Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how contemporary Rajbanshi writers are re-writing the life of Panchanan Barma simultaneously memorializing the struggles of the Rajbanshis offering resistance to the dominant constructions of history and identity of the community, who live at the spatial margins of greater Bengal.

Paper long abstract:

Thakur Panchanan Barma, was a Rajbanshi Dalit leader and a social reformer from Cooch Behar, an erstwhile princely state in North Bengal. In the early twentieth century he spearheaded one of the largest social movements of Bengal - Rajbanshi Kshatriyazation movement. The kshatriyazation movement amongst the Rajbanshis in the early 20th Century consolidated around two issues: one to gain respect and acceptance by the upper caste Bengalis and second to break away from the Koch affiliation of the Rajbanshis and establish a kshatriya identity by rewriting Rajbanshi history.

Today the Rajbanshis are reclaiming North Bengal by demanding separate statehood and through the Kamtapur movement they are not only fighting for greater social, political and territorial authority but are simultaneously re-crafting a new past, a new space and an identity that blends colonial documentations with their own reconstructed histories and mythographies. It is in this context that our paper attempts to understand how contemporary Rajbanshi local writers are writing and re-writing the life of Thakur Panchanan Barma simultaneously memorializing the long, ongoing struggles of the Rajbanshi community, particularly their history of being marginalized. We also argue how the writing of the biography of Thakur Panchanan Barma offers a counter-narrative of the Rajbanshi community spoken in the voice of the community itself, that reiterates and lays claim to a space and a past that is not only lost but is erased from a dominantly Bengali, Calcutta-centric versions of North Bengal.