MIDDLE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS 2l controlled by the class of people whom it tried to emulate. This sorry state of affairs in fact defined the paradox of Bengali middle-class consciousness in the colonial context. To wage an anti-imperialist war on the political front meant for the Bengali middle class to dismantle the apparatus which had played so crucial a role in giving the specific form to his own consciousness. Repudiating the "other" on the political front called for restructuring of the 'self* on the psychological level. In other terms, positioned as he was between the dominant whites and the rest of Indians, it became imperative for the middle-class to relate itself to the rest of its countrymen in a significantly different manner. In the post-colonial period, the middle-class Bengali finds himself in a situation which, qualitatively speaking is not very altered. He still remains hinged between two blocks, placed in the isthmus of a middle state. Therefore, the purport of all Bengali political novels, written whether in the colonial or in the post-colonial period remains the same ; they all seek to show the ways by which the Bengali middle-class can and should forge new relations. This aim can be achieved even in novels where no middle-class characters appear, simply because all Bengali novels are addressed to him. In such novels he becomes conspicuous by his very absence. Given the complexity of the situation, it is not surprising to find that even in the most conscious writers certain fundamental assumptions peculiar to the petty-bourgeois consciousness remain implicit in their novels. Seen from this standpoint, the ideological content of such novels can be regarded as mere variants in strategies of containment. In the novels of Bankimchandra and Saratchandra such strategies are immediately obvious. Limits to Radicalism Aggressively anti-imperialist in intent, Saratchandra's Father Dabi reveals its class-character rather crudely. Sabyasachi, the mouth-piece of the author pleads passionately that India has to be freed from the fetters forged by the British in order to safe-guard the interest of "bhadralok9. He believes that only the educated middle-class has the will or the capacity to organize and lead the war against the imperialists. While the labouring class, the urban proletariat is to be used as a mere instrument in this struggle, the peasants are to be totally excluded. Sabyasachi argues that the key to success, the key to securing the country for the benefit of the bhadralok lies precisely in isolating the peasants from the movement. Father Dabi remains a testimony to the fact that the bhadralok''s rank as the intermediate tenure in the semi-feudal land system brought about by the Permanent Settlement Act, inhibited radical thought and action on agrarian issues. In certain novels even when the writer acknowledges that the basic antagonism between the landed bhadralok and the ryots need to be transcended, he stops short of considering the possibility that this aim can only