Six months into Suvendu Adhikari's tenure, West Bengal is witnessing shifts across its political, social, and cultural landscape. Follow The Quint's Bengal's Saffron Turn for in-depth coverage of these shifts. Become a member to power our ground reports.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has betrayed the very people who voted for them. They did not fulfill any promises made to us, and instead it may now be planing to exclude the Koch-Rajbongshi community from the purview of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC)," Bikash Roy Barman, activist and teacher from West Bengal's Cooch Behar, tells The Quint.
An Indigenous community, the Koch-Rajbongshis are governed by their distinct laws, customs, and cultural traditions. In the past few years, the community has voted for the BJP in large numbers—and is key to the party holding power across the hilly terrains in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri regions of North Bengal.
With West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari vowing that the state will soon introduce laws against “love jihad” and “land jihad” under the UCC—modelled on the laws in Uttarakhand and Gujarat—many within the Koch-Rajbongshis are alarmed.
Adhikari had said this on 4 October at an event to commemorate the birth anniversary of Dr Ashok Singhal, former Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) president and key figure of the Ram Mandir movement.
Fearing the implications for the community, Barman laments,
"The BJP government at both the state and the Centre is a party of illusionists. They have sold the dream of nationhood and identity to the Rajbongshi people. They promised us linguistic, legal, and cultural autonomy. But the reality is that Rajbongshis are nothing more than a comfortable votebank to political parties."
Implementation of the UCC was one of the key poll promises of the BJP in the May 2026 Assembly elections.
The Rajbongshis: Kin of the Kings
The largest Scheduled Caste (SC) group of West Bengal, the Rajbongshis historically associate themselves with the 16th-century Koch Kingdom, which governed large parts of modern-day Bengal and Assam.
Several attempts have been made by anthropologists and researchers to trace their socio-anthropological origins, often termed "Desi Manush". The results yielded have led to differing claims about the people descending from Mongoloid groups, or Dravidians, while some concluded the population was a mixed strain of Aryan-Dravidian-Mongoloid blood.
"But all of them share the opinion that this group of people, like many others, obtained the name 'Koch' through Sanskritisation; then, through Hinduisation, i.e. further Sanskritisation, they came to be known as Rajbongshis."Academic and former Congress MLA Sukhbilas Barma, writing in a 2022 editorial for 'Newsclick'
Today, they remain a prominent indigenous community spread across North Bengal, Lower Assam, eastern Bihar in India; the Rangpur Division in Bangladesh; the Terai region of Nepal; and Bhutan.
While the community falls under OBC in Assam, they have been demanding ST status in the state. And, in Bengal, their SC status has long been a bone of contention for the community.
The UCC exemption applies strictly to STs under Article 342 of the Constitution—and not the SCs. In September, Adhikari had announced that the Kurmis, an Other Backward Classes (OBC) community in Bengal, would also remain exempt from the UCC.
Consequently, Rajbongshis in West Bengal have also been hoping for a similar exemption from the UCC, which will otherwise bind the community in uniform civil regulations regarding marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession like other non-tribal communities.
“The Rajbongshi people, their language, customs, and traditions are hundreds of years old. Despite changes brought about by Sanskritisation and the Kshatriyaisation movements, the existing customs and rituals predate political parties or even independent India. Forcing a uniform civil code on them is not likely to be received well,” former MLA Barma tells The Quint.
Some of the areas impacted by UCC include aspects controlled by personal or customary law such as wedding cor civil union (including 'live-in') customs and practices, such as the non-Vedic 'Sagai biye', a nuptial system that includes provisions for widow and divorcee remairriage practices for women.
As per reports earlier in September, the at least 13 marriage acts would be replaced by a unified law under UCC that is focused on "gender equality and religious neutrality". A standardised civil registration and definition framework could legally override traditional validation. For instance, the community also has the concept of ‘Mittar’ (friend/relative guide for the bride), which under UCC, is likely to be considered a "live-in" with no legal status.
Practices like the customary court (Dewaniye system), clan-based inheritance laws and other social practices would come under the purviews of UCC.
For the Rajbongshis, however, identity goes beyond customs. It’s also about land—and about who they are at the core: kin of the kings, Hindu/Muslim, or Bengali?
Barma adds that the UCC is part of the larger process of “Hinduising” indigenous groups and their distinct social and cultural politics.
“Today, most ST/SC communities have chosen or been made to identify as Hindu, be it through political manoeuvring and benefits, and potential upward caste/class mobilisation. Rajbongshis are also falling prey to a similar polarisation.”
Experts point out, for instance, that Rajbongshis who converted to Islam (known as Nashyo Sheikh), follow the exact same customs, rules, and traditions as Rajbongshis—the only difference being their religious identity. Alipurduar region of North Bengal also contains a considerable number of Christian Rajbongshis.
In recent years, figures like the self-styled Anant Maharaj (originally Nagendra Roy)—a BJP minister from the Rajbongshi community who was formerly with the Greater Cooch Behar People's Association or the GCPA, which has historically demanded the state of Greater Cooch Behar to be carved out of Bengal—have not opposed the UCC openly. Instead, there is a growing demand for a personal Rajbongshi code within the UCC that acts as an exemption. This would not include Rajbongshi Muslims or Christians.
The Demand for Greater Cooch Behar
In Bengal, the Rajbongshi community has been a votebank of the BJP in recent years, especially since 2018, with the party fuelling the community’s fight for political identity assertion through the longstanding demand of Greater Cooch Behar.
Spearheaded primarily by the GCPA, the movement claims that Cooch Behar was a 'C' category state in 1949 and was illegally merged with Bengal in 1950. It advocates for a state named Greater Cooch Behar, rooting its legal and political argument strictly in the 1949 Merger Agreement signed between the erstwhile princely state of Cooch Behar and the Indian government.
An offshoot to the movement is the Kamtapuri movement, which advocates for a separate state named Kamtapur, invoking the historical Kamata Kingdom and focusing heavily on the linguistic and cultural identity of the Kamtapuri people.
Kamtapur and Rajbongshi are two sides of the same ethno-cultural coin, but they differ fundamentally in what they represent: Kamtapur is a geographical, historical, and geopolitical concept, while Rajbongshi refers directly to the ethnic community of people.
Thier movement has been led by groups like the Kamtapur People’s Party (KPP), the All Kamtapur Students Union (AKSU), and the militant wing Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO).
Linguistically, the spoken tongue belongs to the same Indo-Aryan language cluster. However, the choice of the language name is deeply political.
The Kamptapuri movement demands that the Rajbongshi language be called Kamptapuri language—and be entered into the 8th Schedule with that name.
2019: A Turning Point
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections became a turning point for both the Rajbongshis and the BJP when the party won 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, emerging dominant in 7 out of the 8 Lok Sabha constituencies in the North Bengal region (including Darjeeling, Alipurduars, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, etc.).
In the 2021 West Benga Legislative Assembly elections, across the 54 assembly segments spanning the eight North Bengal districts, the BJP bagged 30 out of 54 seats, outperforming the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the region (though the TMC won the state overall).
In 2024 Lok Sabha, despite a drop in support due to anti-Citizenship Amendment Act agitations, BJP maintained its upper hand in the region by winning 6 out of the 8 Lok Sabha seats
In the 2026 Assembly polls, the BJP won 40 Assembly seats, comfortably defeating TMC.
Critics like Barma as well as member of Kamtapuri organisations The Quint spoke with, however, claim that the parties, including the BJP, have used identity politics, including the Rajbonsgshi-Kamtapuri divide, to weaken the community's larger demands.
Bangshibadan Barman, who heads a faction of the GCPA, has been fighting for Greater Cooch Behar for nearly 25 years. In the past, he has been a staunch critic of the BJP—and has demanded a separate state, the inclusion of Rajbongshi language in the 8th Schedule, Rajbongshi-medium schools, recruitment of the Narayani Sena (name of the ancient Koch regiment) in the Indian Armed Forces, and repairs to the Cooch Behar Palace.
In March 2026, Barman, who had previously supported the TMC, joined the BJP, along with some other Koch nationalist leaders. Speaking to The Quint, Barman said,
“The UCC is an attempt to bring legal and social reform and should be looked at in that light. But, so far, it has not been discussed with us.”
Insiders, however, claim that the leaders have been assuring the community at a local level that the Rajbongshis will be excluded from the UCC, even as they maintain a "strategic silence" in public political discourse.
Dalit rights activist and author Saradindu Biswas states that, at this point, the struggle for Rajbongshi identity has been co-opted by political forces and "money power".
“There are about 60 SC and 40 ST communities in West Bengal. Within the SC community, there is definitely growing concern about the UCC," Biswas, who is a member of Jai Bhim India Network, a local non-profit working on caste, notes.
He adds:
"There is no Rajbongshi on the UCC panel either. Instead, the government will support some groups or factions that will, in turn, manufacture consent from the community,"
Keen on ensuring continued support from the community, Adhikari held a key meeting with more than 350 representatives, intellectuals, academics, and leaders of the Rajbongshi and Kamtapuri communities in Siliguri on 3 November, wherein he announced a six-member advisory committee to oversee their overall development.
“He also assured the delegation that the state would take up the demand for constitutional recognition of the Rajbongshi language in the 8th Schedule with the Central government, alongside revamping the Rajbongshi Language Academy and Development Board. The government has also promised to withdraw old legal cases against community members. The dispute between the Kamtapuri and Rajbongshi languages has also been settled,” Barman, who attended the meeting, tells The Quint.
He adds that although the UCC was not mentioned, he's confident the government will consult them "when the time is right".
"The UCC cannot be passed in the current form. Any attempt to do so will result in chaos and non-compliance. The government must either confer ST status to us first or give us a special concession of some sort. Otherwise, there will be agitations."Bangshibadan Barman
Sukhbilas Barma, a former IAS who has engaged in long years of research in North Bengali identity politics, tells The Quint, “The BJP has managed to dangle the carrot of language and identity to divide the Rajbongshi people. The TMC did that, too. There are various views on the UCC, but for the large part, common people don’t feel the need to change anything about their customs or personal laws. Any effort to enforce it would draw adverse reactions from both the Rajbangshi and Kamtapuri factions," Barma tells The Quint.
One Koch-Rajbongshi leader from the more hardlining KPP faction adds that the community will “not agree to the UCC as a uniform Hindu law without a Koch Rajbangshi Personal Law inside the UCC that includes the provision to ensure preservation of sagai (Rajbangshi marriage traditions), panchayat, divorce laws, clan and land rights.”
“If Delhi tries to force them, the result will be boycott of registration, revival of Kamtapur agitation—and it may result in Rajbangshi vote shifting away from the BJP in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls,” the leader said while requesting anonymity.
On 10 July, the West Bengal government notified a nine-member draft UCC committee, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai.
Gopal Chandra Misra, a member of the draft UCC panel, refused to answer specific questions about how the UCC was being envisaged in Bengal, stating the panel was still in its "preliminary stages and attempts are being made to include and represent every community equally."
"Though I can't say about the community-specific details, whether Rajbongshis will have special provisions or not, there was talk of exceptions being given to aboroginal communities and practices," Misra tells The Quint.
"We have opened a public portal to seek suggestions and recommendations from stakeholders and people at large."
"All notifications and updates about the UCC will come from Desai," Misra said.
Tathagata Roy, another member of the panel, is yet to respond to The Quint's requests for a comment.