Caste and West Bengal has been an unfamiliar juxtaposition. Caste rarely makes it to the news in the state. However, in March this year, the plight of around 130 Dalit families who were denied entry to a local temple was widely reported. Discrimination based on caste is not that rare in many other parts of India; however, West Bengal was long considered as an exception. This perceived exceptionality was built upon several factors. To understand the contours of caste in West Bengal one has to look back to the history of the region.

In undivided Bengal under colonial rule, dominated caste or so-called lower caste communities like Namasudra and Rajbanshi tried to battle social constraints and economic deprivations through organized movements. But partition and concomitant communal conflict threw asunder – both spatially and politically – the lives of a large number of depressed class people. In a volatile communal environment, the primacy of caste identity was overshadowed by the quest for religious solidarity.

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In search of safety and shelter, dominated-caste Hindus – largely peasants and landless agriculture workers – migrated to the Indian part of Bengal from Muslim-dominated East Bengal. Displaced from their land, they became refugees struggling to rebuild their life. The battle for survival and rehabilitation was centred on their new found refugee identity. Refugee was not a homogenous category. A caste hierarchy often determined, as a recent work like Caste and Partition in Bengal shows, the degree of struggle they faced in the new land. However, during that turbulent period, refugee was the identity that mattered most. Political parties of Bengal, particularly the communists, played an important role in organizing the refugees, who were numerically strong, yet socially and economically vulnerable.

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In the communist worldview, society was divided into two classes –........

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