Resistance as an Ethno-gendered Expression : A Case of Bihari students in a Bengali Bhadralok School, in India

• In Event: Negotiating Belonging and Identities

Proposal

This paper attempts to engage with the ways in which adolescents of a migrant ethnic lineage resist pejorative ethno-gendered constructs about themselves to be able to continue their education at a government school, and in effect assert claim as the Bihari ‘citizens’ of Bengali city.

The term ‘Bihari’ to the Bengali Bhadralok imagining in Kolkata, other than denoting an ethno-linguistic group with historical and socio-cultural ‘origins’ from eastern India, conjures the image of the ‘underclass’ labouring migrant engaged in ‘menial’ work in the city (Mukhopadhyay, 2006, p.221). By the mid-20th century, the term ‘Bihari’ “…had already acquired pejorative connotations….” among the Bengali Bhadralok or the genteel classes of Kolkata who perceived them as “… rustics, crude and uncultured labourers, ‘outsiders’ from rural upper India…” despite their contribution in building the infrastructure of the city (Alexander, Chatterji & Jalais, 2016, p.166).

The Bengali Bhadralok in contrast denotes an amalgam of classed, ethno-cultural, caste-d, gendered, linguistic and religious dispositions that signify Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of a “legitimate culture”. central to the construction of the Bhadralok is their identification as an intellectual class informed among other causes, by the social and political processes of the 19th and 20th centuries in India (Bhattacharya 2005).

Derogatory identification of populations from Bihar in Kolkata have been informed, among other causes, by labour migration from Bihar to Bengal over the 19th century (Ganguly-Scrase and Julian, 1997, pp.490-420; De Haan, 2002, p.123). Such migration from Bihar to West Bengal continues in the present day. (Ganguly-Scrase and Julian, 1997, pp.419-420). Born, raised and affiliated to school in Kolkata and thus situated at the intersection of two ethnic identities, adolescent Biharis experience derogatory ethno-gendered constructions around their migrant ethnic ‘origins’ at school. The school perceives them ineligible to access the location of learners drawing on derogatory constructs about Biharis to the Bengali Bhadralok imagination in Kolkata. Derogatory constructs obfuscate factors such as migration from a location of complex and multidimensional nature of rural poverty, that can exacerbate access to the nature of social, cultural and economic capital in the urban host society.

The identification of Biharis as a labouring people constructs their personhoods as bodies sans a mind. Such constructions drawing on hierarchised dualisms emphasize the inferiorization of groups perceived closer to ‘nature’ (the Bihari), and in need for civilizing by ‘culture’ (the Bengali Bhadralok). This makes it possible for the school to construct the students as ethnically/culturally unfit to access the disposition of learners. Such ‘pollutant’ dispositions are ‘identified’ by the school as evident in a) dress and appearance, b) behaviours, and c) academic performances of the students. The school describes the dispositions of the students across these mentioned areas, as evidence of Bihari masculinities and Bihari femininities. Data from this research brings forth that while the students, both, girls and boys, perform and own these seemingly ‘Bihari’ dispositions, they do not interpret their actions in any linear ethnocultural framework. On the contrary, they at once draw on, and distance themselves, from aligning with the gendered performatives of any ethnocultural identity. Their dispositions are an assertion of their claim over the school, and also the city that attempts to distance them. Their dispositions are also a way of distancing themselves from the ethnification processes of their families and their imagined communities in rural Bihar.

In this paper I aim to draw on scholarship on the resistance of groups such as the participants of my research, who are positioned within and against a public educational institution and hence not in the capacity for open rebellion. Resistance Studies draws on a range of fields, and I aim to situate my data drawing on the tradition of everyday forms of resistance of individuals such as the adolescent participants of my research. The location and circumstances of the adolescent participants and the nature of their resistance makes it relevant to engage with the tradition of everyday forms of resistance of James Scott (1985, 1989) though I also aim to draws on other authors who engage with mundane forms of resistance that engage with questions of gender and ethnic identity. This is also because the accusations against the Bihari adolescents about their pejorative ethnic identity are articulated as ethno-gendered and ethnosexual constructs. I draw on Joane Nagel's (2000) argument on ethnicity as an ethnosexual and ethno-gendered construct. Nagel (2000) emphasizes that “... ethnic boundaries and identities are built by self and others from such social materials as color, language, religion, and culture, (and) they can be seen to rest on gendered and sexualized foundations...” (p.113). Drawing on scholarship on resistance and on ethnicity as an ethno-gendered construct makes it possible to understand the complex nature of resistance of my participants.

A central finding of analysis of data from this research is that actions and expressions of resistance particularly in a situation of power differentials such as that of a school, may not bring any immediate linear, decisive freedoms. On the contrary, this paper also shows that resistant behaviours can reinforce stereotyped constructions of ethnic masculinities and femininities and consolidate the perspectives of dominant ethnic groups against migrants. At the same time , the evident aims of resistance within an environment such as a school, may be part of a larger struggle for recognition of individuals of migrant ethnic lineage as sanctioned members of the host society. Resistance in such contexts is thus also a claim to reinforce and 'free' the conception of ethnic identity from a frame of biological determinism.

Author

• Sangeeta Roy, Independent Consultant