Here’s why the Bengali ‘bhadralok’ deserted Didi

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.