| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper focusses on the Namasudra leader Jogendranath Mandal (1904-1968), and presents a study of the principal demands submitted by Scheduled Caste legislators over the course of the first half-decade of the Bengal legislative assembly. It seeks to understand these demands and why they were frustrated. It also traces and attempts to explain the withering away of Mandal's initial association with and favourable disposition towards the Congress. In contrast to accepted historiography, it argues that Scheduled Caste politics encompassed demands for representation, education and agrarian reform. It documents how their implementation (particularly the demand for representation) was compromised largely as a consequence of caste Hindu misrecognition.
|