Although Bengal witnessed a series of social reforms in the nineteenth century, these reforms, which were integral to the wider cultural and intellectual movement called the "Bengal Renaissance," remained limited in their social reach by class, caste, and gender constraints. While the extant scholarly literature focuses on class and gender issues, what remains less discussed is the relative silence among these reformers about the inequities of caste. Leaders of some of the non-Brahman intermediate and dalit castes began to address this question in the early twentieth century. But these dalit-bahujan reform movements, this presentation will argue, also remained ambivalent on class and gender issues, indicating their heterogenous character and uneven reach.
Dr. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is Emeritus Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
The series is supported by the Department of History, the Mershon Center, the South Asian Studies Initiative, the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
