The Bengal Renaissance was largely carried out and participated in by bhadralok. In addition, the rise of the Brahmo Samaj and various other samajes (a category halfway between 'society' and 'community') was also largely a bhadralok phenomenon. To be a bhadralok was to embrace some Western and Northern European values (though not always the same ones in each case), to have a modicum of education, and a sense of entitlement to (and consequently grievance against) favours or employment from the colonial government. While the bhadralok were influenced by the West (in terms of their morals, dress, and eating habits) they were also the people who reacted most strongly against the West, and the most scathing critiques, as well as the most spirited defences of Westernisation, were made by bhadralok writers.
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Most, though not all, members of the bhadralok class are upper caste, mainly Baidyas, Brahmins, Kayasthas, and later Mahishyas. There is no precise translation of bhadralok in English, since it attributes economic and class privilege on to caste ascendancy. Many bhadraloks in the nineteenth century came from the privileged Brahmin or Priest caste or middle-level merchant class (such as Rani Rashmoni). Anybody who could show considerable amount of wealth and standing in society was a member of the bhadralok community.
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The bhadralok community includes all gentlefolk belonging to the rich as well as middle-class segments of the Bengali society. Amongst the upper middle classes, a zamindar, or landowner, normally bearing the title Chaudhuri or Roy Chaudhuri at the end of the name, and Babu at the beginning would be considered to be a bhadralok. A zamindar bearing the title Raja or Maharaja would be considered to be higher than middle-class, but would still be a bhadralok 'gentleman'. All members of the professional classes, i.e.
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Bhadralok ( , literally 'gentleman', 'well-mannered person') is Bengali for the new class of 'gentlefolk' who arose during British rule in India (approximately 1757 to 1947) in Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent.
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In Bengal the revolutionaries more often than not recruited the educated youth of the urban middle-class Bhadralok community that epitomised the "classic" Indian revolutionary, while in Punjab the rural and military society sustained organised violence.
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Directed by Ritwik Ghatak, Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), never explicitly mentions the Partition, but takes place in a refugee camp in the outskirts of Calcutta, and concerns an impoverished genteel Hindu bhadralok family and the problems they face because of Partition.
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The two biggest factors that led to the rise of the bhadralok were the huge fortunes many merchant houses made from aiding the English East India Company's trade up the Ganga valley, and Western-style education (at the hands of the colonial rulers and of missionaries). The steep rise in real estate prices in Calcutta also led some petty landlords in the area to become wealthy overnight. The first identifiable bhadralok figure is undoubtedly Ram Mohan Roy, who bridged the gap between the Persianised nobility of the Sultanate era in Bengal and the new, Western-educated, nouveau riche comprador class.
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Among others, Joya Chatterji, Lecturer in History of Modern South Asia at Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College, accuses the Bhadralok class for the economic decline of the state of West Bengal after India's independence in 1947. She writes in her book, titled "The Spoils of Partition" : > In these ways, Bengal’s partition frustrated the plans and purposes of the > very groups who had demanded it. Why their strategy failed so disastrously > is a question which will no doubt be debated by bhadralok Bengal long after > the last vestiges of its influence have been swept away. Many excuses have > already been made, and different scapegoats remain to be identified and > excoriated.
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Danchi babu or Damchi babu () was the term used by the locals in present-day Jharkhand to refer to the middle class Bengali Hindu travellers in a queer and funny manner. The term 'Danchi' is a corrupt form of the English words 'damn cheap' and 'babu' stood for the affluent Bengali Hindu gentleman belonging the bhadralok class.
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Humour is an important part of Kutti culture and in the past, their jokes - told in the Dhakaiya Kutti language - used to generally consist of short stories in which Dhakaiyas mess around with the bhadralok gentry. The Kuttis refer to outsiders or non-Dhakaiya Bengalis by the name "Gaiya" (গাঁইয়া), meaning from the village, and Kolkatans in particular as Demchi (ডেমচি).
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Bimala's interest in the Vaishnava philosophy was further fuelled by the Vaishnava Depository, a library and a printing press established by Kedarnath Datta (by that time respectfully addressed as Bhaktivinoda Thakur) at his own house for systematically presenting Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In 1886 Bhaktivinoda began publishing a monthly magazine in Bengali, Sajjana-toshani ("The source of pleasure for devotees"), where he published his own writings of the history and philosophy of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, along with book reviews, poetry, and novels. Twelve-year-old Bimala Prasad assisted his father as a proofreader, thus closely acquainting himself with the art of printing and publishing as well as with the intellectual discourses of the bhadralok. In 1887 Bimala Prasad joined the Calcutta Metropolitan Institution (from 1917 – Vidyasagar College), which provided substantial modern education to the bhadralok youth; there, while studying the compulsory subjects, he pursued extracurricular studies of Sanskrit, mathematics, and jyotisha (traditional Indian astronomy).
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A.M.A. Zaman was involved in different trade unions. He was a leader of Jute mill workers during the struggle for independence. Whereas many other leaders hailed from the bhadralok, upper classes, A.M.A. Zaman hailed from a working-class background and had been a jute mill worker himself. In the midst of the 1936-1937 labour unrest he founded a jute mill workers union, which was registered in 1936.
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Sircar was born at Chorbagan in North Calcutta. His family hailed from Taragram in Hooghly district of West Bengal, and the family name was originally Das. For services rendered, the Nawab of Bengal had awarded the title 'Sarkar' to Bireshwar Das, an ancestor. Bhairav Chandra Sarkar, Pyari Charan's father, had become quite wealthy as a ship chandler serving the East India Company, and the family was a fairly good example of the new bhadralok class.
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Banerji's contributions to the welfare and upliftment of the working class have however been criticised by Sumit Sarkar of being little more than 19th century middle class interest in industrial and plantation labour and of not going beyond the realm of philanthropy. Others like Dipesh Chakrabarty have argued that Banerji's efforts aimed to create an "ideal working class imbued with bhadralok values" and to create "not only orderly but also noiseless Bengalis for the jute mills".
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Bhadralok class is copiously referred in the popular Bengali literature including in the novel and stories of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore. Kaliprasanna Singha sarcastically criticized the class' social attitude and hypocrisy during its accession to prominence in the nineteenth century in his famous book, titled Hootum Pyanchar Naksha. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chandrabindoo brings forward the class' dilemma and hypocritical attitude in their songs including Sokale Uthiya Ami Mone Mone Boli, Amar Modhyobitto Bheeru Prem, Amra Bangali Jaati and many more.
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In the late 1960s there were regular robberies in various banks in Calcutta where, Ananta Singh's name featured. There were series of writings in local papers and the Bhadralok who in those days was still remembering and revering the revolutionary nationalists were quite upset to learn about his deeds. Finally, along with most of the members of the group, he was arrested from their hideout in a forest near Jaduguda in the present-day Jharkhand state in 1969. He was imprisoned till 1977.
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In colonial Bengal, the Namasudras constituted the second largest Hindu caste. Their interests differed from those pursuing nationalist politics against the British Raj from the time of the Swadeshi period (1905–11) and thus they did not participate much in that movement. That it was heralded by politicians from the high-caste bhadralok community, who cared little for the lower classes, further broadened the gaps. In July 1905, the British government validated a proposal for partitioning Bengal along religious lines.
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The overruling of the Indian jury's decision by the Sessions Court judge was heavily debated. According to Swati Chattopadhyay (author of Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny), the court proceedings were seen as an interference by the British in local matters. The court represented a conflict between village and city, the priest and bhadralok (Bengali gentleman class) and the colonial state and nationalist subjects. The court proceedings were disturbed several times by crowds demanding clemency for Nobin or stringency for the mahant.
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Nationalist writings and publications by Aurobindo and Barin, including Bande Mataram and Jugantar Patrika(Yugantar), had a widespread influence on Bengal youth and helped Anushilan Samiti to gain popularity in Bengal. The 1905 partition of Bengal stimulated radical nationalist sentiments in Bengal's Bhadralok community, helping the Samiti to acquire the support of educated, politically-conscious and disaffected members of local youth societies. The Samiti's program emphasized physical training, training its recruits with daggers and lathis (bamboo staffs used as weapons). The Dhaka branch was led by Pulin Behari Das, and branches spread throughout East Bengal and Assam.
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But perhaps part of the explanation is this: for all their self- > belief in their cultural superiority and their supposed talent for politics, > the leaders of bhadralok Bengal misjudged matters so profoundly because, in > point of fact, they were deeply inexperienced as a political class. > Admittedly, they were highly educated and in some ways sophisticated, but > they had never captured the commanding heights of Bengal’s polity or its > economy. They had been called upon to execute policy but not to make it. > They had lived off the proceeds of the land, but had never organised the > business of agriculture.
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Whether as theorists or practitioners, they > understood little of the mechanics of production and exchange, whether on > the shop floor or in the fields. Above all, they had little or no experience > in the delicate arts of ruling and taxing people. Far from being in the > vanguard as they liked to believe, by 1947 Bengal’s bhadralok had become a > backward-looking group, living in the past, trapped in the aspic of outdated > assumptions, and so single-mindedly focussed upon their own narrow purposes > that they were blind to the larger picture and the big changes that were > taking place around them.
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However, by the last quarter of the century, the Raj was firmly established in the Bengal Presidency and educated Bengali Babu, the middle-class Bhadralok community were amongst the largest numbers who filled civil and administrative offices throughout British India. In traditional British stereotype, the Bengali race was considered "feeble even to effeminacy" and the least martial of all Indian races. However, the Bengalee propensity to form public bodies and organised protests were noted from early on, which piqued the British observers. 1876 saw the foundation of The Indian Association in Calcutta under the leadership of Surendranath Banerjea.
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It was seen as an attempt to divide Bengal on religious lines to stem the tide of political and nationalist work that was emanating from the region. The Raj argued that the opposition to the partition was motivated by the Hindu middle-class Bhadralok, who feared a loss of their government positions and influence in the administrative set up to the larger Muslim population of eastern Bengal. Opposition to the partition took shape in the Swadeshi movement, where imported goods were boycotted in Bengal and throughout India. These boycotts were enforced by groups of "volunteers" recruited from the youth Samities.
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Kamala Das Gupta (11 March 1907 - 19 July 2000) was an Indian freedom fighter. She was born in 1907, to a bhadralok Vaidya family of Bikrampur in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh; the family later moved to Calcutta, where she got a Master of Arts degree in history from Bethune College,Distinguished Almunae www.bethunecollege.ac.in. Calcutta University. Nationalist ideas were current among the young people in Calcutta she met at university, and she was filling with a strong desire to take part in the freedom struggle. She tried to quit her studies and enter Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, but her parents disapproved.
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Initially employees from central government departments like Post and Telegraph, Government of India Press, Accountant General of Central Revenues (AGCR) and Railways were settled in Timarpur; thereafter in 1924, another phase of government housing came up near Gole Market, for employees of the Secretariat. Over time, many employees, after retirement, settled in Karol Bagh and WEA, and later in South Delhi. Chittaranjan Park however remains a major centre of Bengali cultural life in New Delhi, the best part is its evening life in the markets and on the streets people doing AddA - a favourite Bengali bhadralok pastime.
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This focus on rationality and humanity, whilst alleviating Missionary pressure, also allowed the materially wealthy 'bhadralok' members of the society to participate in a spiritual medium which did not condemn worldly concern. The group's writings, particularly the recently rediscovered 'Sabhyadiger Vaktṛtā',c.f. Hatcher, B; Bourgeois Hinduism display a marked stress upon the role of the 'householder' (gṛhastha) as a religious path, over that of the renouncer or hermit. The Brahman, like the renouncer, must restrain his senses and passions, but only to the extent of not becoming obsessed with, or overcome by, anything in the material world.
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When Ramakrishna met him, Keshub had accepted Christianity, and had separated from the Brahmo Samaj. Formerly, Keshub had rejected idolatry practised by his family, but after coming under Ramakrishna's influence he again accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, which was based on Ramakrishna's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true". His acceptance of idolatry created factions within his organisation. He also publicised Ramakrishna's teachings in the New Dispensation journal over a period of several years, which was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok and the Europeans residing in India.
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By 1905, the works of Aurobindo and his brother Barin Ghosh allowed Anushilan Samity to spread through Bengal. The controversial 1905 partition of Bengal had a widespread political impact: it stimulated radical nationalist sentiments in the Bhadralok community in Bengal, and helped Anushilan acquire a support base amongst of educated, politically conscious and disaffected young in local youth societies of Bengal. The Dhaka branch of Anushilan was led by Pulin Behari Das and spread branches through East Bengal and Assam. Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengali politician, began in 1907 the radical Bengali nationalist publication of Jugantar ("Change"), and its English counterpart Bande Mataram.
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Tarja (তর্জা) is a form of folk poetry contest from Bengal with a long tradition. Historically it used to be performed in the village gathering around a chandimandap or altar for village god, mela and other social events, in streets, and marketplace religious festivals. The themes of the contest are usually taken from Ramayana, Mahabharata or Puranas the poets sings his/her part in the form of doggerels and the other participant has to guess the meaning of it. During the rising bhadralok population of the Bengal renaissance many of these clubs as well as jhumur clubs had been destroyed Recasting Women:Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari et al.
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Kashiprasad Ghosh Kashiprasad Ghosh was a Bengali poet and the editor of the Hindu Intelligencer, an English language journal that was published in Calcutta and voiced the opinion of the bhadralok community. Ghosh's wife was a maternal aunt of Bhaktivinoda Thakur (1838-1914), a leading spiritual reformer and philosopher of Gaudiya Vaisnavism. Letitia Landon included a memorandum on this poet in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835 together with an example of his work: The Boatmen's Song to Ganga. The memorandum is as follows: > THIS young Indian poet is a remarkable instance of the mind’s inherent bent > developing itself under the most adverse circumstances.
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Rowe's opinion has been challenged, with claims that it is based on "factual and interpretative errors", and criticised for making "unquestioned assumptions" about the Kayastha sanskritisation and westernisation movement. In post-Raj assessments, the Bengali Kayasthas, alongside Bengali Brahmins, have been described as the "highest Hindu castes". After the Muslim conquest of India, they absorbed remnants of Bengal's old Hindu ruling dynastiesincluding the Sena, Pala, Chandra, and Varmanand, in this way, became the region's surrogate kshatriya or "warrior" class. During British rule, the Bengali Kayasthas, the Bengali Brahmins and the Baidyas considered themselves to be Bhadralok, a term coined in Bengal for the gentry or respectable people.
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Punjab and Bengal, along with Maharashtra, became hotbeds of revolutionary nationalist violence against British rule in India in the first decade of the 20th century. 1905 partition of Bengal and the 1907 colonisation bill in Punjab fed growing discontent. In Bengal, revolutionary organisations like Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar drew young recruits from the educated middle-class Bhadralok ranks, and engaged in a number of prominent attacks on both figures in the administration as well as the local police investigating incidents of robbery, violence and murder linked to these groups. These included assassinations and attempted assassinations of civil servants, prominent public figures and Indian informants.
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Although equipped with an excellent modern and traditional education, and with an enviable social status among the intellectual and political elite of Calcutta and Tripura along with the resources that it had brought, Siddhanta Sarasvati nonetheless began to question his choices at a stage that many would regard as the epitome of success. His soul-searching led him to quit the comforts of his bhadralok lifestyle and search for an ascetic spiritual teacher. On Bhaktivinoda's direction, he approached Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji, a Gaudiya Vaishnava who regularly visited Bhaktivinoda's house and was renowned for his asceticism and bhakti. In January 1901, according to his own testimony, Siddhanta Sarasvati accepted the Babaji as his guru.
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D.L. Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in India (CSDS), listed the Indian upper castes that constituted the middle class and were traditionally "urban and professional" immediately after Independence in 1947. This list included the Khatris from Punjab, Kashmiri Pandits, Nagar Brahmins and the South Indian Brahmins; Chitpawans and CKPs (Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; Kayasthas from northern India; the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis; the Parsis; and the upper crusts of the Muslim and Christian communities. According to P.K.Verma, "Education was a common thread that bound together with this pan Indian elite" and almost all the members of these communities could read and write English and were educated beyond school.
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More groups were scattered around India. Particularly notable movements arose in Bengal, especially around the Partition of Bengal in 1905, and in Punjab after 1907. In the former case, it was the educated, intelligent and dedicated youth of the urban middle class Bhadralok community that came to form the "classic" Indian revolutionary, while the latter had an immense support base in the rural and military society of Punjab. In Bengal, the Anushilan Samiti emerged from conglomerations of local youth groups and gyms (Akhra) in Bengal in 1902, forming two prominent and somewhat independent arms in East and West Bengal identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti in Dhaka (modern- day Bangladesh), and the Jugantar group (centred at Calcutta) respectively.
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" The Journal of the American Oriental Society Tuesday, 1 July 1997 Carl Olson argued that in his presentation of his master, Vivekananda had hid much of Ramakrishna's embarrassing sexual oddities from the public, because he feared that Ramakrishna would be misunderstood. Tyagananda and Vrajaprana argue that Oslon makes his "astonishing claim" based on Kripal's speculations in Kali's Child, which they argue are unsupported by any of the source texts. Sumit Sarkar argued that he found in the Kathamrita traces of a binary opposition between unlearned oral wisdom and learned literate knowledge. He argues that all of our information about Ramakrishna, a rustic near-illiterate Brahmin, comes from urban bhadralok devotees, "...whose texts simultaneously illuminate and transform.
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Besides Gitanjali, other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori ("Golden Boat"), Balaka ("Wild Geese" — the title being a metaphor for migrating souls) Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as those of the bard Lalon. These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.
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Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (; ; ; 6 February 1874 – 1 January 1937), born Bimla Prasad Datt (, ), was a Gaudīya Vaisnava Hindu guru (spiritual master), ācārya (philosophy instructor), and revivalist in early 20th century eastern India. To his followers, he was known as (Srila) Prabhupāda (an honorific also later extended to his disciple A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami). Bimla Prasad was born in 1874 in Puri (Orissa) in a Bengali Hindu Kayastha family as a son of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda Thakur, a recognised Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava philosopher and teacher. Bimla Prasad received both Western and traditional Indian education and gradually established himself as a leading intellectual among the bhadralok (Western-educated and often Hindu Bengali residents of colonial Calcutta), earning the title Siddhānta Sarasvatī ("the pinnacle of wisdom").
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D.L. Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in India (CSDS), lists Indian communities that constituted the middle class and were traditionally "urban and professional" (following professions like doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc.) immediately after Independence in 1947. This list included the Kashmiri Pandits, the Nagar Brahmins from Gujarat; the South Indian Brahmins; the Punjabi Khatris, and Kayasthas from northern India; Chitpawans and CKPs(Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis; the Parsis and the upper crusts of Muslim and Christian communities. According to P.K.Verma, "Education was a common thread that bound together this pan Indian elite" and almost all the members of these communities could read and write English and were educated beyond school.
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Whilst the Congress protested this and asked for a total boycott of foreign goods, the Namasudras thought differently. 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. It was on this issue that the bhadralok politicians of Bengal faced the first resistance from a community previously insignificant in the broader polity of the nation. 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.
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At that time Hindu bhadralok communities in Bengal were more liberal about sending their daughters long distances to study further; Sen found herself part of a group of young girls like herself living in the city for the first time. She stayed in a hostel and soon got over her initial awe at being in the big city. The conservatism and narrowmindedness of the established families she sometimes encountered rather disgusted her, and she also writes with remarkable frankness for her time about the harassment that she and her friends often faced from men. Through her friend Bimalpratibha Devi she became acquainted with leaders of the Mahila Shakti Sangha and several prominent Congress women; this nurtured her nascent feminism and inspired her to think about the need for change in women's position in society.
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Formerly, Keshab had rejected idolatry, but under the influence of Ramakrishna he accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, based on Ramakrishna's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true" and "Assimilation of Hindu polytheism into Brahmoism". Keshab also publicised Ramakrishna's teachings in the journals of New Dispensation over a period of several years, which was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok (English-educated classes of Bengal) and the Europeans residing in India. Following Keshab, other Brahmos such as Vijaykrishna Goswami started to admire Ramakrishna, propagate his ideals and reorient their socio-religious outlook. Many prominent people of Kolkata—Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal—began visiting him during this time (1871–1885).
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The large Bengali Hindu middle-class (the Bhadralok), upset at the prospect of Bengalis being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas, felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness. The pervasive protests against Curzon's decision took the form predominantly of the Swadeshi ("buy Indian") campaign led by two-time Congress president, Surendranath Banerjee, and involved boycott of British goods.V. Sankaran Nair, Swadeshi movement: The beginnings of student unrest in South India (1985) excerpt and text search The rallying cry for both types of protest was the slogan Bande Mataram ("Hail to the Mother"), which invoked a mother goddess, who stood variously for Bengal, India, and the Hindu goddess Kali. Sri Aurobindo never went beyond the law when he edited the Bande Mataram magazine; it preached independence but within the bounds of peace as far as possible.
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On the request of his son Lalita Prasad, in 1896 Bhaktivinoda wrote a detailed autobiography called Svalikhita- jivani that covered 56 years of his life from birth up until that time. Recounting his life's episodes with candour, Bhaktivinoda portrayed his path as full of financial struggle, health issues, internal doubts and insecurity, and deep introspection that gradually led him, sometimes in convoluted ways, to the deliberate and mature decision of accepting Caitanya Mahaprabhu and his teachings as his final goal. Bhaktivinoda did not display much concern for how this candid account would reflect on his status as an established Gaudiya Vaisnava spiritual leader with a large following, in the eyes of thousands of his intellectual bhadralok disciples. It is telling that Bhaktivinoda never refers to himself as feeling or displaying any special spiritual acumen, saintlihood, powers, or charisma – anything worthy of veneration.
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The Śreṣṭha () or () is the second largest Newar caste-class group, occupying around 25% of overall Newar population, or about 1.2% of Nepal’s total population. It is believed that the word Srēṣṭha is derived from the Newar word Śeśyah, which itself is derivation of a Sanskrit word Sista meaning 'noble', although literal meaning of the word also translated to 'best or important.' "Shrestha" itself was later adopted as the specific family surname by members of this high-caste Hindu group, although there are over 50 other recognized surnames of Srēṣṭhas. Despite their numerically low national population, their high-status and socio-economic capital puts Śreṣṭhas amongst the most privileged and politically over-represented segments of Nepali population. Prior to Nepal’s unification, Srēṣṭha was a collective high-status title given to those Hindu clans referred to as 'Bhāju' (from Sanskrit bhadralok) who served as the key non-Brahmin class of ruling, administrative and merchant class of the Malla courts.
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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. Various local socio-religious figureheads (Kalachand Vidyalankar, Sahlal Pir, Keshab Pagal et al.), who sought to repudiate the caste system, further impressed upon large sections of the Namasudra population. 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. In the 1870s, the Chandals of Bakarganj and Faridpur started a boycott of caste Hindus, (apart from Brahmins), as a form of social-protest, when their higher caste neighbors refused to accept an invitation to dine from a Chandal headman.
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Note that Farsi is an Arabization of the word Parsi, which is used as an endonym of Persian, and the Persian language is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and some other regions of the former Persian Empire. The long presence of the Parsis in India distinguishes them from the smaller Zoroastrian Indian community of Iranis, who are much more recent arrivals, mostly descended from Zoroastrians fleeing the repression of the Qajar dynasty and the general social and political tumult of late 19th- and early 20th- century Iran. D.L. Sheth, the former director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in India (CSDS), lists Indian communities that constituted the middle class and were traditionally "urban and professional" (following professions like doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc.) immediately after Independence in 1947. This list included the Kashmiri Pandits, the Nagar Brahmins from Gujarat; the South Indian Brahmins; the Punjabi Khatris, and Kayasthas from northern India; Chitpawans and CKPs (Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus) from Maharashtra; the Probasi and the Bhadralok Bengalis; the Parsis and the upper echelons of Muslim and Christian communities.
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