Namasudra

Clans and Kinship

Bandyopadhyay records that the community was made up of about twelve sub-castes that married within themselves, and that bringing them together and ending the differences between them was one of the first aims of the Namasudra movement. Risley (1891), writing under an older name, found only four exogamous sections, or gotras, in the community. The main body of families in Eastern Bengal all belonged to one of them, Kasyapa, so that the gotra could not decide whom a family might marry; in Western Bengal he recorded Bharadwaja, Lomasa and Sandilya, Lomasa being the sage some families regarded as their ancestor. The sources used do not say how descent is reckoned. The Matua faith gave the community a second, open form of organisation, linked to the Thakur family and the Matua Mahasangha at Thakurnagar.

The four sections H. H. Risley recorded for the community in Bengal (The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, 1891, vol. 1, p. 185, and vol. 2, Appendix I, p. 34), writing under an older name and in his spellings. They are an 1880s record; families today may name other gotras.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Caste

  West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Odisha, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram

  Listed as: Namasudra

Checked in Census 2011 Table A-10 Appendix for all seven states, each of which has an entry 'Namasudra', and against Wikipedia's compilation of the Scheduled Castes order; the tables reflect the 2011 lists, so check the current order before relying on it.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

The community took the name Namasudra in the late nineteenth century in place of an older name it rejected; the 1891 census recorded Namasudra as an alternative name, and by 1900 it was widely accepted. The origin of the word itself is not settled, and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay notes that no theory has broad support. Risley (1891) recorded that some families regarded a sage, Namasa or Lomasa Muni, as their ancestor, and that the name might refer to him.

History

Most Namasudra families lived in the low-lying districts of Bakarganj, Faridpur, Jessore and Khulna, where wetlands were reclaimed for farming. In the 1870s Namasudras of Bakarganj and Faridpur began a social boycott of those who refused to dine with them, which Bandyopadhyay treats as the start of the community's protest movement in 1872. Harichand Thakur (1812 to 1878) founded the Matua faith, a devotional path open to all; his son Guruchand Thakur, born in 1846, opened schools for the community and, Bandyopadhyay writes, gave the Matua movement its cohesion and its link with the Namasudra movement. From about 1950 Namasudra families left East Bengal in large numbers, a movement that went on until 1956 and again after 1964; many were resettled under government schemes, from 1956 in the Dandakaranya region of Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, and others in Assam, Bihar, Odisha and the Andaman Islands. Pramatha Ranjan Thakur, guru of the Matua Mahasangha, founded Thakurnagar, the first refugee colony in India set up by Dalits themselves.

Faith and Worship

Most Namasudra families are Hindu, and many follow the Matua faith of Harichand Thakur, a devotional path of harinam, singing the name of Hari, that needs no initiation by a guru and no pilgrimage and holds all people equal. Its centre in India is Thakurnagar in West Bengal.

Customs

Harichand Thakur's teaching, haate kam mukhe nam, 'work in the hand and the name of Hari on the lips', asks Matua devotees to keep household and work while they sing the name. He gave his followers twelve instructions, among them to speak the truth, to respect women and parents, and to treat all people with the same dignity.

Festivals

Stories and Legends

Notable Personalities