They opened up the possibilities of cultivation, and that transformation promised not only economic betterment but also a path to higher social status. Peasants enjoyed considerably more respect than boatmen and fishermen like the Namasudras. But little of the new ownership actually devolved on Namasudras. In the 1891 census, only fifty-seven Namasudras in Faridpur were reported to occupy land they did not themselves till; they constituted 0.04 percent of the Namasudra population. Even twenty years later, in the 1911 census, fewer than 1 percent of all Namasudras in Bengal owned enough land to receive rents.25 Namasudras farmed the land, but caste Hindus and some few Muslims owned it. What a given peasant farmed, moreover, was very little indeed, whether he was Namasudra or Muslim. By the end of the 1930s, 64 percent of Faridpur cultivators held less than two acres a family—a far greater level of economic deprivation than in many other parts of Bengal.26
Nonetheless, enough of the new lands reclaimed in the late nineteenth century were possessed by Namasudras to solidify a very small affluent class. But social uplift did not automatically devolve from economic improvement, so a campaign to upgrade the status of their community was launched by the newly well-off among them in 1872.27 As Rajat Kanta Ray points out:
Hindu society in Bengal treated other untouchable castes…with equal contempt. But in the case of the Namasudras their low ritual status coincided with an unusual amount of spirit and independence which did not make for tame submission.28
The Namasudras' first attack was on social customs that made them vulnerable to contempt. Women, for instance, always markers of status and power, were prohibited from shopping in the bazar, for only low-class people allowed their women to appear in public. An attempt was also made to attack the economic basis of subordination; Namasudras were prohibited by their community from serving in the homes of caste Hindus or Muslims. The resulting economic hardship was, in theory at least, to be redressed by the community at large. Finally, ritual status markers were adopted. As Sunil suggested, food is primary among these, and Namasudras adopted ritual codes of purity paralleling those of the higher castes.
In time, these symbolic and economic efforts at uplift altered the political landscape of the province, bringing Namasudras and Muslims closer together. New political alliances emerged:
By the 1910's, the high-caste, well-to-do Hindus were sharply polarized from the Muslim-Namasudra masses. Henceforth the peasants, especially the enfranchised section, defied the zamindars and the Hindu bhadralok classes in different ways.29
When the demand for a separate Muslim state was raised in 1940, Bengal was one of the more problematic provinces, since its population was close to evenly divided between the communities. Hard negotiating was employed to determine its destiny: did it belong by rights to Hindu-majority India or to Muslim-majority Pakistan? Sentiments ran strong and violent on both sides. In Calcutta, the mammoth capital city to the southwest of Faridpur, Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other, and violence seeped into some of the larger towns of East Bengal as well.
In this charged context it was extraordinarily significant for an entire Hindu community to opt for Pakistan. But that is just what the East Bengali Namasudras did, defining their interests on the basis of class, not religion, and confounding expectations that Hindus all over India were united in their desire for undivided nationhood. Their future, these Namasudras believed, would be brighter in a state devoid of high-caste landlords than in one ruled by people who shared their religion but nonetheless oppressed them. As I questioned Sunil about the changes in his community, he told me the history of the alliance between Namasudras and Muslims:
In 1947, when there was Independence, many Hindus wondered, “Will we be able to live in peace in Pakistan?”' The caste Hindus left this land for India at the beginning. But our middle-class people and peasants didn't want to go. Our—what's his name?—Mandal, a very big man: Jogen Mandal [leader of an association of Scheduled Caste peoples]! Our Jogen Mandal made an alliance with Jinnah [the founding father of Pakistan]. Many of us believed then, “Let the caste Hindus go, but those of us who are peasants, whether Hindus or Muslims, can live together as brothers.”…
The sense of a division that we felt earlier was gone, because of what that minister [Mandal] said. We gained confidence that truly we could live together as brothers.
Group Identities, Solid and Fluid
Sunil's language is revealing. When he referred to “us,” he identified his community as peasants, not as Hindus or Muslims. Indeed, he specifically excluded the religious identifier as being relevant: “those of us who are peasants, whether Hindus or Muslims” But those whom he would just as soon see leave the country he identified as “caste Hindus,” not as landlords. “Peasants” opposed “caste Hindus”; not once throughout his long interview did Sunil use the name Namasudra. It was “middle-class people and peasants” who chose to stay in Bangladesh. When he did use religious-community signifiers, he stood the more common relationship between group and subgroup on its head. Everyone else used the name Hindu to mean something generic presumably organized around the centrality of those of caste and then designated the minority as Namasudra. Hindu meant the whole, Namasudra the particular, those with noteworthy differences. Only Sunil used the name Hindu generically and differentiated the subgroup “caste Hindus.” As a consequence, he himself became undeniably Hindu and presumably central. At the same time he described community in terms of religious identifiers only in an appropriate context—when explaining his choice of laborers, for instance, or later when describing contending sides in the riot. In another context—when deciding whether to opt for India or Pakistan—he labeled his group in economic terms, “middle-class” or “krishak” (peasant), because that was the basis on which he made his choice.
Sunil's language suggests his ambitions. Not only was he steadfast in his quest for social status improvement, but he was also intent on economic betterment. He was himself unusually prosperous for a Namasudra farmer; indeed, he had grown wealthier since the exodus of the caste Hindus, more than doubling his landholdings, and eventually renting to sharecroppers. He had sent his children to the university and was deeply desirous of their upward mobility, even though he himself continued to till the land with his own hands. When I asked him about his ambitions for his children, his point of reference was, interestingly, the community of caste Hindus. His answer well illustrated the long history of class ambitions among Faridpur Namasudras and the intermingling of individual and group status mobility. (Notice how he mixed religious and economic signifiers in the context of class ambition, too, contrasting “caste Hindus” and sometimes “those Hindus” with “peasants”):
Your children are all highly educated. What was it that made you so determined to educate your children?
There were lots of caste Hindus around our place. My grandfather used to go to their places. He saw their customs. The relationship between the peasants and the caste Hindus was different. The way the caste Hindus lived and the way the peasants lived, anybody with a little vision could see that we are working so hard and producing crops, food grains, but we can't enjoy the fruits of our labor. We pay the price with our health.
On the other hand, those Hindus are living well, with just a little education. My grandfather realized it. I don't remember my father because he died when I was three. But I knew that my father got a little education from the fact that when I grew a little older I found my father's books from class nine, ten.
Even though my grandfather was overwhelmed with grief because of the deaths of my father and uncle, still he was conscientious about our education. Unfortunately, when I was in class seven my grandfather died. We lost our guardian, so we couldn't continue our studies. But I was a very good student. I always stood first in my class. I was heartbroken that I couldn't study any more. I knew that without a guardian I couldn't study as much as I wanted. So I prayed to god, “If you send me any children, please give me the ability to
