Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter Edited by Bashabi Fraser (original) (raw)
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Partition Literature In Bengal
I In the post world-war period, the partition of India is the biggest tragedy of this sub-continent. The partition of a country does not merely mean an extra line to draw on the map or some fences running through paddy fields, it is also a person's partition from his society, culture, family and above all, himself. The partition of India in 1947 was practically an undeclared civil war. The religion based division of the country anticipated many questions like communalism and the rise of religious fundamentalism. The gory event witnessed the three main religious communities of the sub-continent, the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs, trying to destroy each other completely. Thousands of innocent people were killed, looted, raped and mutilated. While documenting the partition and the resulting calamity, we face many problems. If one community speaks only about its distress then the story-line automatically raises its finger against the other community and the story becomes one-sided and fragmented. Partition, almost uniquely, is one event in our recent history in which familial recall and its encoding are a significant factor in any general reconstruction of it. The importance of literary, autobiographical , oral, historical and fragmentary material for an understanding of partition has now been hugely acknowledged by historians. While the western front witnessed only the 1947 partition, the eastern front, that is, the partition of Bengal was a two fold affair. First, in 1947, Bengal was divided into east and west Bengal. West Bengal remained as a part of India while East Bengal got included into Pakistan as a Muslim oriented land. Then after years of fighting to make Bengali as the national language, in 1971, east Bengal emerged as an independent country, Bangladesh, the birth of which was based solely on language. Within this 25 years [from 1947 to 1971], the Indian subcontinent has witnessed many political changes such as the partition and the birth of Bangladesh, but these events did not have the expected effect on the Bengali literature as it should have. Where we have a vast and noted literary canon of partition literature on and about the division of Punjab, we can hardly count the texts written on partition and its effects in Bengal. While discussing the lack of proper partition literature in Bengal, we come across some significant issues. On one hand, the partition did not affect the established people of west Bengal much, irrespective of religion. For them, the 'refugees' were just the 'others' and partition was considered solely 'their' problem. On the other hand, the 'others', the uprooted people of east Bengal who lost their everything-family, home, motherland, wanted to forget, to wipe out this haunting memory of partition once and for all.
Journal of Migration Affairs , 2023
Even after 75 years, the study of the Partition of British India in 1947 remains an ambitious project for many scholars. Over the years, not only historians but also people trained in other academic disciplines have attempted to interpret the Partition in their ways. As a result, there is a deluge of literature on the theme; nevertheless, scholars' interest in the Partition study will not end because many dimensions remain unveiled. Moreover, the "long shadow" of the Partition impacts the politics and social relationships in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Looking at the Partition and its aftermath in Bengal, Anindita's book is a collection of scrupulously written articles.
Revisited: Partition and the Bengali Muslims of India
The Geopolitics, 2022
It may come as a surprise to many people that Bengali-speaking Muslims form the second largest Muslim ethno-linguistic group in the world after Arab Muslims. The 1947 Partition is remembered largely by the massacres of more than a million people, which took place as Hindu and Muslim mobs clashed during the migration of between fifteen to twenty million people to newly created India and Pakistan. While the scholarship of the event is largely focused on the Punjab region where some of the worst massacres took place, there is a need to produce more scholarship on what other regions experienced. It is important to note that, despite the growth in scholarship about Bengal’s partition in recent years, there remains a particular need to document the Partition experiences of Bengali Muslims of India and conduct archival research in light of the increasing strength of the Indian right-wing, which continues to label this group as “outsiders”. Hence, in this article commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of India’s partition, it will be worthwhile to look at the colonial history concerning the Bengali Muslims in three of the states of India: West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura.
Epdf.pub bengal divided hindu communalism and partition
Previous studies of the Partition of India have concentrated on the negotiations of the transfer of power at the all-India level or have considered the emergence of separatist politics amongst India's Muslim minorities. This study provides a re-evaluation of the events of 1946-47 focusing on the political and social processes that led to the demand for partition in a Mulsim-majority province, Bengal, and tracing the rise of Hindu communalism. In its most startling revelation, the author shows how the demand for a separate homeland for the Hindus, which was fuelled by a large and powerful section of Hindu society within Bengal, was seen as the only way to regain their influence. The picture which emerges is one of a stratified and fragmented society moving away from the mainstream of Indian nationalism, and increasingly preoccupied with narrower, more parochial concerns. In this original and thoughtful interpretation of the history of Bengal, Joya Chatterji shows herself to be one of a new generation of scholars prepared to access a wider range of source materials and to question the conventional assumptions of earlier historians.
Partition in Bengal: Re-visiting the Caste Question, 1946-47
The essay introduces caste as a category for discussing the history of Partition of India, which until now has focused almost exclusively on the Hindus, Sikhs and the Muslims. The Dalit or the 'untouchables' of India are usually left out of this discussion, and whenever they are brought in, they are portrayed as either disinterested onlookers or accidental victims. On the contrary, as this essay will argue, the Dalit were deeply entangled in Partition politics, which threatened their natural habitat in eastern Bengal, where they had reclaimed land from marshes and forests, extended cultivation and set up human settlement. Their regional movement was gradually drawn into the broader subcontinental politics that led to Partition, and the movement as a result lost unity, autonomy and purpose. While one group of the Bengali Dalit leaders were opposed to Partition and believed that a Dalit–Muslim alliance was in the best interest of the Dalit, others got closer to Hindu nationalism and demanded Partition of Bengal. Many Dalit peasants were caught in this politics and became both victims and perpetrators of violence. The essay concludes that while the Dalit lacked power to influence the decision to partition, they nevertheless were forced to take positions within the political divide, which they did according to their own perceptions of caste interests and preferred political future of their physical space.
EXPLORING THE HINDU/MUSLIM DIVIDE THROUGH THE PARTITION OF BENGAL
In this paper we shall explore the move from localised to politicised identities in Bengali society and evidence how religious affiliation became a central consideration within this shift. The growth of communalism, we shall argue, has much to do with the colonial strategy of establishing separate electoral systems for Hindus and Muslims, cementing the separation between these religious groupings. Our critical interest centres around the Partition of Bengal, and we shall employ memoirs and literary texts, written in Bengali and translated into English, so as to elucidate upon the complexities of the Hindu/Muslim relationship. We shall argue that the unresolved issues of Partition still cast their shadow on contemporary India, and shall draw connections between past and present manipulations of religious identities for expedient political ends. Resumen En este artículo estudiaremos el cambio de identidad local a identidad nacional en la sociedad bengalí y cómo la religión tuvo un papel central en el mismo. El auge del sectarismo religioso estuvo relacionado con la estrategia de las autoridades coloniales de crear colegios electorales distintos para musulmanes e hindúes, lo que claramente abrió una brecha insalvable entre ambas comunidades. Para conocer mejor la complejidad de las relaciones sociorreligiosas, nos centraremos en los efectos de la Partición en Bengala y al efecto recurriremos a memorias y textos literarios escritos en bengalí y traducidos a inglés. Inferimos que la Partición dejó irresoluta una serie de problemas que afectan a India en la actualidad, debido a la manipu-lación de la identidad religiosa con fines políticos, en el pasado tanto como en el presente. Palabras clave: enfrentamiento, hindúes-musulmanes, historicidad, identidad religiosa, partición, sectarismo religioso.