The non-orthodox variants of the Bhakti movement, that aligned with the Sahajiya tradition and sought to encompass the downtrodden sections into the society, also catalysed the Namasudras, as a guiding faith.
[12] Various local socio-religious figureheads (Kalachand Vidyalankar, Sahlal Pir, Keshab Pagal et al.), who sought to repudiate the caste(varna) system, further impressed upon large sections of the Namasudra population.
[13] The Namasudras, thus, successfully strived to carve out an autonomous niche in the social fabric of Bengal, where the distinction of caste was obliterated but that none from the Hindu bhadralok community did identify themselves with those sects, they were branded as exotic and subsequently came to be rejected by other sections of the society.
[17] This first rebellion in the community in a bid to redefine the local power structure failed to garner much because the poorer Chandals had to return to their previous employers after a few months, often agreeing to more harrowing work conditions.
[17] Joya Chatterjee says that henceforth they "battled continuously to improve their ritual position" in society and later claimed the "more respectable title of 'Namasudra' and Brahmin status".
In 1891, the term Namasudras was recorded in the official census as a synonym for the Chandala(s) and by 1900, it had assumed immense social recognition, as people of the community clung to the new identity and tried to distance themselves from the imagery of the Chandals.
[22] Born to a devout Vaishnava family, he gained initial reputation as a spiritual healer and later claimed to be a reincarnation of God, with a duty to ensure salvation of the downtrodden.
A series of resolutions by community leaders and multiple submissions to British authorities during 1906 affirmed their complete support for the partition scheme, through which they hoped to obtain equal rights in the proposed eastern state where they, along with Muslims, dominated the populace.
[31] Swadeshi leaders reacted by touring extensively in the Namasudra areas, trying to persuade them to join the agitation and, if that failed, bribing, intimidating and coercing them by such means as constructing schools.
But the community leaders, including Guruchand, were steadfast against supporting a political movement that supposedly catered to the interests of the upper class and had no plan of social reform.
The colonial government often provided extensive economic patronage and took steps in reforming their social condition by constructing educational hostels, exclusive-schools et al. which penetrated deep down the community.
[40] Even in the 1920s when mass-nationalism affected the entire country and Gandhi extensively campaigned to include the lower strata of society in the Congress fold, Namasudra-dominated districts were mostly unaffected.
In the Khulna famine of 1920, whilst the colonial government sought to mobilise relief, the Congress went on to continue the Non-cooperation at full zeal and was blamed for increasing the fatalities.
Whilst, Gandhi attracted some admirers due to his social stances, his views offered no political aspirations for the leaders, which were an easy way to status and wealth.
There was a considerable majority in the first conference that supported the nationalist causes including widow-remarriage and boycott of foreign goods, managing to bring the proceedings to a halt but had trickled down to a negligible minority, in the second.
This was also attributed to the developments of fissures in the movement, that was extremely united thus far, when two famed Namasudra leaders switched loyalties to the Swaraj Party and a division began to form along nationalist lines.
[46] The steadfast attitude towards nationalism, throughout the years, that owed more to the need of a voice of protest against the oppressive higher castes than to the benefits provided by the British government, was crumbling down gradually and fissures were beginning to develop.
[47] The Hindu solidarity soon followed in realising that the alienation of lower-castes might hamper its plans of offering a united opposition against the British and the Muslims, as conversions became abundant and threatened to dwindle the numbers of Hindus.
[49] In the late 1930s, especially after the Poona Pact, the Namasudras of Bengal Presidency increasingly adhered to a loyalist stance to the British Government, which was supposedly its best chance to upgrade their socio-economic condition and all throughout[50] and they consistently remained alienated from the nationalist politics.
[54] According to Bandyopadhyay, the aim of the Hindu campaign, throughout the years, was to merely induce the lower castes record themselves as Hindus, which would inflate their numbers and thus, assist them in the redistribution of provinces during partition of the nation rather than to harvest a social reform.
[21] Overall, whilst these attempts at altering the social situation improved things to some extent, discrimination was still markedly abundant and the domination by upper castes continued even post-independence.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay notes that despite Jinnah's promise of equality for all, they were soon subjected to "a process of 'Othering'" as the state sought for "greater Islamisation of the polity"[21] and that the upper-caste-Hindus had almost all left East Bengal, the communal agitation was now solely directed against the lower-caste and untouchable Hindus.
All these, coupled with numerous provocations ranging from unlawful occupation of land to public humiliation of women and direct instruction to leave the country, led to a build-up of insecurity among the Namasudras.
[21] Finally, the government, in early 1956 announced the Dandakaranya Scheme of rehabilitating them in a region consisting of 78,000 square miles of inhospitable unirrigated land in the tribal areas of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
[21] Gradually, the campaign, as to an acceptable solution of the refugee issues began to lose momentum as the organisations were more interested in exploiting the refugee-base, as an exercise in electoral constituency building for the political parties.
[21] By 1965, 7,500 refugee families were forcibly settled there and because of their dispersal, the Namasudras, who were till-then a closely knit community, as to local-geography, lost their capacity to organise powerful protest movements.
The conditions across Dandakaranya camps were extremely poor and that the refugees not only failed to integrate with the native Adivasis but also had to deal with a corrupt government mechanism made survival more difficult.
[68] A prominent Namasudra leader, Pramatha Ranjan Thakur, who was once elected to the Constituent Assembly with Congress support and opposed reservation for the Scheduled Castes whilst advocating drastic social reforms, emerged as a political and spiritual figure-head during the refugee crisis.
[71] Finally, as the efforts by the local-police-machinery failed to address the issue in its entirety, the Government ordered a forcible evacuation of the refugees in a 48-hour span from 14 May 1979 to 16 May 1979, in what was called the Marichjhapi Massacre by the scholarly community.
[21] Beginning the utilisation of the network of the MMS, by All India Trinamool Congress, (which included nominating family members of PR Thakur as MLAs), the group managed to establish an independent identity in politics.