- Mouli Chatterjee*

T.H Marshall in his article ‘citizenship and social class’ recognizes the components of citizenship - civil, political and social and to him these are historical categories. He conceptualizes the civil element to compose of rights necessary for individual freedom- liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, right to own property and conclude valid contracts, and the right to justice. The Right to justice is most crucial because it helps one to defend and protect all other rights on terms of equality with others before law. Political right is the right to participate in the political process either as members of bodies vested with political authority or as electors of such bodies. Social rights include a whole array of rights including right to economic welfare and security, right to share in full the social heritage, and the right to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society.

Citizenship is a status bestowed on members of a national community, who are equal in respects of rights they enjoy and the duties enjoined to them. There is no universal standard regarding what the rights and duties should be but every nation state has some ideal of a citizen towards which it strives. Hence, there is the possibility of citizenship coming in contradiction with any kind of stratification for example class.

Historically, the birth of Matua goes back to Lord Harichand Thakur of Orakandi which is in Gopalganj district of present Bangladesh. He became active and led to the foundation of Matua as a religious sect when there was mass conversion of Untouchables of East Bengal to Christianity and Islam due to the ill-treatment by upper caste Hindus. He wanted to prevent conversion which the introduction of this new religion which maintained continuities with conceptual language of Hinduism. His son Guruchand Thakur in 1881 propagated the religion among Dalits for their upward mobility. Due to the efforts of Guruchand Thakur many Dalits where educated and he was also successful in integrating Bengal’s Namashudra community into units of eight divisions and continued conversions to Matuaism as a protest against Brahminism. In 1990’s perhaps there was the rise of Dalitist Bengali militants against the UC political establishment.

The atmosphere and the recognition of Matuas in Bengal changed context from 2009. Matuas were aligned initially when found by some of the Marxist followers towards the CPI (M) but the dynamics of the politics changed its course in the elections of 2011. The relations embittered with CPI (M) due to the eviction of refugee settlements from Sunderbans which led to many Matua dying but the main game was changed by TMC leader Mamata Banerjee. Even before the polls of 2011, Mamata Banerjee started appealing the Matuas and visiting their priestess. She even made her son one of the leaders while in 2014 she was questioned by Modi on her advances on the issue of citizenship which in a way was made invisable. As per the government estimates, a fifth of the 10 million Matuas in West Bengal do not have any proof of citizenship. But this is a tricky issue. A law passed during the BJP-led alliance in 2003, when it was last in power, left no scope for anyone who arrived in India without proper documentation after 25 March 1971 – the date of Bangladesh's independence – to gain Indian citizenship. The Matua have demanded the repeal of the act but activists concede that there are fewer hopes as many will remain to be infiltrators while few who have the rights will serve as vote banks.

The situations since 2011 polls have led to the politics of bargain which has been a mutually beneficial process for both the camps – the community-organisation and the party. The former gains its political salience in the institutionalised domain of state politics; whereas the latter aims to eventually integrate the former’s discrete politics within its influence. Such a phenomenon is evidently noticeable in case of the Matuas. Although the Mahasangha gained its prominence as the independent mouthpiece of the lower-caste refugees, and negotiated with all the political parties to meet their demands; its leadership eventually aligned with the TMC with the appointment of Manjul Krishna Thakur, the younger son of Baroma Binapani Devi, as the minister of state for refugee-relief and rehabilitation. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections too, the TMC played the same card, and nominated the organisational head Kapil Krishna Thakur, the elder son of Baroma Binapani Devi, as its candidate from Bongaon constituency. Therefore, even though the Mahasangha gained prominence as an important political actor in state’s rural politics; its leadership, today, has been subsumed within the TMC’s party-influence. In 2014, BJP also adopted a similar political strategy, this time by nominating a prominent Matua leader K D Biswas from the Bongaon constituency. It played the Hindu card among the refugee population who had to cross the border due to communal tensions saying that the Hindus who cross the border may make India their home but the Muslims will be considered as ‘infiltrators’. Modi also in one of his rallies promised the Matuas saying that they should keep their bags ready to be back to their own country but soon later he remarked that Muslim refugees who further cross the border will be considered as ‘infiltrators’ whereby he blinded the promise he had made as well has made a deterred communal comment.

The phenomena of caste politics and issues of citizenship bring us to relate Marshall’s concept of citizenship in terms of civil, political and social rights whereby it marks the identity and freedom of an individual unlike the case with the Matuas few of them are simply used as the vote bank and deprived of the civil and mainly social rights while on the other hand there is a lot of Matuas without citizenship rights. The concept of identity is distorted for the Matuas as Taylor says that misrecognition or in this case for many the non-recognition has harmful impacts. The consumption patterns do determine the level of the citizenship or non-citizenship as is evident from the Matuas mostly from lower economic background. The way the civil society has been working and the decay of the definition of it shows that in India it is the anti-Mandal politics which is the criteria to be a part of the civil society. It is the degree of citizen-ness rather than citizenship of the nation. The degree of citizen-ness is determined by the payment of taxes, non- dependence on government welfare and the possession of cultural capital to participate in the ‘public sphere’. By this definition the ones having low degree of citizen-ness are relegated to the level of the ‘illegal society’.

So it is important that identity politics and issues of citizenship are balanced with civic society to give a platform whereby there is diversity in representation and recognition.

* Mouli Chatterjee, is a student of M.A in Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is presently an intern at Lokniti.