West Bengal population share (Census 2011) compared with share of coded cast positions (industry side, surname analysis) and share of respectable narrative roles across both films and serials.
Brahmin-coded individuals constitute roughly 5% of West Bengal's population, hold 69.5% of identifiable cast positions in Bengali cinema, and occupy 40–41% of respectable narrative roles in both films and serials. Namasudra and Scheduled Caste communities constitute roughly 23% of the population, hold under 2% of identifiable cast positions, and occupy 3% of respectable narrative roles. The gap is not narrowing: it holds across seven decades of film and across the OTT serial era.
A ratio above 1 means the group is coded more often as dignified than degraded. Below 1 means the reverse. Shown separately for films and serials — the convergence across both formats is the robustness finding.
The Namasudra/SC dignity ratio worsens from 0.22 in films to 0.11 in serials — in Bengali serials, Namasudra-coded characters are nine times more likely to appear in non-respectable roles than in respectable ones. The upper-caste pattern is stable across both formats (Brahmin 2.82 vs 2.59, Kayastha 2.58 vs 6.00). The structural hierarchy is not a feature of any particular genre — it is a feature of Bengali cultural production as such.
Respectable and non-respectable role shares by caste group, compared across films and serials. The two formats are produced by different studios, for different audiences, across different decades — and reproduce the same representational structure.
Brahmin and Kayastha characters hold 72–74% of respectable narrative roles in both formats. Namasudra/SC characters hold 3–4% of respectable roles and 17–26% of non-respectable roles in both formats. The Muslim non-respectable share (17% in films, 26% in serials) is the only notable divergence between formats — serials show a more pronounced stigmatisation of Muslim-coded characters than cinema does.
Top occupations from the film character classification (826 films, 6,899 characters). The bhadralok domestic world — housewife, student, journalist — is the default narrative universe of Bengali cultural production.
Criminal and police roles combined (619) outnumber all agrarian roles combined (85) by more than 7 to 1. The bhadralok middle-class household — housewife and student in the bhadralok class — accounts for 470 codings alone. The working-class rural world is structurally absent.
Peasants, sharecroppers, and agricultural labourers as a share of all coded occupations per decade. West Bengal's rural majority is nearly invisible in its own cinema. The zamindar and landowner appear more often than the peasant they exploited.
Caste group breakdown of criminal character codings across films, and the escalating Muslim share of non-respectable roles in both films and serials by decade.
Muslim-coded characters are the largest single group among identifiable criminals in films (34 codings). In serials, Muslim-coded characters account for 26.3% of non-respectable roles — identical to the Namasudra/SC share. The pattern of Muslim stigmatisation is cross-genre and escalating: Muslim non-respectable share in films rises from under 20% historically to 50% in the 2020s. Bengali serials, dominated by family drama formats, replicate the same coding pattern as commercial cinema.
Surname-based caste coding of 6,152 distinct actors and directors across 1,518 Bengali films (1947–2025). High-confidence coded cast per decade. The representational hierarchy in the industry predates and exceeds what appears in the narrative.
Brahmin-coded surnames account for 65–76% of high-confidence-coded cast in every decade from the 1950s to the 2020s, with no meaningful trend toward diversification. Namasudra and SC-coded surnames never exceed 2.5% of identifiable cast in any decade. The industry-side hierarchy is more extreme than the narrative-side hierarchy — Bengali cinema's upper-caste dominance is first a structural feature of who gets hired, and only secondarily a feature of what stories get told.