Once Mamata Banerjee’s strongest urban constituency, Bengal’s bhadralok were driven up the wall by corruption, job scams, civic decay and the handling of the RG Kar rape and murder, write Dwaipayan Ghosh & Dipawali Mitra
During the recent Bengal polls, you often heard the term ‘bhadralok’. A lot apparently depended on how this particular class of people would vote. Bhadralok literally means gentlefolk or respectable people, a category of Bengalis that emerged in the 19th century, particularly in Calcutta, as a new English-educated Hindu middle class began to take shape. Drawn largely from the upper caste, the bhadralok dominated British administrative jobs, land ownership, and intellectual-cultural production. The British left long back, Calcutta lost its heft and sheen, but the term bhadralok endured.
And the polls put the spotlight back on this class. Why? Because — or so the theory went — the socalled bhadralok might intensely dislike Mamata Banerjee and her party — Trinamool Congress — but would still stand by her to keep a party like the BJP from assuming office in Bengal.
And the polls put the spotlight back on this class. Why? Because — or so the theory went — the socalled bhadralok might intensely dislike Mamata Banerjee and her party — Trinamool Congress — but would still stand by her to keep a party like the BJP from assuming office in Bengal.