Civil society in Bengal: The postcolonial conundrum

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to interrogate the concept of civil society in the postcolonial context of Bengal. Under colonialism the English educated Bengali elite engaged with colonialism in a critical and creative manner and played a crucial role in the making of civil society, public institutions and a new nation. All these overlapped and reinforced each other. This article critiques the works of the Subaltern school scholars, Partha Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakraborty for discounting the role of civil society in the history of Bengal.

KEYWORDS:

• Bengali middle class
• civil society
• communist regimes
• democracy
• nation
• people
• political hegemony
• populism
• public institutions
• public intellectuals
• public sphere
• state

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to all the participants of the seminar on civil society in South Asia organized by the Aga Khan University, London at Hyderabad in 2018.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).