Packing a Punch at the Bengali Babu

The emergence of the bhadralok in the nineteenth century, typified by ‘genteel’ qualities and Western education, reflected changes in the nature of Bengali identity and subjectivity. The colonial experience resulted in an anxiety among elite Bengalis to define a social class for themselves that would delineate their gentility and shape a new code of ‘acceptability’. The ‘Babu’ came to be associated with this new class of Bengalis eager to adopt Western manners and learning who formed the greater part of the white-collar workers required in the cosmopolitan enclave of Calcutta. They were satirised, particularly in colonial discourse, for their imitation of English manners, attire and language. This article explores the shifting markers of gentility and the satiric representation of the Bengali Babu (and his Bibi) in the British satirical magazine, Punch, and its contemporary vernacular counterparts in colonial Bengal.