Abstract The ‘new middle class’, often identified as an upwardly mobile segment, primarily employed in the growing private service sectors, such as the information technology, and supposedly, representative of the changing lifestyles and consumption patterns of the Indian middle class, has stolen much of the limelight of the contemporary popular as well as scholarly discourses on the Indian middle class. 2 2 This article draws upon from the fieldwork conducted as part of my PhD work completed in 2016. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the international seminar on ‘The Middle Class in World Society’ held at ISEC (Institute of Social and Economic Change), Bangalore, India on 16th and 17th December, 2016. This article, on the other hand, takes up a different social group located in West Bengal, having a close relationship with the state, often described as the ‘old middle class’/‘Nehruvian middle class’ in the postcolonial context, the respondents being predominantly public sector employees and academicians. By taking up the register of sanskriti (culture), the article argues that it is fundamentally through forging continuity from the past that this historically dominant social group is engaged in the construction of Bengali middle classness. Through an analysis of class and its relation to cultural distinctiveness, the article shows that the specific way in which this relation plays out in case of the respondents in my study and argues that any theoretical attempt to understand the complex relationship between class distinction and the question of taste needs to be grounded within narrowly defined contextualised specificities.

中文翻译：

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捍卫 Sustho Sanskriti（健康文化）：了解新自由主义印度的孟加拉中产阶级

摘要 “新中产阶级”通常被认为是向上流动的部分，主要受雇于不断增长的私营服务部门，如信息技术，据称代表了印度中产阶级不断变化的生活方式和消费模式，已经窃取了当代关于印度中产阶级的流行和学术话语的大部分聚光灯。2 2 本文借鉴了我在 2016 年完成的博士工作的一部分进行的实地调查。该论文的早期版本在 ISEC（社会和经济研究所）举行的“世界社会中的中产阶级”国际研讨会上发表。 Change），印度班加罗尔，2016 年 12 月 16 日至 17 日。另一方面，本文介绍了位于西孟加拉邦的不同社会群体，与国家关系密切，在后殖民时代通常被描述为“旧中产阶级”/“尼赫鲁维亚中产阶级”，受访者主要是公共部门雇员和学者。通过对梵文（文化）的记录，文章认为，这个历史上占主导地位的社会群体参与孟加拉中产阶级的建设，从根本上是通过与过去建立连续性。通过对阶级及其与文化独特性的关系的分析，本文表明这种关系在我的研究中的受访者中发挥作用的具体方式，并认为任何试图理解阶级差异与问题之间复杂关系的理论尝试品味需要建立在狭义的情境化特征中。在后殖民时代，他们通常被描述为“旧中产阶级”/“尼赫鲁维亚中产阶级”，受访者主要是公共部门雇员和学者。通过对梵文（文化）的记录，文章认为，这个历史上占主导地位的社会群体参与孟加拉中产阶级的建设，从根本上是通过与过去建立连续性。通过对阶级及其与文化独特性的关系的分析，本文表明这种关系在我的研究中的受访者中发挥作用的具体方式，并认为任何试图理解阶级差异与问题之间复杂关系的理论尝试品味需要建立在狭义的情境化特征中。在后殖民时代，他们通常被描述为“旧中产阶级”/“尼赫鲁维亚中产阶级”，受访者主要是公共部门雇员和学者。通过对梵文（文化）的记录，文章认为，这个历史上占主导地位的社会群体参与孟加拉中产阶级的建设，从根本上是通过与过去建立连续性。通过对阶级及其与文化独特性的关系的分析，本文表明这种关系在我的研究中的受访者中发挥作用的具体方式，并认为任何试图理解阶级差异与问题之间复杂关系的理论尝试品味需要建立在狭义的情境化特征中。