Scheduled Caste demands

The 1937 budget was a surplus year, and during its discussion, Pulin Behari Mullick (brother of Mukunda Behari Mullick, one of the two Scheduled Caste ministers in the Krishak Praja Party, henceforth KPP, and Muslim League-led government), struck an optimistic note, and presented his ideas about how the development of the Scheduled Castes ought to be undertaken. They were an ‘important section of the people, viz., the Scheduled Castes of Bengal, numbering about 10 millions. . . that is, one-fifth of the total population of the Province’. Mullick addressed the speaker of the House:

It is all here—an identification of the various spheres that Scheduled Caste leaders wanted transformed in the interest of a more participatory and just rule. Consider, however, the full implications of the proposal: how would one change administrative procedures such that their demands were met? What criteria, mechanisms, and what percentage would be deemed adequate? These were questions that did not as yet have any satisfactory answers.

Like Mullick, Rasik Lal Biswas (one of the few Scheduled Caste MLAs returned on a Congress ticket) also emphasized the role education ought to play in advancing the interests of the community. Biswas argued that it was not the case that there were no schools or that there had not been ‘earnest efforts amongst our people to get our boys and girls educated’, but they had not as yet received Government patronage worthy of note. ‘We are doing our best to elevate ourselves but how can the scheduled caste people rise up without the help of the Government but the Government patronage has been kept reserved for the big people’.Footnote ¹⁰

Government patronage of communities under provincial autonomy had come to be considered a matter of peculiar importance during the late colonial period. Peculiar because, government was now no longer perceived as overwhelmingly a matter of domination, alone. Government, in notionally autonomous provinces, was increasingly concerned with the politics between different Indian communities in envisioning a shared future, rather than solely with the politics of anti-imperialism. Moreover, employment in the public services, associated as it was with not only prestige, but also with a steady flow of income in a province where the prospects for entrepreneurship were far from generally available in a context of unemployment, industrial stagnation and agrarian crisis, was a highly prized source of economic stability.Footnote ¹¹ The democratization of public institutions, understood to manifest equality between communities, was therefore an entirely significant concern under provincial autonomy and prior to 1947.

A particularly ubiquitous mode of questioning thus emerged in legislative debate in motions tabled almost exclusively by Scheduled Caste and Muslim representatives. The central thrust of this form was to enquire into the communal ratios of public employment in various government departments.Footnote ¹² Scheduled Caste MLAs focused the bulk of their legislative interventions on this matter. Collectively, the data their questioning generated revealed a great deal about the extent of communal representation, not just at the senior levels of office in Calcutta, but also about the entire, dense network of administration British rule had erected throughout the province. If satisfied with the answer, the MLA asking the question responded with additional queries usually regarding the under-representation of Muslims and Scheduled Castes (that is, questions never arose about the under-representation of caste Hindus), and what Government proposed to do to attain an as yet unspecified degree of parity. Such enquiries over the course of the first year of the legislature's functioning made it plainly evident that Scheduled Castes were drastically under-represented.Footnote ¹³

The ambiguities thrown up by the question of how to equitably represent communities in administration thus required address and clarification. The Budget discussion of February 1938, (as in every subsequent year) proved the suitable occasion. In the first move of its kind, which was admittedly considered welcome, Government had allocated Rs. 30,000 for special stipends and scholarships for Scheduled Caste students, an amount nonetheless characterized by Upendra Nath Edbar, as ‘very insufficient in consideration of their numerical strength’.Footnote ¹⁴ Monmohan Das likewise found it ‘quite inadequate’.Footnote ¹⁵ Pulin Behari Mullick, while agreeing with his colleagues yet nevertheless conceding that ‘an earnest endeavour has been made in the right direction’, went further, connecting the question of education to representation: ‘. . .education must be supplemented by a due share in the administration of the land’. Referring to their under-representation, he continued: ‘I submit, Sir, that this is really deplorable. Then again, we have pressed our claims times without number for an adequate percentage of appointments in the services and we would like to hear the policy of Government in this respect’.Footnote ¹⁶

The budget discussion, while partially assuaging Scheduled Caste legislators with regard to education, left unresolved the question of communal representation.Footnote ¹⁷ When Tamizuddin Khan, an opposition KPP MLA tried to definitively press Government on the matter on behalf of both Muslims and Scheduled Castes, a rather exceptional occurrence illustrated just why this might be the case. Even as Khan rose to speak in criticism of Government, Congress MLAs began to depart the House. Abdur Rahman Siddiqi cast Khan's diplomacy in not naming the party in question to the side by addressing what had occurred head on. ‘Mr. Speaker, Sir. It is a pity that our friends of the Indian National Congress have walked out of this House at a very convenient moment. (Laughter from the Treasury Benches)’. Siddiqi lambasted the Congress for their strategy of denial. ‘The Muslim demands his rights, not out of generosity—they do not posses any—but because he wants justice to be done to him even at this late hour’. The said motion proposed a resolution to ‘this problem of all problems:. . .how the minorities in India are going to exist’.Footnote ¹⁸

Negotiating the crisis in representation in the administration of Bengal then, was a source of major disagreement in legislative politics. Walking out of the House in protest was hardly a routine affair, and made entirely clear in performance what did not need to be communicated in words. It would have been increasingly apparent to the Congress that there was precious little they could legitimately do in the face of the tide of Scheduled Caste and Muslim political representatives’ aspirations. There are good reasons why the caste Hindu bhadrolok who predominantly comprised the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha felt so very beleaguered. As Partha Chatterjee has commented about this social group, with the erosion of landlordism as a source of income ‘it now contained a very large proportion whose only sources of livelihood, real or prospective, were entirely urban—in administration, small trade and commerce, education or the professions’.Footnote ¹⁹ Largesse would have proved a difficult proposition in response to Muslim and Scheduled Caste demands for a greater share of precisely the three resources on which their social dominance historically rested—government employment, education, and landed property. Arthur J. Dash, chairman of the public service commission from 1942–1947 thus reflected in his memoirs about the response to communally based representation: ‘Few Hindu Officers probably can accept the policy as administered and perhaps many would not accept the impartial administration of any effective communal reservation policy’.Footnote ²⁰ This was a world with which they were utterly unfamiliar and uncomfortable. How Congress sought to mediate this challenge will be discussed below.

Mandal's early years

Jogendranath Mandal was undoubtedly alive to the obstacles standing in the way of Scheduled Caste representation and education, but as will be shown below, these were hardly his sole concerns. Indeed, some of his first questions in the assembly concerned matters traditionally considered ‘economic’. In one of his first submissions before the assembly, Mandal proposed several amendments during discussions on the Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Bill.Footnote ²¹ Mandal was closely acquainted with the contradictions of political economy as they manifested themselves in Barisal, given his legal background and pro bono practice amongst the tenants of his district. Several days later, he posed a question to the Judicial and Legislative Department regarding the number of suits for the enhancement of rent in different courts of the Sadar Subdivision of Bakarganj since the first of January 1937, additionally enquiring into the number of suits where enhancement had been granted, not granted, and were pending.Footnote ²²

Mandal's subsequent questions in the assembly joined together the two seemingly distinct issues of political economy and representation, enquiring about the appointment of Scheduled Caste candidates for the posts of inspectors and auditors in the Co-operative Department from Barisal, and later, ‘the number, qualifications, etc. of Debt Settlement Officers appointed in the same department after November 1937’.Footnote ²³ His questions assumed that the work of inspecting, auditing, and settling debt were issues hardly immune from the question of the adequate representation of Scheduled Castes in these bodies. The understanding implicit to this nature of questioning, was that by their very presence in these jobs, Scheduled Caste employees would be able to confer a confidence on these bodies that was presently wanting.

Outside the assembly, one of the first activities Mandal took upon himself was to expand the Bhegai Halder Public Academy in Agailjhara, a secondary school at the time, into a higher-secondary one.Footnote ²⁴ Due to the lack of funding and students, the school had remained at the secondary level. Agailjhara was a sub-division of northern Barisal, relatively close to Mandal's own Maisterkandi, and Halder was a noted Namasudra leader of the locale, associated with A. K. Datta, an acclaimed Congressite whose welfare organization Mandal had joined in his youth. Mandal's pro-activism with regard to this school thus carried a certain weight from the past evoking the emphasis he placed on education. In November 1937, along with lawyer Khan Bahadur Hashem Ali Khan, Mandal convened a sabha with the dual purpose of collecting funds and arousing interest in the predominantly Muslim and Namasudra locality. He records that, due to the Rs. 2700 collected, by February the following year, enrollments increased from 93 to nearly 300.

Eventually, the school received official approval from the government, an effort that Mandal had steered through the avenues of district administrative fiat. Indeed, due to the intentionally delayed submission of an educational survey report by an Assistant School Inspector, one J. G. Sen, Mandal had turned to Nalini Ranjan Sarkar (ex-Congress Minister of Revenue) and Syama Prasad Mukherjee, both towering figures in Bengali public life in appeal. His approach must have worked, because within a matter of days Mukherjee informed him that even without the report, the Academy had received a three-year period of sanction for government assistance. Mandal also ensured that the lease for the land on which the school was located was, in fact, renewed—a renewal that had been resisted by members of the Barisal district board, ‘for the same reasons that the Departmental School inspector had delayed submitting his report’.Footnote ²⁵ He had intervened by directly approaching the Barisal district magistrate on the matter, ensuring the lease renewal was included in the agenda of the district board, following which the lease was duly renewed.

There was thus somewhat of a disconnect between Scheduled Caste leaders’ critique of a pervasive caste Hindu prejudice, and the kind of goodwill various caste Hindu leaders extended to Mandal during the early years of his political career. Indeed, not just luminaries like Sarkar and Mukherjee, who appeared in this instance to have been sympathetic to his attempt to revive the school, but Mandal had received the support of various others in the course of his unprecedented election on a general seat, including teachers, colleagues in the legal profession, and well-wishers. However, such instances of personal favour did little to assuage the sense of urgency amongst Scheduled Caste MLAs to increase capital expenditure towards the education of students in their communities and the particular reasoning deployed to justify this.

Justifications

Jogesh Chandra Gupta, on behalf of Rasik Lal Biswas, initiated a cut motion to discuss the education policy of the government as it concerned the Scheduled Castes in particular. He argued that the Rs. 30,000 provided for scholarships was a negligible sum that would only benefit those capable of competing in an examination. Educational expenditure had to help in ‘levelling up’—and if this were to be done, a substantial grant was needed to enable the spread of primary education amongst the Scheduled Castes.Footnote ²⁶

Monomohan Das put a figure on the desired amount: a capital grant of Rs. 5 lakhs and the appointment of a Special Officer for the said purpose. Das justified this demand by an exposition on the ‘condition of the Scheduled Castes of Bengal’. Mobilizing a compressed history of untouchability, he argued that the reason for the Scheduled Castes’ ‘hopelessly abject condition today’ was not only caste Hindu neglect, but also exploitation, ‘so that our so-called friends may enjoy the fruits of our labour’. In his district, although primary education had made a start, people of his community could not even buy dhotis and clothes for their children, let alone books. The primary requirement was therefore funding scholarships and stipends, as establishing schools alone would not do. Das underscored his point that, ‘In the face of the appalling backwardness of our people in education, the only thing that is required is money. . . .’Footnote ²⁷

It is noteworthy that no Congress MLAs rose in support of a motion submitted by a member of their own party. Instead, both Abul Hashim and Tamizuddin Khan expressed their support for the five lakh grant. Hashim even went so far as to state that ‘not only the Moslems on this side of the House but also the Moslems opposite have the same sympathy as I have for the principle underlying this cut motion’.Footnote ²⁸ And Khan, for his part prefaced that he had ‘always been a wholehearted supporter of all reasonable claims of the scheduled castes men, not only because the Muslim masses and the scheduled castes masses stand on the same footing, but also in the interests of nation-building’.Footnote ²⁹

Finally, the Chief Minister, Fazlul Huq detailed all that his government had attempted to do in this regard, yet nevertheless conceded that not enough had been done. Huq recommitted Government to do its most for the education of Muslims and Scheduled Castes ‘in order to bring them on a line with other advanced communities in this country’.Footnote ³⁰ He entirely welcomed Das’ proposal for a Special Officer and the grant of five lakhs. Huq knew very well, from personal experience, the disabilities and disadvantages Scheduled Caste students endured:

Unlike representation in government employment, the demand for educational capital grants was not premised on a strict proportionality per se. Rather, fulfilling these demands was contingent on and reducible to the provision of financial resources: consider Das’ emphatic statement above that the ‘only thing required is money’. The discourse in the preceding discussion was therefore thoroughly imbued with the sensitivity that the allocation of provincial revenues was an entirely politicized terrain—Huq's reminder that they ‘do not belong to any particular caste or community’, that they must be spent ‘judiciously’.

Revenue expenditure was justified by what Das referred to as not only caste Hindu neglect, but their exploitation of Scheduled Caste labour. Scheduled Caste MLAs thus grounded their responses to the history of relations of caste inequality and untouchability in a view of commensuration that hinged fundamentally on material instantiation, and not forms of ritual demonstration. That is to say, within the logic of their demands, equality could only be demonstrated through transformations in budgetary allocations and employment opportunities.Footnote ³² Revenue fundamentally mediated the logic of equivalence that Anupama Rao, following Ernesto Laclau has identified as the presupposition of commensuration.Footnote ³³

If representation and education had thus far formed the crux of Scheduled Caste demands, it became increasingly apparent that they were not being met.Footnote ³⁴ A growing frustration with government, administration and the mechanisms of recruitment set in amongst the 25 Scheduled Caste supporters of the KPP-League run government, throwing into question their continued allegiance to the ministry, and raising the prospect of alliance with the Congress in the legislative opposition.

A want of confidence

In March 1938, M. K. Gandhi visited Calcutta, where he stayed with the Bose brothers. Subhas Chandra was President of the Indian National Congress at the time, and Sarat Chandra invited several Scheduled Caste MLAs to meet with Gandhi, amongst them, Mandal and Upendranath Barman. The meeting appeared to have been convened with the intent of wooing them into the Congress fold. Judging by his part in the conversation, Mandal seemed far from convinced of Congress’ commitment to the Scheduled Castes. He asked Gandhi, for instance, ‘Congress is an association of caste Hindus. How can we repose complete faith in it?’Footnote ³⁵ As an Independent, Mandal was wary of the Congress, even if willing to entertain discussions with them. There was however a premium placed on the autonomy of decision-making, and the increasing, if cautious, willingness to align with the Congress cannot be chalked up to political opportunism alone.Footnote ³⁶ A joint meeting of the All-Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation and the Calcutta Scheduled Caste League on 26 July of the same year for instance, did not include the senior leaders of the provincial Congress. The meeting proposed a reorganization of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly party (of which Mandal was the secretary), and ‘discussed ways and means of achieving unity among the Scheduled Caste members of the Bengal legislature. . .’.Footnote ³⁷

The withdrawal of their support was duly enacted in the assembly in a slew of no-confidence motions against cabinet ministers moved by Jogendranath Mandal, Tamizuddin Khan, M. Shamsuddin Ahmed, Promatha Ranjan Thakur, Abdul Hakeem and others on 2 August, 1938. Although these were ultimately defeated due solely to the support extended to the ministry by the 23 votes of the European group of legislators, the no-confidence debate articulated a fuller sense of what was at stake at this juncture.Footnote ³⁸ The reasons for resentment were hardly contained by the questions of representation and education alone although these were certainly focal points of the overall critique.

Promatha Ranjan Thakur's criticisms were directed pointedly at Mukunda Behari Mullick, the Scheduled Caste Minister of Co-operative Credit and Rural Indebtedness. Thakur alleged negligence on Mullick's part for his failure to undertake any significant schemes for the co-operative movement in Bengal. Government had restricted itself to establishing banks, whilst co-operative systems in education, agriculture, and crop-marketing for instance, had not been introduced and in their absence, agriculturalists did not receive a fair price for their products. Instead, they were ‘being exploited by the middlemen and the millowners and other capitalists’.Footnote ³⁹ Thakur alleged that the officers appointed to educate agriculturalists in co-operation were ill-equipped to do so, and that the proposed Bengal Co-operative Societies Bill which, if passed into law, would suppress the real spirit of the movement. Due to the contraction of credit supply – the unwillingness of money-lenders to extend credit, itself resulting from the formation of Debt Settlement Boards furnished by the Bengal Agricultural Debtors’ Act (which sought to diminish the amount of accumulated and impossible debt) cultivation had suffered and famine had been breaking out nearly every year.

Jogendranath Mandal's no-confidence speech was the most rhetorically charged of those surveyed here.Footnote ⁴¹ It was with a ‘mixed feeling’ that he had been ‘constrained to take part in the motion for no-confidence’, as on account of being from the same district, Barisal, Mandal had looked upon the Chief Minister Fazlul Huq with a special sense of hope and promise. Huq had aroused great expectations, given his pronounced and ‘virtuous intention of liquidating an iniquitous and unjust land system waging relentless crusades against the landlords and zamindars’. But, Mandal submitted, ‘today, I stand disillusioned’. He continued:

Invoking the Marxian heuristics of ‘class struggle, ‘the proletariat’ and ‘exploitation’ in the course of his address, Mandal charged that the ministry had no significant legislative enactment to its name: neither total nor partial prohibition had been introduced; tenancy legislation had been ‘relegated to a paper measure’ and the appointment of the Land Revenue Commission had put the process on hold; the ‘introduction of free primary education is further off than ever’; the pressing problem of the supply of rural credit which required immediate redress had not engaged the Cabinet as yet; lastly, the cost of administration had not been reduced. Mandal deplored the nepotism and favouritism under the Huq regime, mentioning, like Thakur before him, Mukunda Behari Mullick in particular, whose actions had alienated the majority of Scheduled Caste MLAs from the ministry. Finally, the Labour Minister had done precious little to solve the problem of labour unrest. Mandal's and Thakur's concerns thus far exceeded those of representation and education alone.Footnote ⁴³

Retracting support and switching to the opposition did not however immediately translate into a new-found confidence in the Congress.Footnote ⁴⁴ During yet another debate about communal representation in the services, the Congress opposition leader Sarat Chandra Bose conceded to competitive examinations being conducted within communities, the most accomplished candidates from which would be selected for the services. But he did not state his recommendations about the exact proportion of the total appointments to which each community would be entitled, the very matter at hand. As Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, the Finance Minister remarked in his response to Bose: ‘Sir, if the percentage is not fixed, how is it possible to merely fill the posts by holding examinations among the different communities?’.Footnote ⁴⁵ It was thus not entirely clear, precisely how the Congress expected to earn the trust of Scheduled Caste MLAs. In order to assess the attempts of Congress to enlist support from amongst the recently defected, Mandal's association with the Bose brothers is detailed below. If Mandal had turned on the ministry for a want of confidence, what future he envisioned with the Congress remains to be ascertained.

Mandal and the Congress

Mandal recalled in his autobiography that a familiarity and close friendship developed with the leader of the opposition, Sarat Chandra Bose, fairly early on after the constitution of the provincial assembly.Footnote ⁴⁶ Although initially associated with the Nationalist Party, Sarat Chandra had on several occasions commended Mandal's accomplishments to his brother. Mandal recalled how Subhas Chandra was taken in by his ‘honeyed behaviour, unwavering determination, and his singular devotion to service’, embracing him like one would a brother.Footnote ⁴⁷ On 3 May 1939, shortly after his impasse with the Gandhian faction of the Congress, Bose announced in Calcutta the formation of a new group within that party called the Forward Bloc. The purpose of this body was to provide a platform for radicals of all shades of opinion—‘presumably meaning Socialists, Communists, Royists, Kisan Sabhaists, et al.’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Mandal accompanied Subhas Chandra when he travelled to Barisal with the intention of garnering support for the recently established body. It is quite likely that Bose wanted to capitalize on Mandal's mass appeal within Barisal, thus during his welcome procession they sat alongside each other in the phaeton carriage that escorted them around town. Mandal accompanied him on his various public appearances. Although there is no record of their speeches during the campaign's main sabha, it was not insignificant that Mandal and Bose shared the same stage. Indeed, Mandal felt that even the distinguished personalities of Barisal, irrespective of caste, began to perceive him with admiration as a result of Bose's demonstration of confidence in him.Footnote ⁴⁹

It is not difficult to discern who, in the transactions between the two men, decided on the terms of engagement. Bose was older, though only by seven years, and was one of the most towering leaders on the national scene at the very highest echelons of the largest political party in British India. In Mandal's autobiography, it is Bose who commands and Mandal who obeys. The brothers appeared rather enamoured of him, referring to him as ‘sterling gold’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Despite such overtures, however, and their active support for Mandal's election to the Calcutta Corporation (a development to be discussed in due course), it was the same Sarat Chandra for instance who, whilst he and his brother were reaching out to Mandal, in a series of heated exchanges in private letters with the Chief Minister Fazlul Huq about the problem of communal percentages in the services no less, angrily referred to the category caste Hindu as ‘a stupid and misleading classification’, and Scheduled Caste as ‘an entity so artificial and unreal that no better label could be attached to it’.Footnote ⁵¹ Bose's virulent and unguarded disavowal of the very category Mandal represented leaves little doubt as to his private disposition even as the Congress publicly sought to garner Scheduled Caste MLAs’ confidence. For the leader of the Bengal Congress, the question of recognition did not even arise.

While on the face of it there appeared to be an understanding of mutual convenience, Mandal's relationship with the Bose brothers thus contained a contradiction even if considered simply in terms of the class analysis he increasingly seems to have adopted. During the Budget Discussion in early 1939 he excoriated the Finance Minister, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, for ‘defending the interests of the class of expropriators’, the irony being that the Bose brothers and Congress were unavoidably representative of the very same.

Mandal chastised Sarkar for his failure to ‘grapple with the problems of Agriculture and Rural Development, of national and industrial reconstruction, of irrigation and public utility’.Footnote ⁵³ The Budget had provided for the construction of various buildings in predominantly urban areas, and allocated what seemed to many Scheduled Caste legislators the entirely disproportionate and misplaced provision of funds to already well-established institutions. A common refrain amongst those of them in opposition, including Mandal, was that they would not have grudged such expenditure if it had been accompanied with a similar concern for their own demands.Footnote ⁵⁴ Regarding the long-promised grant of Rs. 5 lakhs for education, Mandal found it unfortunate that no constructive scheme for expenditure had been forthcoming, moreover, that the salaries of the administrative staff in this programme were allegedly to be paid out of this sum. He ended by informing the assembly of matters crucial to the lives of agriculturalists in northern Barisal. Recurrent flooding combined with the absence of embankments and drainage had rendered people homeless and destitute. The problem of the overgrowth of water-hyacinths in such conditions worsened the scope for production. Mandal argued that such developments, in the Chief-Minister's own district no less, required urgent state intervention. His concerns, both in the assembly and outside, were thus deeply intertwined with those of smallholding, family-based peasant cultivators. In addition to his attempts to rejuvenate the Bhegai Halder School, Mandal had gone to great lengths to ensure the construction of embankments in Barisal that benefitted agriculturalists, whose fields were otherwise inundated by unpredictable and annual flooding, leading to the loss of entire seasons of crops. On another occasion, Mandal facilitated the digging of a long-promised one-mile-long irrigation canal and adjoining road—even going as far as to exhort residents to withhold paying taxes, and courting arrest upon a District Official's accusation that he was encouraging circumvention of the law. As a result of these efforts, a significant amount of land was irrigated.Footnote ⁵⁵ Additionally, during the Demands for Grants session of the same year, Mandal raised a discussion about the failure of the Government to provide rural credit in wake of the devastation wreaked by the previous year's floods and the formation of Debt Settlement Boards. He had personal knowledge of the acute distress prevalent in North Bakarganj and South Faridpur where lands remained fallow ‘for want of capital, to meet the cost of seeds and other requisites’. The miniscule amount of Rs. 5 per capita that Government agricultural loans forwarded did not even cover the cost of ploughing, let alone seeding and weeding. As local money-lenders withheld credit as a result of the Debt Settlement Boards, an ‘indescribable havoc’ reigned in the money markets of the villages as cultivators found it impossible to procure the very loans that locked them into a system of perpetual indebtedness. As a result, the Agricultural Debtors Act was perceived by creditors and debtors alike, even though it was intended for the latter's benefit, as a machinery of ‘tyranny and repression’. Moreover, the existing co-operative banks were failing in their intended function. Mandal thus appealed to Mukunda Behari Mullick, the minister in charge of the department in question, to ‘find out some means to supply rural credit. Of all the problems of the day it is of supreme importance. No distress is more acute, no necessity is more pressing’.

Indeed, several other Scheduled Caste MLAs touched on the abject conditions of the peasantry, and the perceived callousness with which the budget regarded their plight, alongside, to be sure, their grievances about education and representation. Upendranath Edbar, for instance, advocated the advancing of agricultural loans to the cultivators to a greater degree than ever, due the denial of credit by mahajans in the wake of the setting up of debt conciliation boards. This had not been done. Instead, inexplicable and undue expenditure had been directed towards ‘town and city hospitals. . .the Universities, and the Colleges and such other things which exclusively concern the upper and middle classes’. Jagat Chandra Mandal felt that as 90 per cent of Bengal comprised the peasantry, 90 per cent of the total revenue receipts of 13 crores ‘should be spent for the causes of the poor and hungry millions living in mufassil areas. . .’ and ‘works ameliorating the educational, economic, political and social conditions of these people’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Prem Hari Barma supported Mandal's motion on a later date for the provision of rural credit, adding that if Government failed to do so, cultivators would increasingly be pressed to part with their land holdings.Footnote ⁵⁷

Mandal's association with the Congress, even if a contradiction in class terms, indicated then his as yet optimistic and accommodative stance on matters of difference internal to the Hindu community. He was opposed for instance, to constructing separate hostels for Scheduled Caste students: this ‘vivisection of the Hindu community which will promote the invidious distinction between the Scheduled Castes and the Caste Hindus instead of placing them on the footing of complete equality of treatment’.Footnote ⁵⁸ Nevertheless, he qualified that such an assertion of difference would be ‘indispensable and necessary, if and when the caste Hindu students refuse to live jointly with those of the Scheduled Castes’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Likewise, Mandal expressed a measured resistance to the principle of separatism about the Calcutta Municipal Bill, a legislation that would introduce separate electorates within the Calcutta Corporation. It is entirely plausible that he perceived the potential for his own election to the municipal council with the support of the Bose brothers through the joint-electorate. In contrast to Birat Chandra Mandal who held that separate electorates were necessary so that ‘Bengal caste Hindus may learn a lesson’,Footnote ⁶⁰ Jogendranath argued that separate electorates were antithetical to democracy and hindered the ‘creation and development of a healthy atmosphere that is most congenial to the growth of national advancement’. Mandal was willing to forgive past injustices and to look beyond exacting revenge. ‘It might be that the Calcutta Corporation have done some wrong to the Scheduled Castes as well as the Muhammadans but should one wrong be remedied by the commission of another wrong? Can we expect to see justice coming out of vengeance?’. Mandal thus appealed to the Coalition party to not be driven by ‘communal sentiments alone and a spirit of antagonism’—assuring the assembly that the day was not far when Scheduled Castes and Muhammadans would in combination ‘fight tooth and nail for democratic Government, where no communal consideration will vitiate the political atmosphere. . .Sir, before I conclude, I do declare and declare without any fear of contradiction that democracy is essentially necessary for the prosperity and advancement of Muhammadans and scheduled castes that mostly constitute the peasantry and the proletariat of Bengal’.Footnote ⁶¹

Frustrated demands

If Scheduled Caste MLAs had long maintained that caste Hindu discrimination was the main reason for their communities’ socio-economic backwardness, they increasingly sought other explanations for their continuing under-representation.Footnote ⁶² The no-confidence motions brought to the fore the question of why a KPP-Muslim League government avowedly sympathetic to their demands could not ensure the representation of Scheduled Castes in the services. Despite their majority however, neither did Muslim MLAs feel as though they were receiving their fair share. Maulvi MD. Mozammel Huq for instance complained of what he called an ‘under-Government. . . . If the Government order [sic] something to be done in a particular way, the under-Government do not comply and have their own way with it. This is why the Government above cannot do anything. It is for the same reason that the claims of the Moslems with regard to appointments are being trampled underfoot’.Footnote ⁶³

Indeed, Mandal recalled that when the question of reservations for Muslims came up in legislative debate, he along with other Scheduled Caste MLAs decided to discuss the matter of similar reservations for their own with the Governor. He wrote that it was in fact the ‘caste Hindu MLAs’Footnote ⁶⁴ who desired the demand for reservations for Scheduled Castes in government employment be withheld altogether. Mandal apprised his colleagues of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party regarding their opposition, upon which they collectively drafted a memorandum addressed to the Governor and the Chief Minister demanding that reservations be implemented for them as well.

Thus, even if Scheduled Caste MLAs turned critical of the sincerity of the coalition's promises, such a realization was not followed by the conclusion that any better could be expected of the Congress.Footnote ⁶⁵ When the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill came up for discussion once again later in the year with a recalibrated set of proposals for instance, they bemoaned how they had become wedged between the two major political blocs in the assembly.Footnote ⁶⁶ Another explanation became increasingly prominent in responses to questions tabled by Scheduled Caste MLAs as to why their candidates were not being recruited according to the communal ratio rules (although these rules were still being formalized)—the plea that a sufficient number of qualified or ‘suitable candidates’ were not found from amongst the Scheduled Castes. Set against the ongoing debate about the decline in administrative efficiency since provincial autonomy, there is considerable evidence that prominent officials, including the Governor, held the view that the communal ratio had seriously compromised the efficacy of administration's function, in part, because of the unavailability of suitably qualified candidates for the posts reserved for Muslims and Scheduled Castes. Muslim and Scheduled Caste leaders countered with the claim that the candidate most academically accomplished (most likely to be caste Hindus) did not necessarily inspire the most confidence and trust from the majority of the people (Muslims and Scheduled Castes), and thus lacked a certain communal sympathy in the execution of public service.Footnote ⁶⁷ Based on the entirely subjective value judgments of recruiting authorities, invoking this clause would be heatedly debated in the months to come. Conversely, it was undeniable that a greater number of Scheduled Caste candidates were indeed entering the services compared with their entirely negligible numbers earlier, even if, in the majority of cases, not up to the designated 15 per cent which the communal ratio rules had established.

The 1940 budget discussion elicited the same litany of complaints as in past years. The leadership was particularly stung by the absence of any separate allocation of funds for education in a general education budget of over 1.5 crores.Footnote ⁶⁸ Furthermore, queries regarding the communal ratio in public services brought forth conflicting evidence. An enquiry into Government-aided educational institutions revealed that there was but one Scheduled Caste clerk amongst the total number of teachers and clerks in ten different schools and colleges in Dacca—that is to say, there was not a single Scheduled Caste teacher at any of these institutions. The staff at these institutions was composed almost entirely of caste Hindus and Muslims. On the other hand, [one exception was] Rasik Lal Biswas’ question to the much maligned H. S. Suhrawardy, Muslim League Minister of the Commerce and Labour Department, showed that Scheduled Caste appointments since 1937 in his department nearly amounted to the stipulated 15 per cent. Banku Behari Mondal's enquiry into the communal ratio of the clerks in the Criminal Courts of Asansol showed that 16 were caste Hindus, 5 were Muslims, and 1 was of the Scheduled Castes. The Civil Courts of the same subdivision were composed of 14 caste Hindu clerks, 5 Muslims and no Scheduled Castes. If there was clear yet sparse evidence of the will to ensure that Scheduled Castes were recruited to the services, there was also ample evidence that their candidates were not receiving their due share.Footnote ⁶⁹ Several MLAs therefore pushed Nazimuddin on whether the phrase ‘provided suitable candidates are not available from the Scheduled Castes community’ issued in a Government circular to recruiting authorities was being used as a loophole to deliberately deprive their candidates of appointments. This evidently was the case, as Nazimuddin replied that Government was considering the potential interpretations given to the phrase over the course of the coming month.Footnote ⁷⁰

A certain alignment of the opinions of Scheduled Caste and Muslim leaders thus marked the course of legislative debate during these years.Footnote ⁷¹ As with the implementation of the communal ratio, this was the case in connection with two of the most controversial and debated legislations of this period: the Secondary Education Bill and the Land Revenue Commission. The former proposed to transfer decision-making powers regarding secondary education from Calcutta University to a board constituted through proportional representation, and the latter's recommendations sought to vest land rights with the cultivators themselves, thus replacing the extant structure of Permanent Settlement bolstered landlordism. In both instances, even if there were some exceptions, Scheduled Caste and Muslim MLAs predominantly pitted themselves against the protestations of their caste Hindu colleagues. Casey wrote of the Secondary Education Bill that, ‘They are afraid that Dr. S.P.M. would gerrymander the position (if there were joint electorates) so that his stooges would be elected (Hindu, Muslim or Scheduled)—who, although Muslim or Scheduled, would not in fact adequately represent their fellows. They don't think that joint electorates would result in the return of individuals acceptable to themselves (Muslims and Scheduled Classes)’.Footnote ⁷²

Even as legislative debate brought forth irrefutable evidence of the reluctance to recruit Scheduled Caste candidates up to the requisite level, Mandal's own political fortunes grew considerably as a result of his election to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation with the support of the Bose brothers and Congress in 1940. This constituted the very apogee of his relationship with that party as Sarat Chandra nominated him for one of the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes. His appeal for votes to the municipality residents described his ongoing work and his life's sole purpose as the ‘removal of distinctions and inequality between Caste Hindus and Scheduled Caste Hindus and the construction of a powerful indivisible Hindu society’.Footnote ⁷³ It was at his single-minded effort, he explained, that the Independent Scheduled Castes group had been founded, and this group now worked along with the Opposition in the assembly. He was singular amongst those who had moved no-confidence motions against the Huq ministry, and he had opposed separate electorates in the municipality elections. Once elected, however, Mandal's strategic cooperation with Congress, and the importance of his being able to retain autonomy from party dictates, acquired meaning when, due to his support of the demand for the reservation of five per cent of appointments in the Calcutta Corporation, he voted against the stand taken by the Congress Municipal Association.Footnote ⁷⁴

Assembly debate during the years 1940 and 1941 continued to reflect the contradiction of a political class pronouncedly sympathetic to Scheduled Caste demands and the expression of just the opposite in the data presented at the assembly.Footnote ⁷⁵ Whereas education had primarily been discussed with reference to Scheduled Caste students, Dhananjoy Roy's question regarding the Education Department revealed some startling evidence about the educational personnel of the province—there were only three Scheduled Caste individuals in a service staff of more than 400 employees.Footnote ⁷⁶ Despite such stark discrepancies however, in the ensuing years a pattern gradually emerged. Bandyopadhyay's observation that ‘it was beyond the ability of individual ministers to make any effective intervention’Footnote ⁷⁷ does not relate to the actual situation in several instances. As an exception to the general tendency, Mukunda Behari Mullick submitted a statement showing that, of 232 vacancies in his department over the previous three years, Scheduled Caste applicants had secured 36, a figure exceeding the mandate of 15 per cent.Footnote ⁷⁸ Evidently, Mullick must have gone out of his way to ensure such a development. Similarly, the Jute Regulation Department under Tamizuddin Khan reported figures in some cases in excess of the designated ratio.Footnote ⁷⁹ Fazlul Huq likewise provided evidence of increased recruitment of Scheduled Caste police constables and sub-inspectors in the Dacca Range.Footnote ⁸⁰ It was not entirely true, then, that if indeed a political will existed to make good on promises, it could not be exercised with the desired results. In such cases, more often than not, it was in departments under Muslim or Scheduled Caste ministers that the communal ratio was observed.

In contrast, when pressed by Kshetra Nath Singha as to why Scheduled Castes were almost entirely excluded from serving in the Court of Wards estates, Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy, one of Bengal's wealthiest caste Hindu landowners and the Minister of Revenue responded:

Roy's refusal to ‘recognize that barrier’ typified the caste Hindu leader's response to Scheduled Caste demands. That is to say, it was rarely the case that Muslim MLAs refused the desired recognition. Singha's query was not unwarranted: Sir Bijoy's revenue department had not recruited a single Scheduled Caste candidate in the first four years of provincial autonomy. Roy also showed that of 100 Managers, Tahsildars, and Muhuries in the Courts of Wards Estates of Bakarganj, only one, and that too, a muhurir, was of the Scheduled Castes.Footnote ⁸²

The 1941 census

Perhaps the most egregious instance of caste Hindu leaders’ misapprehension (of which there were many others throughout the course of legislative debate) was the manner in which the 1941 census was conducted, a subject that to my mind has not received sufficient attention in the extant historiography.Footnote ⁸³ Responding to Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy's motion about the Census Expenses Contribution Bill, Kshetra Nath Singha complained that, ‘enumerators and supervisors are being taken from the caste Hindus but none from the Scheduled Castes, although there is no scarcity of that in our community’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Despite paying taxes, Singha alleged, Scheduled Castes were not being appointed amongst the ranks of enumerators. A letter by Mullick, and a statement by Mandal—political opponents at various points in their respective careers—both reflecting on the 1941 census, corroborate that even while seeking the confidence of Scheduled Caste leaders, the Congress and Mahasabha were ensuring that the numerical strength of their political community was eroded. These parties appear to have exerted a very active influence in manipulating Scheduled Caste numbers.

Amongst a host of other grievances against the caste Hindus detailed in a letter to Sir Stafford Cripps, the Labour politician tasked with securing Indian cooperation in the war effort, Mullick registered a quite remarkable one, if the full implications of his allegations are drawn out. Having criticized the Congress for setting up ‘hench-men of theirs against the true representatives of the Scheduled Castes only to create disunion, misunderstanding and confusion’ during the 1936–1937 elections in both the provincial and central legislatures, Mullick described the 1941 census as follows:

Mandal had similarly picked up on this manipulation of census data in a statement submitted to The Statesman several years later. Comparing the 1931 and 1941 censuses, he noted how, over this ten-year period, the Scheduled Caste population in Bengal had declined by more than 18 lakhs. In Calcutta alone, when in 1931 there resided a population of 107,194, by 1941, there remained only 55,000. Mandal challenged Syamaprasad Mukherjee's claim in the press that the Mahasabha had not made any gains in their campaign to urge the populace to withhold their caste from amongst the Scheduled Castes during the 1941 enumeration—a claim that Mandal held as nothing but a sinister distortion of the truth.Footnote ⁸⁶ Indeed, when the total population of Bengal between 1931 and 1941 increased from 51,087,338 to 61,460,377, the Depressed Classes numbered 8,390,942 in 1931, and the Scheduled Castes numbered 7,597,404, a not insignificant decline of 793,538.Footnote ⁸⁷ Rasik Lal Biswas thus alleged in the Assembly during a discussion about General Administration that the ‘real intention’ behind reducing Scheduled Caste numbers was to deliberately subvert the procedures by which they could claim their rights to employment and a political future—to ‘spoil the interests of our community’.Footnote ⁸⁸ At a later date, Madhusudan Sarkar argued that due to the ‘mischievous activities and mischievous propaganda of some organized bodies during the last census operations’ he had been deprived of the opportunity to prove by ‘facts and figures’ the progress of Scheduled Castes in education, their numerical strength in the province, and their actual economic and political situation, what the house already knew—their overwhelming poverty and lack of education.Footnote ⁸⁹

The census has, in South Asian historiography, been granted enormous explanatory power in terms of its status as one of the supreme artifacts of colonial domination.Footnote ⁹⁰ Drawing on and extending the work of Michel Foucault, scholars have emphasized how colonial subjects came to inhabit and organize their communities in accordance with the categories fashioned by colonial rulers and administrators. But the life of the 1941 census recounted above, speaks of an altogether different logic not solely organized across the poles of colonial difference. Rather, in this instance, the two main Hindu political organizations of Bengal under the pretext of conferring an idealized unity to the Hindu community sought to minimize the numerical strength of the Scheduled Castes. Without wishing to deny the very powerful insights of scholars who have drawn attention to the reification colonial censuses wrought on Indian society, it appears that the 1941 census furnishes evidence of how actors, even while partaking of the enumerative rationality such technologies enshrined, were nevertheless fully capable of subverting the same to decisively determine their execution. Mandal was undoubtedly privy to this manipulation of census data, and indeed, would bring it to bear on his argument against the partition of Bengal in 1947. Moreover, he would increasingly have had to confront the contradiction of continuing an alliance with the Congress, howsoever strategic, in the face of evidence of its functionaries actively working to deflate the Scheduled Caste population.

Mandal's turning away

Crisis struck Huq's ministry once again towards the latter half of 1941, which once resolved, emerged drastically transformed. Due largely to the infighting between Huq, Nazimuddin, Suhrawardy, and Jinnah, and the conflicting aspirations to power amongst the Congress, KPP, and the Muslim League, the moment represented a decisive parting of ways between Huq and the League.Footnote ⁹¹ Huq agreed to lead a coalition comprising the majority of the opposition, including two of the most dominant figures in public life, Sarat Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mukherjee. This was the Huq of Hindu Bengal's dreams. Unfortunately, on 11 December 1941, the coalition's prospects suffered a drastic setback with the detention of Sarat Chandra Bose under the Defence of India Rules and his subsequent imprisonment in a Madras Jail.

Mandal was ‘overcome with sadness and disappointment’ upon hearing of Bose's arrest, not least because due to the latter's absence, his hopes of becoming a minister vanished.Footnote ⁹² Several details stood out in his memory of the Syama-Huq ministry. Whereas in the first Huq ministry, there were two Scheduled Caste ministers, presently, there was only one—Upendranath Barman, a Rajbangshi MLA from Jalpaiguri. Mukherjee and Huq had ventured assurances that another Scheduled Caste minister would be selected in the near future, but when the better part of a year passed Mandal realized that they were trying to ‘hoax’ the majority of the Scheduled Caste MLAs, moreover, claiming that they tried through various strategies to ‘sow disunity’ amongst them.Footnote ⁹³ As a consequence he noted that a deep discontent had set in amongst not only the Scheduled Caste MLAs, but also the wider community. Namasudras in particular were agitated over why not a single one of their 13 MLAs had been chosen—so much so that, according to Mandal, it became difficult for them to ‘show their faces’. As secretary of the Independent Scheduled Castes Assembly Party, he received resolutions from meetings held all over the province with the following near identical demand: ‘This sabha expresses its deep distress about a Scheduled Caste minister not having been appointed within the year, and if necessary for Scheduled Caste interests, informs Scheduled Caste MLAs of its demand that they break the present ministry with help of the opposition, and form a new ministry’.Footnote ⁹⁴

Mandal's disenchantment with the Congress set in over the course of late 1941 and 1942. Not only were the Bose brothers no longer around to patronize him, but his earlier misgivings about the Congress developed into public disavowal for a number of reasons, not least being the absence of a Namasudra minister on a cabinet supported by that party. The reconfiguration of the ministry, which included Santosh Kumar Basu and Pramathnath Banerjee, both Congressmen of the Bose group as well as Syamaprasad Mukherjee, did not mean that they worked to give effect to Scheduled Caste MLAs’ demands. As Finance Minister, and chief representative of a Hindu nationalist organization extolling the virtues of Hindu sangathan, Mukherjee provided 1.5 lakhs towards annual expenditure on Scheduled Caste education, a sum nearly unanimously acknowledged as inadequate. Radhanath Das, initially elected a Congressite, thus took particular issue with the fact that when those who currently sat on the Treasury Bench were in opposition, they had on innumerable occasions invited greater attention by Government towards Scheduled Caste education, yet now these very same members had provided a ‘very considerably paltry sum’.Footnote ⁹⁵ Mukherjee, moreover, had shown a keen interest and provided the impetus for a little known study of public administration in Bengal by a Calcutta University Ph.D. graduate, Naresh Chandra Roy, who sought to demonstrate how administrative inefficiency was largely a consequence of what he termed the ‘great evil’ of the communal ratio.Footnote ⁹⁶

By the middle of 1942, Mandal began laying the groundwork to try and break the impasse in which Scheduled Caste MLAs found themselves. He had come to the conclusion that Congress was ‘not especially keen to ensure the welfare of these neglected communities’.Footnote ⁹⁷ Along with Rasiklal Biswas and several others, he attended the founding meeting of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation in Nagpur held on 17–19 July that year. As is well known, convened on an initiative by B. R. Ambedkar, the All India Scheduled Caste Federation billed itself as the first and only national political organization representing the Scheduled Castes, and to this end the meeting sought to galvanize various provincial organizations into a unified body. The very fact of Mandal's presence at the gathering indubitably suggested his rejection of the Congress. The meeting resolved that they would not accept any government or constitution that did not earn their consent; that did not perceive the Scheduled Castes and caste Hindus as separate and autonomous elements in national political life; and, moreover, that did not have laws under which they could genuinely feel confident of their existence. In consonance with Mandal's fairly sustained appeals for relieving agrarian distress, the conference advocated a massive government-backed redistribution of land to landless Scheduled Caste cultivators. The conference (sammelan) outlined the following amongst other demands that had to be included in any future considerations of a new political constitution:

1. 1) In consultation with the Scheduled Caste community, every provincial government would have to set aside a certain proportion of monies for the primary and higher education of Scheduled Caste students in advance of all other budgetary allocations.

2. 2) Arrangements such that every provincial government include the true representatives of the Scheduled Castes according to their proportion of the population both in the assembly and gram sabhas.

3. 3) Arrangements such that the Scheduled Castes would receive employment in government services according to their proportion of the population.

4. 4) Arrangements such that every central and provincial public service commission contain Scheduled Caste representatives.

The sammelan further resolved that whereas the majority of Scheduled Castes were cultivators, day-labourers and workers, relieving them from their economic hardship would entail a massive government-backed resettlement of land. To this end, the sammelan advocated the foundation of a Commission that would purchase land to be redistributed to landless Scheduled Caste cultivators. This Commission would receive 5 crores annually to undertake the desired transformation. Even in formative stages, the All India Scheduled Caste Federation thus sought to forge questions of both political and economic equality.Footnote ⁹⁸

Indeed, Mandal had consistently supported legislation that would ease the various burdens under which they laboured. For instance, he had spoken at some length during a Demand for Grant discussion about various inconsistencies and difficulties to which the Jute Regulation Act had given rise. Mandal acknowledged that the Act had been passed with the cultivator's interests in mind, but having considered its consequences at some length, argued that it had done more harm than good. Claiming an intimate acquaintance with the jute-cultivators, this enabled him, he argued, ‘to assess whether the Act had benefitted the intended recipients or not far better than the “darling boys of wealthy homes”’ ministry. He proceeded by pointing out several contradictions in both the framing and implementation of the law: Firstly, even though jute-cultivators were not allowed to cultivate more than a third of their land, they were solely dependent for realizing the value of their product on jute-businessmen. Secondly, as the remaining two-thirds of their land would remain fallow, they would have to subsist on the bare minimum of profits earned on the cultivated third. Thirdly, the cycles of cultivation being entirely dependent on rainfall, combined with the system of licensing the act had introduced, would wreak havoc on the jute cultivator. Mandal explained that since the typical cultivator worked on plots at varying elevations that were often separated from each other by as much as a mile and a half in some instances, the confluence of these constraints would ensure that the cultivators might under certain circumstances be able to sow significantly less than the one-third cap that the Act had placed on cultivation. Jute-cultivators depended on realizing the value of their product to pay rent, loans, and purchasing the basics for their existence like salt and oil—regulation, such as had occurred, would consequently subject them to even greater economic insecurity than they were already accustomed. As prices were determined not by government but by the Jute Mill Association—cultivators would have to sell at whatever price the jute-businessmen would set.

Mandal had recently travelled to the mofussil in Barisal, Faridpur and Khulna, and having met with notables amongst the ‘Hindu-Mussalman farming community’, reported that, despite the majority of them being supporters of the Huq ministry, they were up in arms over how the regulation had impacted their lives.Footnote ⁹⁹ In early 1943, in the context of the acute crisis of food supplies that had befallen the province, just weeks before the Syama-Huq ministry toppled, Mandal drew attention in the assembly to how the crisis would affect the Scheduled Castes.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Days later he rose to elucidate the inequities in the adhi barga and dhanyakarari systems of commuting rent, and to demand the abolition of these practices. In this system, cultivators turned over half of the produce from the land they worked to their zamindars in lieu of rent. Mandal doubted whether the Revenue Minister, the Congressite Forward Bloc representative Pramathnath Banerjee, had any personal experience or understanding of what difficulties such forms of rent-collection placed on the praja. Whereas under previous land laws, prajas had the option of circumventing these norms, the 1928 land laws had unfortunately omitted the provision under which they could do so. Questions might indeed be raised, Mandal conceded, as to why prajas had not taken advantage of the provision when it had existed. But there were, he returned, many reasons for this—amongst which he included the false promises zamindars routinely extended to the prajas.

On many occasions, Brahmin zamindars, taking hold of their sacred thread and embracing them, would plead with their prajas, ‘We will not harm you, don't take recourse to section 40 [the particular law in question]’. Mandal knew that when the Chief Minister Fazlul Huq visited his native Barisal, thousands of prajas approached him with the plea that he abolish dhanyakarari. And he himself knew personally that prajas in Barisal, Faridpur, Dhaka, Khulna and Mymensingh, had drafted innumerable petitions desirous of repealing barga and dhanyakarari—indeed, he had received several of these, signed by thousands from Barisal. This was why he represented their pleas in the assembly, imploring that section 40 be reinstated such that in place of produce rent, prajas would be able to pay their dues in cash. This surely constitutes evidence of not only their concerns, but Mandal's attempt to bring them to the attention of the assembly.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Shortly thereafter, he followed with a motion to discuss the failure of Government to ‘fix a minimum price of jute at a profitable price’ and to ‘raise the price of jute to ameliorate the condition of the jute-growers’. He contextualized his cut motion with reference to the war and its effects on the prices of commodities—and the resultant strain it had placed on jute-cultivators whose lands were predominantly sown with that crop. Mandal rehearsed how the coalition supporting the ministry had discussed ‘fixing a minimum price last September’, but sadly, not even an effort had been made since then to give effect to the same. According to him, the price of jute, given the strained economic circumstances, was no less of a problem than others they faced.Footnote ¹⁰² It is possible to multiply such examples of his concern both in and outside the assembly. Such interventions suggest a conscience deeply anguished by the destitution it witnessed.

In his last major contribution to legislative debate before the ministry was reconstituted once again, and this time with him as a minister, Mandal delivered an exceptionally angry and accusatory address regarding communal representation. He pointedly accused members of the ministry—Fazlul Huq, Syamaprasad Mukherjee, and followers of ‘my leader’ Sarat Chandra Bose, for their hand in the matter. However, Mandal regarded Huq somewhat distinctly from others in the ministry, given his long-standing reputation as a ‘messenger of democracy’. He still held out hope that Huq would not be party to policies that seemed to want to ‘destroy the Scheduled Castes’ existence’.Footnote ¹⁰³ And his reasons are quite pertinent: ‘The existence of the Scheduled Castes is necessary for his own. This the Muslim community understands. Caste Hindus want to absolutely annihilate them, but it would not be reasonable for the Muslim community to adopt such a spirit’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Mandal continued,

Mandal had thus clearly retracted his earlier more favourable disposition towards the Congress. Within a matter of weeks he would become a minister in the Nazimuddin ministry and orchestrate the long-elusive unity of Scheduled Caste MLAs in support of the same. As his criticisms above suggest, even if they had in the past held the KPP and Muslim League leaders partly responsible for the plight of their communities, the predominant burden of responsibility more often than not lay with Congress and the Mahasabha.