Baijayanti Chatterjee
Assistant Professor of History, Seth Anandram Jaipuria College, Calcutta University.
ORCID: 0000-0003-1176-6557. Email: chatterjeebaijayanti@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.04
Abstract
This article sets out to dismiss the European notion of a lazy and static Bengali perennially averse to movement, by looking at transport networks, mobility and mobile groups in eighteenth century Bengal. The article argues that Bengali society was highly mobile, owing to the presence of an efficient system of transport by land and water which sustained movement. The so-called ‘indolence’ of the Bengali and his reluctance for movement was in fact a ‘myth’ created by the Europeans with a vested interest to disparage native society and to justify European domination over Bengal.
Keywords: Colonial myth-making, transport & mobility, eighteenth-century Bengal