The Possibility of Namasudra and Muslim Unity in Late Colonial Bengal

The last two decades of British colonial rule witnessed increasing violence and estrangement between the Hindu and Muslim communities of Bengal.  These dynamics of communal conflict and impasse resulted in the partition of that province and British India.  While extant historiography has underscored the various processes of mutually reinforcing consolidation within these two antagonistic political blocs, comparatively less attention has focused on the import of the few instances of engagement across this great divide at a time when this was near unthinkable.

This paper will explore one such novel alliance crafted by the Scheduled Castes Federation and the Muslim League in 1940s Bengal, and the theory of Namasudra and Muslim unity on which it rested.  I draw on the private papers and materials of arguably the key architect of this unlikely partnership, Jogendranath Mandal, the Bengal Federation's mouthpiece Jagaran, as well as official sources.  The paper attends to both the expression and reception of this political imagination.  My analysis illustrates how Federation and League cooperation challenged the project of Hindu nationalism, and the upper caste anxieties it provoked in turn.  In a sense, Gandhi’s apprehension of caste Hindu death at the hands of Muslims and untouchables had been realized.  The possibility of Namasudra and Muslim unity thus poses a unique set of problems for the no doubt understandable, yet inadequate rendering of the years prior to partition in terms of their communal significance.