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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2023
Chapter 4 examines how neoliberal development in West Bengal affected various identity markers to explain the marginalization of Bengali Muslims. English and Hindi became the privileged languages of global/national capital, effectively turning Bangla into a provincial, backward language in the popular mind. The decline of class politics and the rise of identity politics brought to the surface a kind of anti-Muslim sentiment informed by caste. The everyday marginalization of Bengali Muslims, on the one hand, relies on caste discrimination and ghrina (disgust) that reinforces the exclusion of Bengali Muslims, and on the other, is a product of conflating Bengali Muslims with Bangladeshis, effectively making them invisible, and hence justifying the lack of safety nets available to them. Using a variety of qualitative methods and a comparative analysis between West Bengal and Bangladesh regarding the hold of Bengali culture in the contemporary period, the chapter shows the various ways in which neoliberal ideas impact Bengali identity.
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