The story of Marichjhapi is a saga of despicable tribulation and continuum of a grotesque past – that had long been suppressed in the annals of dialectics and political discourses of postcolonial India. Though this mayhem was long done and dusted in 1979, it survived and recurred in the memory and socio-political imagination of a […]Read More

Recently, the Peerzada of the Furfura Shariff in West Bengal’s Hooghly district, called for forging a social coalition of Muslims and other marginalised communities like tribals and lower-castes – to protest the dominance of Bhadraloks in Bengal. The idea of a ‘social coalition’ may be regarded as an election gimmick – as for in a […]Read More

The question of caste remains ignored in the political and intellectual discourse of West Bengal. However this does not imply that caste did not play a steering role in mobilisation of political opinion in favour or against the Partition of Bengal in 1947. Two divergent and rival streams emerged within the Bengali Harijan community on […]Read More