By Utsha Sinha
“ওর নাক কি আর উচু হবে না?” (“Will his/her nose not have a higher nose bridge?”)
These are some of the things I’ve personally had to hear growing up. Being Rajbanshi has always been a conflicted identity. Some members of my family proudly boast about their identity. On the contrary, others are more discrete, even finding it humorous when I speak of my academic interest in exploring this area of study. This is a general reflection of the varied representation among the members of the community. But why? It is a question that has always bothered me. Why is my identity not as celebrated as others? This question is multifaceted.
Jalpaiguri Rajbari Shiv Mandir
There exists a myriad of internalized complexity at work; let’s try to understand their roots from a historical perspective. After the Revolt of 1857, the Sepoy Rebellion, as labeled by Indian historians and called the Great Mutiny by British imperialist historians, [1] the British displayed their anxieties and launched the Peel Commission in 1859, largely altering the ratio of European soldiers to Indian soldiers. This further led to the development of the ‘Martial Race Theory’, which shaped the recruitment policies in the army, resulting in a frenzy of ethnographic anthropological documentation projects. Sir Herbert Hope Risley, a British colonial administrator, and ethnographer was the core advocate of anthropometry, the most favoured criterion, which measures the size of the nose and the skull to determine whether an ethnicity or a caste of people is a martial or non-martial race.
“এত মোটা করে ইয়েলিনের লাগাস না, চোখ গুলো আরো ছোট হয়ে যাবে।“ ( “Don’t wear your eyeliner so thick, it will make your eyes even smaller.”) “ওর নাকটা কি বোচা ই থাকবে?” (“Will her nose remain flat?”)
However, this theory was completely flawed, as the criteria for who qualified as a martial race were inconsistent and Machiavellian in nature as per the needs of the Colonial Masters. The Rajbanshi community was no stranger to this categorization. Risley in his book ‘The People of India’ writes: “The seriations of the Kochh deserve special notice for the indications which they give of the two elements that have combined to form the Mongolo-Dravidian type.”; “Take the Kochh in Dinajpur and Rangpur, and they strike you as in the main Dravidian; travel further east, and include in your survey the cognate Kachari of Assam, and there is no mistaking the fact that Mongoloid characteristics predominate.” [2]
The more Aryan features one resembled, the higher the status of their caste and the more sophisticated was their culture, proximate to that of the British but, in actuality, never the same in any sense. As Homi K. Bhabha puts it, being White “but not quite.” [3] This desire to be more like the British and subsequent recognition in the guise of martial race with all its anthropometrical justifications have left behind a legacy of racial complexities deeply internalized within Indians.
Caste-‘ism’ is like a disease which has infected Indian society. One still has to live with its realities. Panchanan Barma was one of the most important Rajbanshi leaders of the first half of the twentieth century. It was under his leadership that the community got representation as peasant Kshatriyas in the All-Bengal Depressed Classes Conference. Male members of the Rajbanshi community started imitating rituals often reserved for the Brahmin higher castes, such as wearing a sacred thread.[4] This transition was not a new phenomenon; adapting to higher caste status and traditions has been observed since the Vedic Period, known as ‘Sanskritization’ as coined by historian M.N. Srinivas.[5] The main objectives of the Rajbanshi community were to improve their social status and political representation.
Despite this constructed caste status, on ground reality, they were still considered to be of inferior social status, treated as untouchables, and even experienced prohibition from entering certain temples. As per the 1931 Census, the community’s literacy rate was a mere 5.8 percent, eventually bringing them under the protection of the list of Scheduled Castes in Bengal in 1933.[6] Although situations have improved since then, one cannot really escape the generational stigmas. There’s still a degree of reluctance observed in resembling any Mongolo-Dravidian features of our ancestors. By consciously choosing to consciously dissociate, individuals tend to distance themselves from the very stigmas and discriminations associated with it. Moreover, it’s the lack of popular representation among the younger people of the community. While many successful Rajbanshi individuals excel in their respective fields, how many can you name who proudly talk about their ethnic identity?
It is not just the lack of representation but also the lack of resources online. A handful of websites and organizations exist, most are small-scale with no vibrancy in the issues discussed and might have no appeal as such in attracting non-academics. A website titled ‘United States of Kamatapur’ mentions how “Koch Rajbongshis are shy by nature; they do not disclose their ancient language in public….”; “This behavior of Koch Rajbongshi tribe is because of their shyness, but it also has a negative effect because the world is unknown about their language and tribal culture….”.[7] These statements are just depictions of simplistic expositions of issues that require serious scholarly exploration. In my opinion, it’s rather a combination of the factors I have mentioned above that have led to the long-lasting colonization of the mind, leaving most people in denial of their roots.
To my surprise, only a few research papers exist in the English language on issues related to the Rajbanshis. Only 18 PhD theses are available in all languages combined, [8] along with a few books and articles that studied the community from the various angles of socio-cultural issues across its vast histories. Very recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Cooch Behar Rajbari. It was magnificent in all its glory, but as a student of history, it led to some queries. ASI has done an excellent job at its conservation efforts, but why were only 4-5 rooms opened to the public with inadequate historical information guides? It felt like visiting any other tourist destination which has lost its historic significance. Even the displayed artifacts were a mere few of the vast selection of treasures of the Rajas. Jalpaiguri is another district with a large number of Rajbanshi inhabitants. It used to be the centre for the Raikats, a sub-branch of the Koch Dynasty.[9] Today, however, the Rajbari has lost its former glory, only visited by its members during Durga Puja. The Rajbari Kali Mandir remains dilapidated with few interested in its historical significance.
Young individuals today spend hours on social media platforms discovering relatable content that reflects the nuances of their cultural background and finding others from their kin. But as a Rajbanshi, who do you identify with? Are you part of the Northeast Indian communities, who resemble you in your physical features, or do you relate to the Bengali people, with whom you share your language and customs to a great extent? Who exactly are you? – A part of both but at the same time not quite either. Identity is complex and, as such, cannot be explained by simple categorization (another problematic legacy of the Victorians) into static definitions. Against all these questions, one might ask my motive behind prioritizing the question of identity repetitively. It is a very simple longing for a sense of belonging. Is it wrong for me to want to celebrate and want to know my origins? Why is it normalized for others but I’m judged for doing the same?
References:
[1] Pradeep Barua, “Inventing Race: The British and India’s Martial Races,” The Historian 58, no. 1 (1995): 109. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24449614.
[2]Herbert Risley and William Crooke, The People of India (India: Asian Educational Services, 1999), 41-42.
[3] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (United Kingdom: Routledge, 1994), 86.
[4] Milinda Banerjee, The Mortal God: Imagining the Sovereign in Colonial India (India: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 324.
[5] M.N. Srinivas, Religion & Society Among the Coorgs of South India (United Kingdom: Clarendon, 1952), 31.
[6] Banerjee, The Mortal God, 312, 315.
[7] “United States of Kamatapur,” accessed April 1, 2024, https://unitedstatesofkamatapur.weebly.com
[8] Centre for Koch (Rajbanshi) Studies and Development, “Ph.D. Theses,” accessed April 1, 2024, https://kochrajbanshicentre.org/publications/ph-d-theses/.
[9]P. K. Bhattacharyya, “A SURYYA IMAGE INSCRIPTION FROM RAJGANJ,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 38 (1977): 791. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44139149.
Centre for Koch (Rajbanshi) Studies and Development 