Bhadralok

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Bhadralok bhôdrôlok, literally 'gentleman', 'well-mannered person') is Bengali for the new class of 'gentlefolk' who arose during British rule in India (approximately 1757 to 1947) in the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent.[1][2][3]

Caste and class makeup[]

Most members of the bhadralok class primarily belong to the three traditional upper castes, Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas, but the bhadralok "was never a closed status group".[1][4] There is no precise translation of bhadralok in English, since it attributes economic and class privilege to caste ascendancy. Many bhadraloks in the nineteenth century came from the privileged upper castes, or the middle-level merchant class. Anybody with considerable wealth and standing in society was a member of the bhadralok community.

The bhadralok community includes all gentlefolk belonging to the rich as well as middle-class segments of the Bengali society. Amongst the upper middle classes, a zamindar, or landowner, normally bearing the title Chaudhuri or Roy Chaudhuri at the end of the name, and Babu at the beginning would be considered to be a bhadralok. A zamindar bearing the title Raja or Maharaja would be considered to be higher than middle-class, but would still be a bhadralok 'gentleman'. All members of the professional classes, i.e. those belonging to the newly emerging professions, such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, university professors, and higher civil servants, were members of the bhadralok community.[citation needed]

Colonial factors[]

Two primary factors led to the rise of the bhadralok:

  • the huge fortunes many merchant houses made by helping the British East India Company's trade up the Ganga valley
  • Western-style education from colonial rulers and missionaries.

A steep rise in real estate prices in Calcutta also made some petty landlords in that area to wealthy overnight. The first identifiable bhadralok figure was Ram Mohan Roy, who bridged the gap between the Persianised nobility of the Sultanate era in Bengal and the new, Western-educated, nouveau riche comprador class.[citation needed]

The Bengal Renaissance[]

The Bengal Renaissance was largely carried out and participated in by bhadralok. In addition, the rise of the Brahmo Samaj and various other samajes (a category halfway between 'society' and 'community') was also largely a bhadralok phenomenon. A bhadralok embraced Western and Northern European values (though not always the same ones in each case), had a modicum of education, and a sense of entitlement to (and consequently grievance against) favours or employment from the colonial government. While the bhadralok were influenced by the West in terms of their morals, dress, and eating habits, they also reacted the most strongly against the West, and both the most scathing critiques, and the most spirited defences of Westernisation, were made by bhadralok writers.[citation needed]

Babus[]

Main article: Babu (title)

The term Babu means an individual of rank and dignity. It is most commonly used to refer to a gentleman, but is meant for anybody who enjoys a position of dominance in his immediate social circle. An Indian zamindar (land-owner), or an Indian member of the higher government services, was referred to as a Babu. Amongst the landlords, a Babu in the former Bengal Presidency, especially in Bengal and Behar, was normally a substantial and extremely wealthy zamindar in the same rank as a Thakur or a Mirza, and would rank just below a Raja. The term Babu has been historically used to refer to the upper echelons of Indian society, including the ruling classes.[citation needed]

In British India, the term was derogatorily used to refer to members of the indigenous community, especially in law courts and revenue establishments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where most members were appointed as Munsifs from respectable and/or zamindari families.[citation needed]

Popular culture[]

Bhadralok class is copiously referred in the popular Bengali literature including in the novel and stories of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore. Kaliprasanna Singha sarcastically criticized the class' social attitude and hypocrisy during its accession to prominence in the nineteenth century in his famous book, titled Hootum Pyanchar Naksha.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Chandrabindoo brings forward the class' dilemma and hypocritical attitude in their songs including Sokale Uthiya Ami Mone Mone Boli, Amar Modhyobitto Bheeru Prem, Amra Bangali Jaati and many more.

Economy[]

Among others, Joya Chatterji, Lecturer in History of Modern South Asia at Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College, accuses the Bhadralok class for the economic decline of the state of West Bengal after India's independence in 1947.[5] She writes in her book, titled "The Spoils of Partition":[6]

In these ways, Bengal’s partition frustrated the plans and purposes of the very groups who had demanded it. Why their strategy failed so disastrously is a question which will no doubt be debated by bhadralok Bengal long after the last vestiges of its influence have been swept away. Many excuses have already been made, and different scapegoats remain to be identified and excoriated. But perhaps part of the explanation is this: for all their self-belief in their cultural superiority and their supposed talent for politics, the leaders of bhadralok Bengal misjudged matters so profoundly because, in point of fact, they were deeply inexperienced as a political class. Admittedly, they were highly educated and in some ways sophisticated, but they had never captured the commanding heights of Bengal’s polity or its economy. They had been called upon to execute policy but not to make it. They had lived off the proceeds of the land, but had never organised the business of agriculture. Whether as theorists or practitioners, they understood little of the mechanics of production and exchange, whether on the shop floor or in the fields. Above all, they had little or no experience in the delicate arts of ruling and taxing people. Far from being in the vanguard as they liked to believe, by 1947 Bengal’s bhadralok had become a backward-looking group, living in the past, trapped in the aspic of outdated assumptions, and so single-mindedly focussed upon their own narrow purposes that they were blind to the larger picture and the big changes that were taking place around them.

Politics[]

The polity and politics of West Bengal was dominated by bhadraloks despite their lesser numerical presence in the state.[7] All Chief Ministers of West Bengal since 1947 were from the social group that was denoted as bhadraloks.[8]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar (2004). Caste, Culture, and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal. Sage Publications. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-761-99849-5.
  2. ^ Chakrabarti, Sumit (2017). "Space of Deprivation: The 19th Century Bengali Kerani in the Bhadrolok Milieu of Calcutta". Asian Journal of Social Science. 45 (1/2): 56. ISSN 1568-4849.
  3. ^ Ghosh, Parimal (2016). What Happened to the Bhadralok?. Delhi: Primus Books. ISBN 9789384082994.
  4. ^ Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar (2004). Caste, Culture, and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal. Sage Publications. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-761-99849-5.
  5. ^ "Bengal's sorrow". Frontline. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  6. ^ Chatterji, Joya. (3 March 2011). The spoils of partition : Bengal and India, 1947-1967. p. 317. ISBN 9780521188067. OCLC 816808562.
  7. ^ Bhattacharya, Debraj (2019-06-14). "Decline of the Bengali bhadralok in the politics of West Bengal: What next ?". National Herald. Retrieved 2021-02-27.
  8. ^ "Political Collapse Of Bengal's Upper Caste Bhadralok Hegemony And BJP's Prize". Outlook India. Retrieved 2021-02-27.
  • Subho Basu and Sikata Banerjee, 'The Quest for Manhood: Masculine Hinduism and Nation in Bengal in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
  • Bhadralok in Banglapedia
  • Indira Choudhuri, The Fragile Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
  • Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
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