ABSTRACT
From roughly the second half of 1923, stories—disseminated mainly by newspapers—began to be circulated about the oppression of Hindu women by Muslim goondas located principally in eastern Bengal. This happened barely a year after the ebbing away of the Non-Cooperation/Khilafat movement and broadly coincided with the formulation of the Bengal Pact. Although the Women's Protection League took care to stigmatize only Muslim 'goondas', and not all Muslims, as perpetrators of abductions, the communal import was obvious; it was only the Muslims who could produce sexually depraved people, while at its more extreme, the discourse could charge the Muslim community with nurturing such criminals. The mention of Namasudras raises a question. From about the second decade of this century, the Namasudras had engaged in fairly regular riots with Muslims. And yet, despite the best efforts of Hindu communalism, the Namasudras never joined with them on a common ideological platform.
