Jetor: An Unrecognized Caste Community in West Bengal

Based on ethnographic research methodology, this article engages with the questions of identity, recognition, and major economic activities of the Jetor(s), a riverine, as yet unrecognized, partly-pastoral, in-marrying, ethnic group dwelling in forestine (Jangal Mahal) West Bengal, India. If the experiences of untouchability, regression, humiliation, discrimination, lack of rudimentary education, dispossession of land, entrapment in vicious cycle, etc., are the insignia for being a ‘caste’, the Jetors, who may be designated as a particularly vulnerable marginalized interstitial (between tribe and caste) group, more than pass for the denomination. After Independence, many communities were recategorized as DNT, PVTG, ST, SC, etc., and no less than seven censuses were conducted, but the Jetors have remained unaccounted. Abjectly deprived, minimally ‘organized’, and somewhat disinclined to the denomination ‘Jetor/Jatord’ on account of social stigma, they still live a socially in-between life. It is critical to draw the attention of the academia and the policymakers to the Jetors because ‘visibility’ sometimes helps in recognition and emancipation from caste atrocities.