In the drawing rooms and Instagram feeds of liberal Kolkata, Adivasi culture enjoys a special status. It is "ethnic" in precisely the right way — never threatening, always aesthetic. The delicate silver jewellery from Jharkhand or Odisha becomes the perfect accessory, a subtle nod to one's progressive tastes. Adivasi motifs printed on a Tant or Baluchari sari, or woven into the border of a kurta, signal just the correct amount of cosmopolitan chic. "How vibrant," the upper-caste Bengali antel (that self-styled intellectual) exclaims, posting photos from a handicraft fair or a curated "tribal" fashion event. It communicates refinement, cultural openness, and a fashionable distance from crass majoritarianism.This love for the exotic Other is selective and safe. It romanticizes Adivasi life as timeless, artistic, and consumable — something to be incorporated into Savarna wardrobes and lifestyles without disturbing the hierarchies that structure everyday Bengal.
Yet the same voices fall eerily silent when Adivasi or Dalit writers, poets, thinkers, and organic intellectuals face attack from within their own Savarna circles. When a Brahmin or upper-caste critic, academic, or public figure dismisses, mocks, or marginalizes the work of a Kalyani Thakur Charal, a Manju Bala, or any number of Dalit-Bahujan articulators from Bengal's margins, the liberal antel network often looks the other way. There are no spirited Facebook posts, no solidarity statements, no op-eds decrying casteist gatekeeping in literature or academia. The outrage machine that activates instantly against Hindutva or "fascism" stalls when the perpetrator shares the same caste and class networks.
This is not mere inconsistency. It reveals the enduring power of Brahminical caste solidarity — an invisible but potent social glue that protects privilege. Upper-caste Bengalis, particularly Brahmins and other Savarna groups that have historically dominated Kolkata's bhadralok culture, share the same schools (the elite institutions of South Kolkata and beyond), the same colleges (Presidency, Jadavpur, St. Xavier's in their heyday), the same cultural references, and the same networks of influence in publishing, media, academia, and NGOs. When one of "their own" is challenged by a voice from below — whether it's an Adivasi critique of development-induced displacement or a Dalit writer's unsparing account of everyday humiliation — the instinct is often to close ranks. Solidarity here is not abstract humanism; it is networked self-preservation.
Bengal has long prided itself on its progressive exceptionalism. The Left's long rule supposedly submerged caste under class. The bhadralok liberal claims to be "casteless," speaking fluently of subalternity, Ambedkar (selectively), and intersectionality while rarely interrogating their own over-representation in positions of cultural and intellectual power. Meanwhile, Dalit and Adivasi literatures in Bangla — rich with resistance, lived pain, and alternative aesthetics — struggle for mainstream recognition. Upper-caste appropriation of folk forms (Baul, Fakir traditions, or tribal motifs) often erases the caste labor and exclusion behind them. The romanticization of the Adivasi as a cultural resource coexists comfortably with the dismissal of Adivasi or Dalit agency when it demands structural change.
This pattern is not unique to Bengal, but it is particularly stark here because of the cultivated myth of castelessness. The antel can wax eloquent about global decolonization or Indigenous rights abroad, yet remain invested in the quiet maintenance of local hierarchies. Attacking caste privilege within one's own ecosystem risks social ostracism, lost invitations to adda sessions, or diminished access to the same schools and colleges that reproduced their advantage. Far easier to wear the ethnic jewellery and stay silent.
True solidarity would require more than aesthetic consumption. It would demand listening to — and defending — the uncomfortable voices of Dalit and Adivasi intellectuals even (especially) when they critique Savarna liberalism itself. It would mean examining how networks of schooling, marriage, and professional gatekeeping continue to function as caste capital. It would require the liberal Kolkata antel to risk something real: their own comfort, their carefully curated progressive brand, and the solidarity that has protected their caste-class interests for generations.
Until then, the Adivasi pattern on the sari remains just that — a pretty design, safely detached from the people who created it, and from the critiques they dare to voice.The ethnic chic is performative. The silence, however, is structural.