When I asked Basantibala whether there had ever been fighting in her village, therefore, I was making conversation rather than expecting news. To my surprise, she answered:
Oh yes, there was, so many times. There were riots. Then all the Hindu people left.
I was flustered. “Oh, really? When?” I stuttered.
Spilling the Beans
The room full of people suddenly became quiet, and then it erupted into chaotic debate. Several men first denied that anything had happened, but when Basantibala persisted, everyone began trying to place “oh-that-riot” in time, a creative process involving big storms, dates in the Bengali calendar nobody quite knew how to translate into English equivalents, disagreements over who got married when, and so on. Basantibala insisted that the biggest riot had happened in the British period, when she was newly married and had no children. She guessed her own age to be about seventy, so that would have placed the incident in the mid-1930s, a time, I knew, of considerable upheaval in other rural parts of East Bengal. I was surprised, but the news was believable.
By this time neighbors had begun to drift in. With helpful enthusiasm they muddied the waters even further. Mr. Ghosh, an unassuming, immediately likable man in his sixties who lived next door, reeled off a whole list of riots:
Which riot are you asking about? At the time of Pakistan, do you mean? Do you mean the one at the temple with the Buddha priest? Or do you mean at Partition [in 1947]?
My head was spinning with this proliferation of mayhem. It didn't help that everyone was talking at once, adding to the list, placing events in other towns at different times, and generally being most unhelpfully helpful. At last a young man quietly brought some order to the proceedings with authoritative hearsay:
I heard from my father that there was this trouble.
What did you hear? There was some kheshari dal [a variety of lentil] planted in a field, and someone's cows ate it. The fighting went on for two or three days.…
Hindus supported each other, and Muslims supported each other. Then the police came and made a temporary camp over there to stop it. It was at the time of British Empire, not after Independence. Both Hindus and Muslims participated.
Here we had a nicely objective statement. It was nobody's fault: some cows ate some plants; the cows happened to belong to a member of one community, the plants to another; people fought, as people do over banal village disputes; the police came and stopped it. The young man had given us a skeleton of a tale. It was an incident that had happened many times in many places in India. But there were some tantalizing hints of bigger drama: the fighting went on for two or three days; the police not only came, they camped out.
Mr. Ghosh now took up the tale and began to hang flesh on the skeleton. Still contesting the dates, he nonetheless now understood that I was truly interested in this particular riot, and he set about covering the bare bones with tough sinews of intent and responsibility:
It was a very recent riot….
Side by side were a Hindu piece of land and a Muslim piece of land. In both fields, dal [lentil crop] was growing. The Muslim farmer kept his cow so that it could eat a little bit from the Hindu field too. A few hours later, the Hindu farmer came and saw that some of his plants had been eaten by the Muslim cow.
So the Hindu man went to the Muslim's house and said, “Your cow has eaten my dal. So I'm going to call a matabbar [village headman] and see what he has to say about it.”
The Muslim was not happy about that, so he put his cow where it could eat more plants. When the Hindu came to his field and saw more plants had been eaten, he became angry. So he took the Muslim cow, and the owner saw his cow was taken and he got a lathi [stick] and he ran after him and beat him. In the Hindu's hand there was no weapon [he was unarmed]. So the Muslim beat him, then left his cow and rushed to his house.
After that, Hindu people took up koch [a fishing spear] and lathi and swords and rushed to that field. And Muslims, too, came armed with the same things to the field. They fought each other for a few hours.
Then night came, and they went home. It became too dark for them to see who they were fighting, at whom they were throwing the stick. Also local leaders came and stopped the fight.
The Caste Hindus
It was clear where Mr. Ghosh's loyalties lay: it was the Muslim's fault. The Muslim meant his cow (a “Muslim” cow) to eat the Hindu's crop. The Hindu was innocent. All he did was to make a just complaint. Very reasonably, he proposed that the village authority adjudicate the dispute. The Muslim retaliated with more of the same injustice. Only then did the Hindu take matters into his own hands, seizing the cow. But then the Muslim escalated the fight to violence, attacking the unarmed Hindu. Outrageously provoked, the Hindus, now multiplied, took up weapons and fought, until night and local leadership intervened.
Mr. Ghosh was a Hindu. It made sense that he would line up with the Hindu protagonist. Mr. Ghosh himself was not a central actor in the Panipur riot, a fact established by his description of the morning after:
The next morning, I was going to the bazar [market] to buy milk. People were sitting and talking about the fighting the day before. So I stopped to hear what they were saying.
Were they Hindus?
No, they were Muslims. I heard them say, “We'll fight.” I said, “No, why is it necessary to quarrel? It's better to compromise. Local people, the matabbar, and the chairman will decide it” They said, “Don't talk to us. Go and do your work.”
Then I saw that in the Namasudra area, at some distance, there was another group sitting together. I thought, “It will not stop; there will be another fight.” So I hurried to my house.
Just as I reached my house, I could hear the fight begin. The two groups were running after each other with knives and other weapons. But we were neutral, so we stayed at home. From a distance we observed the fight. One side ran at the other, and when they had a chance, they ran at the other side.
All this time Mr. Ghosh had been speaking in an even tone, while the roomful of people listened politely. Basantibala, thoroughly upstaged, slipped out to arrange another round of refreshments, since our visit was clearly taking on major proportions.
Castes, Fixed and Mobile
As he described how the fight escalated and the sides arranged themselves for combat, Mr. Ghosh introduced a significant distinction: “Then I saw that in the Namasudra area, at some distance, there was another group sitting together.” This was the first time he had mentioned that the Hindus involved were Namasudras. They were “at some distance,” and Mr. Ghosh hurried to distance himself even further: “I thought, ‘It will not stop; there will be another fight/ So I hurried to my house.”
As a metaphor for relations between high—and low-caste Hindus, Mr. Ghosh's description was perfect. He both identified with the warriors as Hindus and at the same time distinguished himself decisively: “[W]e were neutral, so we stayed at home. From a distance we observed the fight.” We in this case clearly did not mean Hindu but caste Hindu.
Mr. Ghosh was delineating distinctions of caste, class, and culture so complex they intertwine like columbines climbing an ancient wall. He and the man with the cow-ravished plant were and were not of the same group. Caste is easy to deplore, difficult to understand. Its complexities are legendary. Nehru repeated a popular conception of caste when he likened it to the medieval trade guilds of Europe.2 But to imagine that caste is simply a hierarchy of occupations is soon to become bewildered by modern-day exceptions. Indeed, exception was probably the rule even historically. To describe caste by economic function is to fail to describe much that is important about it. Caste is a rich mixture of ideology, ritual, highly internalized group identity and aversion, and practical community association.3
Of all that might be said about caste, three