Paper short abstract:

Paper addresses how off-shoots of Bengali middle class Dalit takes on Partition, refugee question, experiences of caste, had repercussions for ethnography and redirected the study of contemporary Bengali middle class and significance of caste in its structuring and reproduction.

Paper long abstract:

Bengali society has not engaged adequately with the question of caste. In my study of the castedness of contemporary Bengali middle class I initially had plans of mapping it from 1991 the year when caste, one 'knew', made its public appearance through the anti-Mandal Commission (that extended reservations to Other Backward Classes) agitations. In selecting the sample I first approached several middle class Dalit organisations in Calcutta. Through these extensive interactions the shape of the project changed. The ethnography of Partition memories led me back to history and official documents; it made me look at the presentness of history in this (contemporary) ethnography, making history and presentness inseparable; it made me chart the contemporary in a larger sense going back to the Partition for I was being introduced to a new aspect, that Partition was also a caste question. Further, different reactions of the field to a Brahmin woman researcher, footnotes and locating textual materials in unintended ways all critically redirected the later ethnography, as well as the writing-up of research. They also led to interrogations of selves, to re-looking at ways in which caste and middle class get scripted and to opening up of newer sites of inquiry. These off-shoots had repercussions for ethnography; by redirecting the study they brought out a relatively new story of caste and middle classness characteristic of Bengal by bringing to the surface complex interplays of caste with history, different identities and contexts that structure contemporary Bengali middle class and allow its reproduction.