NEW DELHI: The current electoral map of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) in West Bengal is widely dispersed yet politically convergent across key corridors. There are 68 SC-reserved Assembly seats, spanning northern districts to the silted expanses of the Sundarbans. The spread is extensive; the clustering is concentrated.
What demands attention is not merely the aggregate, but the patterning. Dense concentrations appear in North Bengal—Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur—and in the Matua-dominated tracts of North 24-Parganas and Nadia.
These are not incidental cartographic outcomes. They are historically sedimented formations that map onto Rajbongshi and Namashudra settlement geographies shaped by colonial agrarian regimes and post-Partition movements. Geography is not passive; it is political memory.
Voting patterns in these seats have undergone huge transformations—rupture, consolidation, and rupture again.
In 2006, the Left Front’s dominance in SC constituencies was complete—electoral, organisational and social. The rupture came in 2011. The Trinamool Congress did not merely gain seats; it absorbed an entire social base.
Discontent over land acquisition, accumulated grievances against cadre dominance, and a desire for political dignity translated into a sweeping transfer of SC votes. The Left’s collapse from 57 to 13 seats in SC constituencies was not incremental erosion; it was systemic dislocation.
By 2016, this shift consolidated into dominance. The TMC’s near sweep of SC seats reflected the success of a different political idiom. Welfare schemes addressing education, mobility and rural livelihoods deepened the party’s reach. The electorate did not just shift allegiance; it stabilised. For a moment, the field appeared settled.
It was not. The 2021 election marked another rupture, but of a different kind. Unlike 2011, which saw a transfer from one hegemonic bloc to another, 2021 produced fragmentation. The BJP emerged as a contender in SC constituencies, winning 32 seats.
In North Bengal, particularly among Rajbongshis, identity-based mobilisation gained traction. In the Bangaon-Ranaghat belt, consolidation of the Matua vote—driven by anxieties around citizenship and the promise of legal recognition—shifted electoral behaviour.
The TMC retained a majority but no longer exercised monopoly. Across these four elections, what emerges is not a simple partisan shift but a reconfiguration of the underlying logic of mobilisation. The 2006 moment was anchored in class consolidation.
The 2011 shift foregrounded political dignity and anti-incumbency. The 2016 phase reflected welfare-led stabilisation. The 2021 rupture brought identity—particularly caste-inflected and refugee-mediated identity—back to the centre of electoral politics.
This divergence complicates reductive readings. Caste in Bengal may not operate with the overt rigidity seen in North India—less declarative, less codified—but it does not disappear. It persists elliptically: subtle, yet consequential.
What emerges, then, is not a settled alignment but a densely intertwined field of forces. Class doesn’t vanish; caste doesn’t dissolve; identity doesn’t operate in isolation. Each inflects the other—quietly, persistently.
To understand why these alignments remain fluid, one must return to the longer trajectory of caste assertion in Bengal. The deeper grammar of this politics lies in the Namashudra movement. Its early phase, led by Harichand Thakur and Guruchand Thakur, foregrounded dignity, community consolidation, and social restructuring through a religious idiom that was both egalitarian and insurgent. This hardened into political assertion in the early 20th Century, as leaders began seeking institutional representation.
Within this conjuncture emerged Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Namashudra leader shaped by the Matua social world, who operated through strategic ties—mostly with All-India Muslim League. It was through this network of SC legislators in Bengal that B R Ambedkar, after failing to secure a seat from the Bombay Presidency, was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946. Bengal became the conduit for Ambedkar’s entry into the constitutional project—a moment when regional caste politics acquired national consequence.