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Accepted Paper:

"Asceticizing" and "ethicalizing" everyday peasant life: the case of the Rajavamshis of Bengal, ca 1910-2010  
Milinda Banerjee (Heidelberg University, Germany)

Paper short abstract:

In order to interrogate the relevance of self-transforming regimes of morality in ‘modern’ life, the paper focuses on the Rajavamshi peasants of Bengal. Codes of Kshatriyaizing ethics produced by peasant elites are analyzed, along with the subsequent ambivalent response of lower-class peasants.

Paper long abstract:

Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid until now to the ways in which moral codes have influenced, and been contested by, the everyday life of peasants in Bengal. By focussing on the Rajavamshi community, which constitutes the largest Scheduled Caste group in present-day West Bengal, I interrogate how for over a century, peasants have created codes of morality for enhancing their status. Utilizing governmental as well as community records, I demonstrate how specific soul-mind-body transformation techniques have been practised by the Rajavamshis, focussing on the cultivation of rajoguna as the proper this-worldly as well as soteriological goal for becoming the governor of one's self, society, and the cosmos. Practice of rajoguna and kshatriyatva include inculcation of self-awareness of oneself as a Kshatriya 'ascetic', moral education predicated on the differentiation of 'virtue' and 'vice', and changes in ceremonies, liturgical texts, diet, and forms of social and political organization. These techniques for 'asceticizing' the peasant have sometimes been rejected by lower-class peasants, particularly when they have been felt to be too economically or psychologically demanding, or when they have not addressed agrarian grievances. At other moments, the moral codes have nurtured a strong sense of communitas for the peasants against elite Indian (and particularly Bengali gentry) power, and provided bases for the growth of ideas of social justice. The Rajavamshi case serves as a point of departure for a broader theorization about the role of moral codes in constructing 'modernity' as a project for 'asceticizing' and 'ethicalizing' everyday life.

Panel P28
The (im)morality of everyday life in South Asia
  Session 1