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Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

BJP Bengal win dissolves the old Bhadralok order. It kept Dalits and their issues out

'Bengal is caste-less' is a hegemonic notion peddled by the Bhadralok. It swept the crucial question of Dalit struggle, first under the red carpet and then the blue.

Among the results of five Assembly elections announced yesterday, Bengal’s will go down in history. May 4, 2026 shall be a red-letter day — not for the BJP, but for millions of Rajbanshi, Namo Shudra, Matua and several other Dalit communities across Bengal who had no say in the government and governance of the state since its independence, until now.

It is often quoted that what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow, but not for Dalits. The paradox of intellectual and enlightened Bengal has been the constant invisibilisation of Dalits as a political constituency. “Bengalis have no understanding of caste,” said Kancha Ilaiah, in a conversation with journalist Chandrima Bhattacharya. Dalits account for 23.5 per cent of Bengal’s population — one of the highest among all states — and the state’s total Dalit population is second only to Uttar Pradesh. Yet the state has failed to produce a single Dalit leader since Independence. The reason is clear: the Bhadralok of Bengal do not reckon with caste, and decades of communist rule have further crystallised this phenomenon, which even the “Maa, Mati, Manush” clarion call failed to overcome in bringing Dalit issues to the fore.

Dalits and their issues have been conspicuously absent from mainstream politics, and their concerns repurposed into a broader framework of class and left ideological pursuits, with the assumption that their struggles could be addressed without relinquishing........

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