Gidhgram (West Bengal): Two recent incidents in West Bengal have brought simmering caste tensions to the fore, challenging the state’s claim that it has a relatively casteless society. In Gidhgram of Purba Bardhaman district and Debgram in Nadia distrcit, long-standing efforts by upper caste people to deny those belonging to Scheduled Caste communities entry into temples have sparked protests and revealed pervasive nature of caste discrimination in the state.
Gidhgram
Nestled amid lush paddy fields, Gidhgram’s idyllic facade hides a 300-year-old caste order. The village which is home to 6,000 mostly agrarian residents, has 18 small neighbourhoods, largely divided along caste lines. Here, for the past one week, police have been guarding the temple perimeter.
Police at Gidhgram, deployed because of tensions over the Das community’s protests for equal temple entry rights. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.
The Gideshwar Shiva Temple, established by a zamindar, is a microcosm of the village’s caste hierarchy. The temple, endowed with 60 bighas of land by a zamindar centuries ago, has allocated land and duties to various communities – Brahmins take care of rituals, the Ghoshal community supplies milk, the Malakar community supplies flowers, the Bayans are responsible for music, and the Kumor community handles pottery.
A woman from the Scheduled Caste Das community does a pranam to the temple from a distance in Bengal’s Gidhgram. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.
For generations, the Das community, residing on temple land, had performed duties like playing instruments during ceremonies. However, they were barred from entering the temple’s main chamber.
“We’re daily wage labourers. We live on part of the temple land. Our duty for generations has been to play kasar (cymbals) with the dhak (drum). Yet, we were barred from entering the temple. Brahmins monopolised access, dividing us through caste politics,” said Bhagirath Das, an elder villager from the community.
The Das community, comprising 130 families, recently challenged this exclusion, demanding equal temple access. The resistance from the Brahmin-led temple management triggered a legal and social confrontation. After intervention from the district administration, the Das community secured entry rights, but only for an hour a day. They are still not allowed to offer water to the idol.
“For three centuries, access to the inner sanctum was exclusively for Brahmins. Other castes could only offer water to the deity through the priests. Now, the Das community is permitted entry between 10 am and 11 am, and they can participate in the ritual of the priest offering water to Shiva,” explained Bankim Chattopadhyay, the current priest who assumed his role following the previous priest’s death without a male successor.
Swapan Das sees this one-hour window as a victory for the poor. He is one of the villagers who have led the equality movement. “Similar efforts were made during the Left Front’s rule too, but the village’s powerful factions suppressed the issue. This time, our community has presence in the Panchayat under the reservation quota. We applied political pressure, making the breakthrough possible,” said Das.
The Das community of Gidhgram is keen to begin onion harvesting now. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.
However, the limited victory came with a cost. Asha Das, a villager from Daspara – literally ‘the neighbourhood of the Dases’, the area earmarked for the Scheduled Caste community said that upper caste villagers now avoid them. “They deny us daily wage work and have stopped buying milk from our households. They’re quietly seething because of what they see as their defeat,” Das said.
Caste discrimination has not become a mainstream political issue in West Bengal due to the deeply entrenched bhadralok political culture, which has historically emphasised class over caste in political discourse. The political economy of Bengal has ensured that dominant castes continue to hold socio-economic power while maintaining the illusion of caste neutrality.
“Casteism in West Bengal is not absent, contrary to popular perception. It rarely manifests in the forms of overt violence and brazen discrimination. It is reproduced through unconscious and absent-minded cultural typecasting, which severely restricts the possibilities of social mobility and scope of representation in different realms of public life for the lower castes,” explained Ayan Guha, historian and the author of The Curious Case of Caste Politics in West Bengal.
Four Trinamool Congress members represent the Gidhgram village in the panchayat, but they have maintained silence over the protests. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party, has not spoken either.
As a mark of how this was not strictly about the temple but about equal rights, the Das community of Daspara, having achieved partial temple entry rights, has shifted its focus to the onion harvest. “Only four or five members from the Das community come daily now,” remarked the priest. Bhagirath Das said the community’s main focus is agriculture. “The temple will always be there, but securing our rights mattered,” he added.
Debgram
A similar battle is unfolding in Debgram, Nadia district. In the village of Bairampur, under Kaliganj police station, 150 Dalit families from the Ruidas (cobbler) community are barred from entering the temple. They too are allowed to play the dhak for rituals but must do so from outside the temple premises.
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“We have always played the dhak from a distance while the landlords danced to our beats. But we are forbidden from approaching the deity. Did god make this rule, or did the landlords?” asked Madan Ruidas, an elderly man from the village.
While Bardhaman saw partial progress, the struggle in Nadia remains unresolved.
“We fear such silent casteism prevails statewide. Manuvad is reviving zamindari-era oppression,” said Alakesh Das, former CPI(M) MP and general gecretary of the Paschim Banga Samajik Nyay Mancha (West Bengal Social Justice Platform), which has been fighting caste-based discrimination in both Bardhaman and Nadia.
Although a petition was submitted to the district magistrate on March 12, no response has been received. While the CPI(M)-led Palitpur village panchayat supports the Dalit protestors, the issue of blatant caste discrimination has not gained significant political traction in the state.
“Government records confirm that this is temple trust property. According to the Constitution, everyone has the right to enter religious places,” stated Panchayat chief Halima Bibi.
The lack of intervention from major political parties, beyond local panchayat members, suggests a reluctance to address caste-based discrimination in a broad political sphere. While local politics is influenced by caste through informal networks, this influence does not translate into a statewide political movement.
“This unconscious cultural typecasting furthers higher caste supremacy. By operating subtly, without any expressive invocation of caste, it masks and invisibilises the caste dimensions of the overrepresentation of upper castes in the political system and other walks of public life,” explained Guha.
Translated from the Bengali original and with inputs by Aparna Bhattacharya.
