Reclaiming Rajarhat: Bengaliness, economic nativism and cultural insiderism

The rapid development of Rajarhat, West Bengal into a ‘global city’ has attracted both skilled and unskilled migrants. Amidst economic precarity and social polarisation, ethnicity-based identity politics are easily weaponised by a section of the Bengali population, in order to deflect public attention away from the political economy and towards those perceived as ‘outsiders’ – an empty signifier that refers to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and financially weaker migrants. The ‘insider’ embodies a profound sense of belonging to an imagined Bengali community, whilst the ‘outsider’ is perceived as a threat to Bengali culture and livelihood. Through a social media analysis of comments and videos posted on the Facebook page of Banglapokkho, a civil society organisation in West Bengal that advocates for ‘putting Bengalis first’, this article examines how an insider/outsider impulse unfolds as a symptom of fissures in community relations. The authors argue that what has transpired in Rajarhat between Bengalis and non-Bengalis, through a narrative of ‘reclamation’ and its ethnolinguistic framing, is a function of a specific economic order shaped by the global flows of capital and the ensuing economic precarity, which must be understood with reference to the intersectionality of class and ethnicity.