Exclusion of the Koch/Rajbansi Community of the Princely State of Cooch Behar: Exploring Crises and Complexities

Abstract

Exclusion or marginalisation has generally been defined as the social process whereby something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group and accorded lesser importance. This is predominantly a social phenomenon by which a minority or sub-group is excluded, and their needs or desires ignored. Social exclusion refers to processes in which individuals or entire communities of people are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources. Exclusion or marginalisation of various communities, especially various ethnic groups including the aboriginal communities, is considered to be a product of colonisation and as a result people at the margin lost their land, were forced into destitute areas, lost their sources of income and were excluded from the labour market. Additionally, marginal groups lost their culture and values through forced assimilation and lost their rights in society. In the context of exclusion or marginalisation of the communities, the objective of this paper is to explore the perceived economic and cultural exclusion of the Koch/Rajbansi community in the princely State of Cooch Behar. The Koch/Rajbansis constituted the most pre-dominant section of the local Hindu population in the Princely State of Cooch Behar. They were a socially homogenous community because there was no sub-caste among them. They have their own distinct culture totally different from the Brahmanical culture. The situation changed over the years with gradual political and cultural penetration of the British colonial authority in the Princely State of Cooch Behar. Consequently as it had happened in other areas of colonial India, a major cultural shift took place in the colonial endeavour to construct ‘the native’. The subverted identity crisis of the royal family of Cooch Behar, which was held by the Koch/Rajbansi populace as their cultural icon outdistanced them from their erstwhile cultural moorings. In this way the Rajbansi mass was culturally marginalised. Together with it the factor of land alienation caused by revenue reforms undertaken by the Cooch Behar government triggering non-Koch/Rajbansi migration in the Cooch Behar State had intensified the process of economic marginalisation of the Koch/Rajbansis. These immigrants got hold of a vast amount of land and gradually established their monopoly over the local administration. Many of the Koch/Rajbansi Jotedars were turned into sharecroppers in the lands that they once owned. Therefore, a complex dichotomous social order was created between the locals and the non-locals on socio-economic, ethnic and cultural grounds.