Postcolonial Maharashtra and Bengal’s Political Societies, Identity & Urban Dynamics

Aryama in a demographic study examines political societies, governmentality, and naming in Maharashtra and Bengal’s postcolonial metropolises—exclusively for Different Truths

The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, after four decades of commanding presence in the political discourse of the state, has taken a backseat, both factions, one way or the other, have been absorbed into larger political structures The Left in Bengal lost their seat years ago. to pick up the pieces of a three-decade-long electoral dominance. As political dynamics continue to change, it may be important to interrogate the situation. that proliferated in the urban centres of the two states in the last decades of the previous century and the electoral ramifications Thus, we engage in a demographic study across the two post-independence urban spaces, observing tendencies in migration, settlement, organisation, and mobilisation among the marginalised, in the light of Partha Chatterjee’s idea of political societies and its interactions with the institutions of governmentality, legality, and participatory democracy. We will also discuss the question of naming and how it is intrinsic to the identity of the postcolonial metropolis.

Chatterjee, in his essay, Politics of the Governed, provides a case study of Gobindopur Rail Colony, one of the numerous working-class settlements in the southern fringes of Kolkata. Although Chatterjee discusses the political developments within a specific temporal location, the last two decades of the 20^th century, providing some context to the population in question becomes necessary. To that extent, we consider the major waves of population migration into the city. The famine of ’43 saw a major influx of the rural population from the agricultural districts of southern Bengal into erstwhile Calcutta (Kolkata).

This not only caused a demographic shift but also contributed to the political environment of the metropolis. A large part of this population shall be mobilised in the following years in the wake of the Tebhaga Movement. This indicates that a political consciousness had begun to take shape among the marginalised, a consciousness that is in stark opposition to the urban sensibilities, and the desire among the marginalised population for greater participation in the political discourse. This shall only grow in the aftermath of the partition as the city will come to accommodate a large number of migrants. Unlike its counterpart on the Western border, the Bengal partition has been greatly underrepresented in clerical documents and excluded from the scope of critical inquiry until recently. The inconsistent border, lack of state supervision and repressive political climate in East Pakistan caused migration to continue through the Eastern border and into the city. The vast populations of immigrants settled on the margins of the city, often on illegally acquired land with passive acceptance of the state, in informal settlements called “colonies”.

Here we may note the instances of contact between an individual and the modern state, the “citizen” and the system of governance. As Chatterjee points out, the relationship between the state and the individual is mediated through the dimensions of property and community. Property, Chatterjee argues, is the larger framework of legality that governs civil society, a fictitious premise that upholds the rights of every individual under the law.

This brings into question the position of those whose very existence is defined by paralegal arrangements through landowners, brokers, or governmental amnesia. (Chatterjee, 74) These individuals continue to be protected under the civil code as beneficiaries rather than citizens, vested with entitlements rather than rights. Much of these entitlements have been earned by actively participating in negotiations with the government body, thus forming a distinct political discourse that holds a dialectical relationship with the civic society; a political society that emerges out of a certain shared sense of disenfranchisement. This, Chatterjee argues, is a class interest.

At the same time, there exists within these societies a distinctly precapitalist form of relationships, an organic sense of hierarchy from the various familial metaphors associated with it. One can point out its similarities to the “mai-baap” form of power relation, one that is based on entitlements or rewards. We can remind ourselves of a similar instance in a different yet greatly familiar cultural context, the “dada” or the “bhai” in Bombay (Mumbai). This would also take us into the question of community that Chatterjee does not explore in his essay, limiting himself only to the ideas of property and class.

The Dada in Mumbai came to occupy an important position in the political discourse in the later part of the 80s. The name itself invokes an image “of a masculine, assertive, often violent local strongman, whose clout lies in self-made networks of loyalty rather than in institutionalised action and discourse.” (Hansen, 72) The marginal communities in Mumbai continue to operate through similar paralegal arrangements, that Hansen humorously calls Dadaism, governed by a certain condescending, at times absent-minded, paternalism.

One remarkable facet of the Mumbai situation is the charged communal environment that proliferated within the city. Strong nativist claims were being made from as early as the 60s and a growing sense of xenophobia of the large populations of migrants, who moved into the city as the manufacturing industries moved to Gujarat and unemployment rose. There were arguments for the revival of the Maratha (the Hindu) past that were invoked before by Tilak.

Shivaji Army, later Shiv Sena, with its militant Hindu rhetoric and promises of order, clarity, and heavy-handed governance came into prominence. The violence that was practiced in the marginalised political societies, removed from the language of civic discourse, gained a distinct communal metaphor.

While the civic society may act aloof towards the violence of political society or look down upon it with disdain, one may not deny its role as a tested vehicle for political mobilisation among the sub-citizens or the subalterns. Parallel systems of the order were founded, and institutions such as the club (Mitra Mandal) or the akharas gained significant prominence within low-income chawls as sites of celebration of camaraderie and shared affinities, especially culture. They even operated as parallel institutions of justice. In the charged communal environment of post-Emergency Mumbai, communal populism greatly politicised these masculine communities that would extend the certain political ideology not only in electoral democracy or civic participation but also in acts of violence outside the realm of the legal.

Across the two urban landscapes, what remains consistent is the sense of uncertainty that characterised the postcolonial space. The metaphor of change holds within itself a sense of belongingness to a certain past (imagined) and a distinct other, the present. This otherness is perceived differently by different societies but what runs through them all is a desire for reunion. In this context, we may see the act of changing Bombay, the English name, to its vernacular origin, Mumbai, as political action toward such revival.

The intellectual community might also argue that it is a step towards decolonising the mind. However, some may believe that the image of cosmopolitanism and capitalist modernity captured in the name Bombay was undercut by the subsequent vernacularisation. However, the politics of naming or identity in general, is “driven by the paradox that no identity, no sense of community, and no imputed property of a place ever can be self-evident or stable. There are always multiple meanings, many narratives, and inherent instabilities within such entities.” (Hansen, 2) The city, therefore, is not a stagnant entity but a constant performance of certain institutions, which form the meaning or the connotation of the name.

Works Cited

1.     Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Columbia University Press. 2004.

2.     Hansen, Thomas B. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton University Press. 2001.

Picture design by Anumita Roy