1950 (Calcutta: KP Bagchi & Company, 1988), 47Google Scholar.

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49 Cooper, Sharecropping and sharecroppers’ struggles, 46–48.

50 NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), FQE, Jun. 1927, 359–60: The second part (paragraphs 11 to 20) of the opinions of the Cultivators Association, Lakhipur and Raipur (Noakhali) on the Preliminary draft of the Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Bill, nos. 92–93, file: 2-A-1(67) of 1923.

51 NAB, Rev Dept (Land), Progs ‘A’, Jun. 1916, 115: Maulvi Wasimuddin Ahmed, Secy, Anjuman-I-Islamia to Chief Secy to GoB, 9 Jan. 1914.

52 NAB, Progs of Rev Dept (Land), Apr.–Jun. 1916, 89: F. C. French, Offg Comm of Dacca Div, to Secy to GoB, Rev Dept, 4 Jan. 1915.

53 NAB, Progs of Rev Dept (Land), Apr.–Jun. 1916, 92: F. W. Strong, Collector of Bakarganj to Comm of Dacca Div, 3 Dec. 1914.

54 B. C. Prance, Final report on the survey and settlement operations in the riparian area of district Tippera conducted with the Faridpur district settlement 1909 to 1915 (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1916), 25.

55 NAB, Judicial Dept, list 114, bundle 2, no. 1-8-2642. File 55C—13/33(1), 1–3: Rai R. C. Sen Bahadur, Land Rev Settlement Officer, Chittagong, to Director of Land Records, Bengal, 2 Aug. 1933.

56 For an important discussion, although with a somewhat different focus, on ‘depeasantization’ in Bengal and Bihar since late nineteenth century; see Binay Chaudhuri, Bhushan, ‘The Process Of Depeasantization In Bengal And Bihar, 1885–1947’, Indian Historical Review, 21, 1 (1975), 105–65Google Scholar.

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58 NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), Apr. 1923, 54: Babu Kshetra Mohan Roy, Pleader and Zamindar, Comilla to Collector of Comilla.

59 NAB, Progs of the GoB, Rev Dept (Land), 155: Babu Sarat Chandra Ray, Senior Government Pleader, Rajshahi to District Judge of Rajshahi, 12 Feb. 1923.

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61 NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), May 1927, 58: ‘Opinion on the Bill for the amendment of the Bengal Tenancy Act’ by Rai Satish Chandra Sen Bahadur, Senior Government Pleader, Chittagong.

62 NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), May 1927: J.F. Graham, District Judge Dacca to Assistant Secy, GoB, Rev Dept, 15 May 1923.

63 NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), Apr.–Jun. 1927, 158: Babu Birendar Chnandra Sen-Gupta, Munsif of Rampur-Boalia to District Judge, Rajshahi, 10 Apr. 1923; On this point, see also Mohiuddin Mondal, President of a meeting of ‘Jotedars and raiyats’ of Rajshahi to Secy to GoB, Rev Dept, no. 77, 16 Apr. 1923, NAB, Progs of GoB, Rev Dept (Land), Apr.–Jun. 1927, 320.

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66 Ibid., 46.

67 Ibid., 33.

68 LRC, 1 (1934), 37.

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70 F. C. French, Offg Comm of Dacca Div, to Secy to GoB, Rev Dept, 4 Jan. 1915 in Progs of Rev Dept (Land), FQE Jun. 1916.

71 Chatterjee, Present history of West Bengal, 61–64.

72 Sen, Poverty and famines, 70–75.

73 This argument is heavily drawn from CSAS (John) Bell Papers, box V, no. 37: ‘The Bengal Famine. 1942–43’, 25; On land-holder's preference to pay in cash instead of kind during the rise of price of rice, see also LRC, 6 (1941), 46.

74 For sharecropping in Bengal was ‘a stage in between landholding and landlessness’. See Cooper, Sharecropping and sharecroppers’ struggles, 91.

75 Mahalanobis, P. C., ‘The Bengal Famine: the background and basic facts’, The Asiatic Review, 42 (1946), 313Google Scholar.

76 Ibid.; Starting by the turn of the century, the draining of resources of Eastern Bengal culminated through the fateful years of the great Bengal famine. As David Ludden has observed, between 1905 and 1944, ‘private capital drained steadily from east to west, following bhadralok interests that moved wealth from eastern low lands to Calcutta; while in the east, peasants used capital for basic needs, including rental payments to bhadralok landlords and interest payment to moneylenders to secure peasant property and family survival’. See ‘preface’ to Ludden, David ed., Agricultural production, South Asian history, and development studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

77 The Times, 3 Nov. 1943, Letters to the Editor, 5.

78 Bhattacharya, Tithi, The sentinels of culture: class, education, and the colonial intellectual in Bengal (1848–85) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

79 For a detailed discussion of socio-economic predicaments of the bhadralok and their political response to these until the partition in 1947, see Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 55–102.

80 This was also a time when colonization reached the last edge of frontier all over the world, as exemplified in Turner's announcement that American frontier had ‘closed’. Michael Williams observes in this context, ‘The phrase fin de siècle was coined; more than a reference to the last decade, it (the 1890s) resonated: decade, decayed, decadence’. See Williams, Michael, Deforesting the earth. From prehistory to global crisis. An abridgment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 For the debates, see Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, and Joya Chatterjee, ‘On religious and linguistic nationalisms: the second partition of Bengal’, in van der Veer, Peter and Lehmann, Hartmut eds., Nation and religion: perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton University Press, 1999), 116–26Google Scholar.