Bengal is ready for BJP’s Bhadralok Hindutva. Bhadralok Marxism is on its way out

Screengrab from video of Former Calcutta High Court judge Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay joining BJP | ANI

The ‘Bhadralok Marxist’ has a new challenger. The ‘Bhadralok Hindutvavadi’, who is breathing down their neck in Kolkata’s talk circuits, TV studios and West Bengal’s political circles. Ever since Calcutta High Court Judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay resigned and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, the state and its polity have taken serious note of a rising new breed of politicians; leaders who want to de-hyphenate the Bhadralok from the Marxist by hyphenating religiosity and nationalism with Bengali exceptionalism.

Commenting on Gangopadhyay’s induction into the BJP, the party’s former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta wrote: “Abhijit Ganguly’s decision to join the BJP in Bengal is momentous. For long, the Left—and now the TMC [Trinamool Congress]—has perpetuated the spurious notion of the ‘progressive’ Bengali mindset being at odds with the BJP”.

Dasgupta said Justice Gangopadhyay is, in many ways, a “typical Bengali—with mild leftist inclinations” and his joining may just be the BJP’s “breakthrough moment in its bid to win over the Bengali bhadrolok”.

BJP’s Bhadralok makeover

Dasgupta makes a solid point. The Bhadralok had, even as recently as the 2021 Assembly Elections, mocked the BJP. For instance, when its then-state chief Dilip Ghosh claimed there was “gold in cow’s milk”. Then, there is the image of the party as an essentially non-Bengali construct with little or no knowledge of Bengali sensibilities.

The party desperately needed a Bhadralok makeover, which is why it has now onboarded an array of people who cater to the stereotype. Justice Gangopadhyay; Botany professor Sukanta Majumdar; consultant oncologist Dr Indranil Khan, and the chairman and trustee of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, Dr Anirban Gangopadhyay. The Bhadralok Hindutvavadis are here and how.

Bhadralok, Marxism and massacres

For those unaware of Bengal’s social matrix, the Bhadralok stands for a class of ‘gentlefolk’ that emerged during British rule in India. In his 2004 book Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal, historian Sekhar Bandyopadhyay wrote that the Bhadralok “primarily, though not exclusively, belonged to the three traditional upper castes of Bengal: the Brahmin, the Baidya and the Kayastha”.

English education, affluence and administrative service became markers of this new class of Bengali aristocrats in 19th-century Bengal.

The Bhadralok was never a closed group, though. According to oral historian Avishek Biswas, poor and illiterate Brahmins or Kayasthas never made the cut. However, the agricultural and trader castes that gained affluence and education were gradually welcomed into the fold. “The upward social mobility of Pritaram Das Marh, a ‘lower caste’ businessman who came to be called babu, is a prime example of lower caste Bhadralok,” he tells me.

When the Left Front assumed power in Bengal in 1977, attacking caste and class barriers, the Bhadralok and the Marxists became closely linked. Many new leaders gained prominence. Erudite young Marxist leaders like Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Shyamal Chakraborty, Biman Bose and others, often armed with foreign degrees, showed disdain for religiosity (though not always openly). This new breed of political leaders appealed to a large strata of Bengali society, from the sharecropper to the college professor.

So enamoured were Bengalis with Bhadralok Marxists that they kept electing the Left Front to power for 34 long years. This was despite the exodus of industries due to militant trade unionism, a ban on English teaching till Class VI in 1983, and numerous massacres that branded Bengal as a state where political violence was the norm.

There was also the Marichjhapi massacre in 1978-79; the Nandigram violence in 2007, and the Bijon Setu massacre of 1982. But the Marxists continued to hide behind their Bhadralok image.

Aroon Shah, a fifth-generation Gujrati in Bengal and the vice-president of BJP’s youth wing in West Bengal, has a new anti-Left jingle for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections: “Nanoor, Netai, Nandigram, phir ne na kono din bam (After massacres in places like Nanoor, Netai and Nandigram, It is the endgame for the Left (Bam).”

Shah says Marxists cannot be considered a part of the Bhadralok class. “If you are a Marxist, you can never be a Bhadralok. They speak a fine tongue, talk about Cuba and Vietnam, but are neither genteel nor affluent or have been in favour of affluence.”

Bhadralok and Hindutva

With his judgments that often went against the ruling Trinamool Congress, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had become quite the middle-class hero in West Bengal. A Bhadralok, if there ever was one, Gangopadhyay in September 2022 instructed the state school service commission to replace illegally appointed teachers. In December last year, he gave an order to arrest a lawyer in his courtroom on contempt charges. No wonder then that, apart from the opposition BJP, many Left supporters also warmed up to him.

It wasn’t just Swapan Dasgupta; there was much cheer within West Bengal BJP when Gangopadhyay quit his job and joined the party. Bhadralok Hindutva, however, isn’t a new phenomenon. Bengal has always had Bhadralok who were inclined toward the nationalist school of thought and had a strong sense of Hindu religiosity. Take Syama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, and figures such as Sukanta Majumdar, Swapan Dasgupta and Tathagata Roy. It also included the legendary Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, author of nationalist novels like Anandamath and the composer of Vande Mataram.

Bhadralok Hindutva has had a glorious past. Will it have a glorious future too?

Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)