Namasudra, also known as Namassej, is an Avarna community originating from eastern and central Bengal. The community was earlier known as Chandala or Chandal, a term usually considered as a slur. They were traditionally engaged in fishing and as boatmen, and later in cultivation too. They lived outside the four-tier ritual varna system and thus were outcastes. Etymology There is a dearth of discussion as to the etymology of the word namasudra in pre-nineteenth-century Bengali literature and its period of origin is also undetermined. Several theories have been suggested but there is no broad consensus supporting any of them. Origins The Namasudra community was earlier known as Chandala or Chandal, a term usually considered as a slur. They lived outside the four-tier ritual varna system and thus were outcastes and untouchables in the eyes of the caste Hindu communities. The community was traditionally engaged in fishing and as boatmen, in the marshy swamps of their native lands. Over the years, as the wetlands were reclaimed for agricultural purposes, they turned to peasant agriculture as a major occupation. Their economic condition was quite poor and rates of indebtedness quite high. Colonial ethnography Colonial ethnographers such as Herbert Hope Risley believed that the Chandals of their time were related to a tribe of the same name that existed in the Vedic Period. However, modern research disputes their opinion for a variety of reasons, including that the main habitat of the modern community in Eastern Bengal was largely outside the core region of Brahmanical civilisation, that regional texts did not refer to them as untouchables and indeed nor was untouchability rigidly practised in Bengal. Furthermore, the modern community does not occupy the extreme lowest tier of the society, unlike the historical tribe, and their social status varied widely from region to region, especially with regard to their material wealth. The more modern community comprises around twelve endogamous sub-castes, most of whom were derived from the occupational traits of the members and was entitled to differential social-status. But the colonial ethnographers choose to coalesce several such low-ranking occupational sub-castes into one caste, without taking the regional variations into account and assigned a fixed social rank to of all Namasudra-Chandals, (something which Bernard Cohn later described as the "objectification" of colonial culture) and falsely stereotyped the entire community as universally despised. Overall, the term Chandal was a generic term that was initially used to refer