He who Rides the Tiger

The spring of 2025 unveiled Bengal's dirty casteist secrets, with Chamar community members in over two dozen villages calling out untouchability

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

CHAMARS are not Hindus, Soumen Dey asserts with high confidence. The man in his 20s is agitated. He is a Kayastha. The administration, by allowing Chamar caste members to enter their Shiva temple and worship their deity has ruined the sanctity of their village’s age-old traditions, he complains.

“Their forefathers used to skin dead cows. Only Muslims deal with dead cows. A Hindu will never take anything but milk from a cow,” says Dey, explaining their objections to the entry of Chamars in their religious festivities. Others in the Kayastha crowd that had gathered around nod in approval.

It’s a hot and humid evening in early April. The atmosphere is tense at Bairampur village in Nadia district of West Bengal, roughly 170 km north of Kolkata. The leaves on the trees are as still as the water in the pond.

The Kayasthas feel restless. They are one of Bengal’s three upper caste groups, besides the Brahmins and the Baidyas. In Bairampur, they form the majority. The Chamars, also called Muchis, are a Scheduled Caste (SC) group considered ‘low’ even by some other SC groups.

Less than a fortnight ago, on March 20, the administration deployed police forces to ensure the Chamar caste members’ entry into the local Shiva temple, from which they had been prohibited so far. Now, as the Gajan festival in the last week of Choitro (April 8-14), the final month in the Bengali calendar, nears, the prospect of the Chamar community’s participation in the festival intensifies the Kayastha discomfort.

The Calcutta High Court’s March 17 instructions to the police to ensure that no one in Bairampur is barred from entering the temple and participating in the Gajan left the village's Kayasthas feeling helpless and let down. Gajan celebrates the devotion to Lord Shiva. Being a bhawkto (devotee) or