Sudarshana Bhaumik is Assistant Professor of History at Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida, Delhi NCR. She has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She is a recipient of the prestigious Charles Wallace India Trust Grant Fellowship (2018). She has delivered lectures at various international conferences held at places like Queens College, Oxford (March 2019), IIAS Leiden (July 2019) and Victoria University of Wellington (November 2019). She has published articles in numerous journals and edited volumes including IIAS Summer Hill , Historical Sources and Genres and Encyclopaedia of Historiography: Africa, America, Asia (2019). She has worked as Assistant Professor (History) in the Lovely Professional University, Punjab and has also worked as Guest Faculty in the Department of History, Central University of Karnataka, Gulbarga, and as Guest Lecturer at Milli Al-Ameen College for Girls (Affiliated to the University of Calcutta).

Introduction 1. Locating the issues of marginality and hierarchy in colonial Bengal: histories from the long past 2. The making of the goddess tradition in Bengal: exploring the world of omnipotent lower caste malevolent deities 3. Popular religion, myths, orality and subalternity in Bengal 4. Land reclamation leading to new agriculture and settlement 5. Risley and the constructed Bengali space: caste, census and the relevance of jatis Conclusion