Representation of Forced Migrants

3/16/13 Representation of forced migrants: a case study of the east bengali migrants to West Bengal

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Representation of forcedmigrants: a case study of theeast bengali migrants to WestBengalReprésentations des migrants forcés: étude de cas de la migration des migrants du Bengale de l’Est vers

le Bengale de l’Ouest

SUBHASRI GHOSH

Abstracts

The paper wishes to address one of the key themes of the v olume—the representation ofthe self and the other. The theme will be studied in the backdrop of the forcedmigration from East Bengal (present Bangladesh) to West Bengal (in India) followingthe v iv isection of British India int o two nation-states—India and Pakistan—in 1 947 .The ev ent triggered off large-scale cross-border migration on the Bengal and Punjabsector in India, with as the surging tide of uprooted mass lashing the shores of thesetwo states. Concentrating on the Bengal side, the paper will try to capture the many -facetedrepresentations of the migrants through the lens of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’; the guestand the host, i.e. the local people of West Bengal and the migrants from across theborder. Culling information from Gov ernment documents, autobiographies, oral interv iewsand memoirs, the paper will focus on how each perceiv ed the other and whether morethan half a century and subsequent generations later such perceptions hav eundergone any change.The representation of the ‘Bangals’, as the Bengali Hindus from East Pakistan arepopularly referred to as by the ‘Ghatis’ (Bengali Hindus of West Bengal), in the latter’spsy che, too, is multi-faceted—sy mpathy towards the migrants, at being uprooted fromtheir ancestral home, antagonism at being ‘the Gov ernment’s fav ored son’ in terms ofjob reserv ations and financial help which in turn fostered the feeling of ‘outsidersinfringing on our rights, occupy ing our lands and making life miserable for us.’

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Coming towards the other end of the spectrum—how did the migrants v iewthemselv es? Did they , too, consider themselv es as unjust v ictims of the politicalpower-play ? Did they , too, v iew the Gov ernment as the benev olent patriarch andaccept the help offered to them without so much of a whimper? Did they v iew the localpeople as cold and indifferent? In other words did they subscribe to the representationsof the Gov ernment and the locals or did they construct an identity of their own? These are some of the aspects of representation of forced displacement of the BengaliHindus from across the international border, which hav e been dealt with in thecourse of this paper.

Représentations des migrants forcés: étude de cas de la migration des migrants du

Bengale de l’Est vers le Bengale de l’OuestLe présent article souhaite aborder l’un des thèmes clés du numéro thématique, celuide la représentation du soi et de l’autre. Ce thème sera étudié sous l’angle de lamigration forcée de la population du Bengale de l’Est (le Bangladesh actuel) auBengale de l’Ouest (Inde), qui fait suite à la div ision de l’Inde britannique en deuxÉtats-nations (Inde, Pakistan) en 1 947 . Cet év énement a déclenché une migrationtransfrontalière à grande échelle v ers les régions du Bengale et du Punjab de l’Inde,alors qu’une marée d’indiv idus déracinés v int fouetter les riv es de ces deux États. Cet article s’intéresse av ant tout à l’histoire du Bengale. Il tentera de rendre comptedes multiples facettes des représentations des migrants à trav ers le prisme du soi et del’autre. Il s’agira de dépeindre les représentations de l’« inv ité » et de l’« hôte », cellesdes migrants en prov enance de l’autre côté de la frontière et celles des populationslocales du Bengale de l’Ouest.S’inspirant d’informations obtenues à même des documents gouv ernementaux, desentrev ues orales et des mémoires, cet article focalise son attention sur la façon dontchacun perçoit l’autre et si, plus d’un demi-siècle plus tard, au gré des générations, cesperceptions se transforment.Les représentations des « Bangals », comme les Bengalis hindous du Pakistan de l’Estsont populairement appelés par les « Gathis » (Bengalis hindous du Bengale del’Ouest), par les « Gathis » possèdent de multiples facettes : la sy mpathie relativ eenv ers les migrants en lien av ec le déracinement qu’ils ont v écu; l’antagonismegénéré par le fait qu’ils sont « les fils fav oris du gouv ernement », singulièrement en cequi concerne les emplois qui leur sont réserv és et l’aide financière qu’ils reçoiv ent, unantagonisme qui génère le sentiment que des « étrangers compromettent nos droits,qu’ils occupent nos terres et qu’ils nous rendent la v ie difficile ».À l’autre extrémité du spectre, des questions se posent : comment les migrants sepercev aient-ils eux-mêmes? Se considéraient-ils comme des v ictimes injustes desrapports de force politiques? Percev aient-ils le gouv ernement comme un patriarchebienv eillant et acceptaient-ils l’aide qui leur était offerte sans protester? Percev aient-ils les populations locales comme froides et indifférentes? En d’autres termes,souscriv aient-ils aux représentations que le gouv ernement et les populations localesportaient sur eux ou construisaient-ils leur propre identité?Ce sont là quelques-uns des aspects de la représentation du déplacement forcé desHindous du Bengale par delà la frontière internationale qui ont été traités dans lecadre de notre article.

Index terms

Mots-clés : mémoire, représentation, nostalgie, migration forcée, patrie

Keywords : memory , representation, forced migration, nostalgia, homeland

Géographie : Bangladesh, Calcutta

Index chronologique : present-day , 1 947 -2007

Full text

The paper1 tries to capture the representations of the forced migrants from

erstwhile East Pakistan (present Bangladesh) to Calcutta (the capital city of the

Indian state of West Bengal), through the lens of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, the

1















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The background

guest and the host, i.e. the local people of the city and the migrants who crossed

over, during the time span of Partition in 1947 to the early 1950s—the period

during which Calcutta received the bulk of the migrants. From the mid-1950s

onwards, migration to West Bengal, in general thinned out, with occasional

bursts for specific reasons, like after the 1964 riot and the 197 1 Bangladesh

crisis.

Although technically speaking host community includes government of the

recipient country also, I have consciously left out the role of government (both

the centre and the state) from the ambit of my study , since government

perception of the refugee crisis has already been dealt with in great detail, in the

existing literature on Partition and refugee historiography (Chakrabarti, 1999;

Chatterji, 2001). But what is lacking in the existing discourse is a sy stematic

study of representation and displacement from the point of v iew of the locals

and the migrants during this span. This paper is an attempt to fill in this lacuna.

2

Fleeing from their motherland in the face of impending v iolence and looking

for a safe haven, the East Bengali migrants chose West Bengal because of its

phy sical proximity coupled with the ties of language and religion. Over 7 2% of

the refugees who came over to eastern India, chose West Bengal as their safe

haven (State Statistical Bureau, 1951). Did they find a new home? Were the locals

sy mpathetic towards their less-fortunate brethren that would help ease the

trauma of uprootment and rebuild their lives? The question assumes significance

in light of the fact that in the Punjab sector, which was similarly scarred by the

ravages of Partition, animosity and rejection towards the migrants were well-

nigh absent as is ev ident from the oral interv iews. Sardar Aridaman Singh

Dhillon recounts, “Several community kitchens were organized by the people

voluntarily on all the main routes through which refugees were trickling in…

actually the response of the people was so spontaneous…every body pulled

resources required for the people…all Sikhs and Hindus of Punjab got together to

extend help…the local people prov ided support to let them settle down” (Talbot,

2006, 42-43). Did a similar sense of camaraderie prevail in the eastern sector

too?

3

Culling information from a wide array of sources, namely memoirs, oral

interv iews, government documents, contemporary newspaper and journal

reports and novels, the paper will seek to answer these questions by pivoting on

how each perceived the other and the degree of convergence and difference

between the two during the said period. However, at the outset, I wish to point

out that in no way should the findings be treated as absolute. Exceptions did

exist no doubt. But I have left these out from the purv iew of this paper and

concentrated on the dominant trend. As a corollary , I have fast-forwarded to

analy ze the situation at the turn of the twentieth century , especially at a juncture

when first-generation migrants are a disappearing lot. Do the second generation

migrants, brought up on a staple diet of nostalgic stories, still retain the same

feeling as their forefathers? Are the migrants still looked down upon by the

locals? Is the Bengali society still striated along East Bengali and West Bengali?

The conclusion is drawn on the basis of answers to these questions.

4

The Partition of British India, purportedly on religious lines and the creation5

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of two independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 resulted in the

uprooting and forced migration of thousands of minorities in the Punjab and the

Bengal sector in India. While in the former case, there was an exchange of

population in the sense that an immigration of 4.9 millions from West Punjab and

the adjoining areas in Pakistan, was matched by an outflow of 5.5 million from

East Punjab and the adjoining areas in India (“Editorial”, 10 May 1960, 4), in the

Bengal case the movement was essentially unidirectional, the tide of migration

flowing from the Pakistan prov ince of East Bengal (East Pakistan from 1956 and

Bangladesh from 197 1) to West Bengal.

In the wake of the div ision of Bengal into East Bengal (that fell in Pakistan) and

West Bengal (that fell in India), convoy s of refugees journey ed across the

frontier to West Bengal to begin their 'try st with destiny '.

6

Period Number of Fresh Arrivals

1947 4, 063, 474

1948 4, 090, 555

1949 3, 026, 211

1950 11, 072, 928

Source: Ministry of Supply and Rehabilitation, Report of the Working Group

on the Residual Problem of Rehabilitation in West Bengal

7

Between 1947 and 1950—the span within which Calcutta witnessed a spate of

influx—the root cause of migration from the east remained the persecution of

Hindu minorities by the East Pakistani administration in the form of arbitrary

requisition of houses of the minorities, absence of Hindu representatives in the

decision-making bodies, a partisan police force, rumors of minority massacres,

threats like “Now that Pakistan has been formed, remember that we are no

longer y our subordinates” (H. Bandy opadhy ay , 197 0, 14-15) or “whenever we

feel, we will hack y ou to death” (S. Bandy opadhy ay , 1994, 15) or persistent anti-

Hindu propaganda carried out in the press and the media to incite the masses

against the Hindus in East Bengal. They came to be branded as “kafirs”, “fifth-

columnists”, “a danger to our state” (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,

1967 , 138). All these created a claustrophobic atmosphere, in which the Hindus

found difficult to breathe. Migration at this stage was sparked off more by the

“what if…” sy ndrome since any actual occurrence of v iolence, namely ,

abduction, killing, rape and murder were far and few. In fact, Bengal witnessed

no large-scale killings immediately after Partition. Rather the riots that preceded

Partition, like the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946 and the Noakhali carnage

of October 1946, gradually petered out after the proclamation of Independence.

Migration was more in the nature of what Egon F. Kunz identifies as anticipatory

flight. Nearly 90% of the Hindu citizens of Dacca city —the capital of East Bengal—

by 1949, had migrated to West Bengal in the assumption of impending massacres

(S. Guha, no date, 9). Fear psy chosis play ed a major role. Rumors induced

people to migrate. Noakhali being still fresh in the minds, rumors of large-scale

massacres, led the Hindus to scurry across the border for shelter.

8

However, from 1950 onwards, hatred took a gory turn as it came to be

manifested in a v iolent manner, with the merciless slaughter of Hindus, together

with forced abduction and marriage of Hindu girls, and destruction of Hindu

edifices. The watershed was the February Riot of 1950, which was the first major

riot to affect East Bengal after the Partition of 1947 . Violence broke out on

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Friday , 10 February 1950, in Dacca. The epicenter was the Secretariat Building.

A meeting was convened in its compound by the Muslim clerics, after the

Jumma namaz (Friday pray er). Later, a procession was taken out, which

shouting anti-Hindu and anti-Indian slogans, moved along the Nawabpur Road

plundering and looting the Hindu shops on the way . In no time the v iolence

spread like wildfire to engulf the districts of My mensingh, Comilla, Chittagong,

Rajshahi, Khulna, Sy lhet and Noakhali. Perhaps the worst-affected was the

district of Barisal, where the casualty list touched nearly 2,500. Total casualties

in the East Bengal riots were estimated in the neighborhood of 10,000 killed

(Chattopadhy ay , “Notes”, 1950, 346).

Anticipatory flight, i.e., migration till 1950 came to be undertaken essentially

by “those who may be called the middle classes and they generally are from

amongst the lawy ers, government servants and other such persons”

(Constituent Assembly of India, hereafter referred to as CAI, 1099). As per the

information supplied by the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission of West

Bengal, of the 11 ,00,000 migrants who had crossed over by June 1948,

3,50,000 belonged to the urban middle classes, 5,50,000 to the rural middle

classes, and a little over 1 ,00,000 were agriculturists and a little less than

1,00,000 artisans (Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1948). 48.2% of the total number of

migrants of all ages was literate, who preferred migrating to Calcutta and the

adjoining areas because of the urban influence of the metropolis, which could

offer opportunities in terms of employ ment (State Statistical Bureau, 1951, 4).

The Census of 1951 shows that 27 % of Calcutta’s inhabitants were born in East

Bengal, while another 17 % were settled as ‘displaced’ in the city (Mitra, 1953,

VII).

10

In order to comprehend the nuances of the relationship between these two

sets of Bengalis—East Bengalis or Bangals and West Bengalis or Ghatis—it is

necessary to rewind to the pre-Partition day s. Although emerging as separate

political entities only after 1947 , the concept of East Bengal and West Bengal has

existed in the common Bengali psy che for centuries preceding the pre-Partition

day s. The river Ganges is looked upon as the great div ider. Bengalis usually look

upon themselves as hailing from ‘this side’ or ‘that side’ of the river. The

relationship between the Bengali-speaking Hindu population of the eastern part

of Bengal and that of the western wing has been guided by this notion of the ‘self’

and the ‘other’ right from the eighth century , where the ‘other’ is alway s v iewed

through the looking–glass of ‘self’ and its v irtues are extolled, often exaggerated,

to lend an aura of superiority . But why this distinction? Are not the bonds of

race, language and religion strong enough to iron out such apparently ‘triv ial’

differences? It is true that given the ties of kinship, cultural values and

community behavior, the notion seems somewhat ambivalent to an outsider.

But if one cares to lift this veneer of unity and take a closer look, the reality is

that, behind this facade of apparent oneness, can be located some fundamental

differences in food habits, customs, rituals and above all dialect, which set apart

the ‘self’ from the ‘other’. The feeling of east and west, of them and us was very

much a part of life in undiv ided Bengal.

11

Middle-class East Bengali Hindus had made Calcutta their temporary abode

from the second-half of the nineteenth century , because of the opportunities the

city offered in terms of education and employ ment. The locals disdained these

temporary migrants, who remained the butt of ridicule of the Ghatis. R.N. Sen

reminiscences that boy s study ing in Calcutta at the beginning of the twentieth

12

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Du char lathi parle ghare, tabe

Bangal bujhte pare

Dhopa jaane konjon kangal,

Shekra jaane konjon Bangal

The local disdain

century heard the jingle – “Bangals are not human beings/they jump onto

trees/although they have no tails” (Sen, 1981, 4). The Bangals were looked down

upon as uncultured, rustic country bumpkins unfit to be a part of the ‘urbane’

society of Calcutta. Every thing associated with them—their dialect, their custom

—were looked down upon and joked about. One popular rhy me among the

Ghatis, was (Dey , 1945, 97 ):2

Another one goes like this (Dey , 1945, 49):313

It is in this context that the relationship between East Bengalis, who were

uprooted from their ancestral homes and swarmed across the border in post-

1947 to crowd Calcutta, and the local people, should be studied. It is expected

that “with a common background of Bengali tradition, a pervasive Hindu

religion, ties of common national kinship, similar sy stems and cultural values

and familiar pattern for community behavior, the displaced concerned should

not have any formidable hindrance to resolve problem of accommodation and

assimilation” (Pakrasi, 197 1, 133). But was that the ground reality ? Did the

div ide between Bangals and Ghatis inherent in Bengali society from the pre-

Partition day s, widen or begin to diminish in the context of the catastrophe that

threw open the floodgates of migration? Did the Ghatis come forward to apply

salve to heal the raw wounds of forced migration?

14

The general perceptions of the Calcutta locals in the early 1950s, was that the

Bangal refugees were a tremendous economic liability and that their

rehabilitation would make enormous demands upon the meager economic

resources of the nascent prov ince of West Bengal and jeopardize its prosperity

and future development.

15

Partition had reduced West Bengal to one-third of its prev ious size or 36.4% of

the area of the parent prov ince, and at the same time saddled it with a huge

population (West Bengal Legislative Assembly , hereafter referred to as WBLA,

18). The average density of the city of Calcutta (area 32.33 square miles) was

around 88,953 persons per square mile (A. Mitra, 1953, VII) – a whopping

increase from 7 51.2 persons per square mile in undiv ided Bengal (CAI, 17 38).

The food grain situation presented a pathetic picture. In 1949, production of

rice, the staple diet of the Bengalis, was estimated at 3.2 million tons as against

the required 3.6 million tons. The West Bengal premier Dr. B.C. Roy declared

that West Bengal had a food deficit of 2 million tons of rice and cereals (Amrita

Bazar Patrika, 1949). In fact the state was suffering from a deficit in the

production of different food crops, vegetables and other essential food items :

16

Item Deficit (in tons)

Sugar 399000




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Potato 33400

Fruits 96500

Milk 266000

Fish and Meat 1776000

Egg 7.5 crores

Ghee, Butter, Mustard Oil 409000

Source: Prabashi: Part I, Vol.2, Calcutta, May 1951, p.250.17

In revenue sphere, Partition dealt a severe blow as a huge proportion of the

proceeds of the jute-duty and income tax dried up. In March 1948, the central

government informed West Bengal, that the share of the income tax receipts has

been reduced from 20% to 12% or in other words, Rs.6 crores worth share was

cut down to Rs.3.5 crores, the r emaining 2.5 crores being distributed to other

prov inces (Chakrabarty , 1998, 141). The Government of undiv ided Bengal had a

succession of mainly deficit budgets during the few y ears before Partition:

18

Years Surplus (+) or Deficit (–)

In Rs.'000

1941-42 -56,76

1942-43 -32,76

1943-44 -2,73,67

1944-45 -4,80,14

1945-46 +4,96,43

1946-47 -2,74,78

1947-48 -7,81,88*

* Figures relate to pre-Partition period.19

Source:Statistical Abstract of Indian Union, 1950, New Delhi, 1951.20

On the date of Partition, leav ing aside the cash in treasury chests, the account

of the late Government of Bengal with Reserve Bank of India showed a debit

balance of over Rs 5 crores. This debit balance by mutual agreement was

allocated in equal proportions to East and West Bengal. Accordingly , the

Government of West Bengal started with a debit balance of Rs 2.5 crores in the

Reserve Bank partly counterbalanced by the cash balance in treasuries

amounting to about half a crore. In other words, it started with a net negative

balance of Rs 2 crores (WBLA, 1948, 22). This was followed by a majority of

deficit budgets in the next ten y ears:

21

Year Surplus (+) or Deficit (–)

(in Rs. '000)

1950-51 -3,32,20

1951-52 -1,20,75

1952-53 -1,48,13

1953-54 -6,86,96

1954-55 -6,50,62

1955-56 -10,72,93

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1956-57 -13,58,94

1957-58 -1,89,94

1958-59 +5,75,99

1959-60 +1,03,28

Source:Statistical Abstract of Indian Union (1962), New Delhi, 1963.22

The growing influence of the Marwaris further exacerbated the antagonistic

feeling towards the post-Partition refugees. Essentially migrant traders from

Eastern Rajasthan, the Marwaris, started migrating to Calcutta in the mid-

nineteenth century and gradually over the y ears carved a niche by gathering

considerable wealth through banking, money lending, and as traders, brokers,

and speculators in commodities like jute and cotton. As Anne Hardgrove shows,

the Marwaris steadily gained ground in the commercial scenario in Calcutta,

pushing the Bengali traders out of competition. Understandably , the ‘outsiders’

did not find much favor with the Bengalis. Hardgrove quotes extensively from

the autobiography of noted Bengali chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray to show how

the Bengali dislike for the community came to be reflected in phrases like ‘mere

parasites.’ They were chided for siphoning off money from Bengal and investing

the capital in their native v illages, thereby draining off Bengal (Hardgrove,

2005, 25). Thus already cornered in the economic field by the Marwaris and

with the financial position of the state in a precarious position, the host

population increasingly nursed the v iew that ‘generous’ relief and compensation

on the part of the official agencies as part of the rehabilitation package would act

as a magnet in attracting more refugees from across the border. For them the

simple equation was that more the amount of relief measures, more will be the

number of refugees. A v icious circle would thus be created from which the state

would find it hard to disentangle itself. The local population questioned – why

should we sy mpathize with them when they themselves show no affinity to West

Bengal, consciously and constantly harking back to their ‘glorious past’? That the

pre-Partition contempt continued is ev ident when one goes through the writings

in some leading contemporary Bengali journals of the time, published from

Calcutta.

23

Appearing in the one of the widely read Bengali journals of the period, a highly

provocative article offers a glimpse of the mentality of the West Bengalis

(Sharma, 1950, 462-465). Writing nearly three y ears after the catastrophe, it is

interesting to note that he still refers to the refugees as Atithi or guests who as

per the norms of a guest-host relationship, should be forever grateful to the

locals for prov iding them with refuge and shelter. A one way flow of goods and

serv ices should be matched by a reverse show of obligations. But the author

laments that such courtesies were seldom shown by the rustic East Bengali

country bumpkins, whose behavior often bordered on rudeness.

24

The author then goes on to unleash a tirade against the government. He

ridicules the government for dissipating its precious time and money in refugee

rehabilitation, at the cost of the welfare of the local residents. Their prov ince

being taken over by the outsiders, they have been elbowed to the background.

He felt that the outsiders with the blessings of the government had besieged the

province, while the West Bengalis were being reduced to non-entities.

25

Through this article, the author urged the locals to agitate against this one-

ey ed policy of the government. Sri Vishnu Sharma asked the West Bengalis to

shed their image as the epitome of tolerance. Instead of welcoming all and

26

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sundry with open arms or remaining mute spectators to the heinous plan of their

prov ince being bartered away to the Bangal barbarians they should act

decisively . Drawing their attention to the charged situation in Assam where the

atmosphere was rife with anti-Bengali agitation Sri Vishnu Sharma egged on the

Ghatis to behave similarly . If they wanted to ensure a secured future for

posterity , it is high time that they take suitable action to thwart the plan of

gifting West Bengal to the Bangals. The bottom line of the whole essay is West

Bengal for the West Bengalis, and they are not willing to give an inch without a

fight.

In the same issue, the editor urged the minority Hindus to cling to their bhita

at all cost (K. Chattopadhy ay , ,September-October 1950, 98). He accused the

migrants of being cowards and not showing enough courage to face the

challenge. Come what may , he wrote, migration was not a solution to the

problem and instead of fleeing the scene of battle they should stay put and fight

it out. The editorial criticized the Hindus, on the other side, as escapists, ready

to flee at the ‘slightest pretext’ (98).

27

It is ironical that the article was written in 1950 at a time when the worst

communal riot in the post-Partition era, had scarred East Bengal a few months

back and the embers were still smoldering. Coming at this juncture, to a hapless

migrant, the article reeks of nothing but contempt and derision.

28

Another instigating article appearing in the Bhadra (September-October)

edition of the same y ear reminded the natives that ‘three y ears of freedom’ had

brought no good to the real children of West Bengal (K. Chattopadhy ay ,

September-October 1950, 385). Independence was a bane instead of a boon

since it had resulted in the pauperization and impoverishment of the locals

‘pushing them towards disaster and complete annihilation’ (K. Chattopadhy ay ,

September-October 1950, 385). Instead of showing humane feelings towards the

v ictims, the time was ripe for some soul-searching and introspection by the West

Bengalis, so as to take stock of their own miseries and seek redress of what they

felt were just grievances.

29

Another essay , published in 1950 in another widely -read Bengali journal of the

period Mashik Basumati, harshly condemned the government policy of giv ing

preference to refugee y ouths in matters relating to promotion and employ ment,

often flouting the established set of rules (H. Chattopadhy ay , July -August 1950,

436). In a bid to help the migrants acquire a firm foothold, schemes were

launched by the Regional Directorate of Resettlement and Employ ment, namely ,

prov iding technical and vocational training, grant of loans for business and

industry , prov ision of business premises, procurement of special quotas for

certain essential commodities, preference to displaced persons in government

jobs. Factory employ ers were encouraged to select refugee candidates for

apprenticeship and stipends of Rs 30 per month were given to these apprentices

during the period of training (Ministry of Rehabilitation, 1961, 4). The Director

of Health Serv ices to the Government of West Bengal appointed 100 refugee

doctors to the post of Rural Medical Officers of Health on Rs 150 as pay and Rs

40 as dearness allowance per month (One Who Knows, 1949, 8). In the light of

such measures the article moaned: “the local y ouths are a neglected lot” (436).

The government did not bother to spare a thought for them. If this continued for

long, the article warned, a showdown could not be ruled out in the near future.

30

Examples can also be gleaned from Bengali novels, depicting that tumultuous

period. These are full of instances that portray the lackadaisical attitude often

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bordering on hatred. Take for instance persons like Sibaprasad Gupta, one of the

central characters of Bimal Mitra’s novel, Ekak Dashak, Shatak (Y ear, Decade,

Century ). Maintaining an outward facade of sy mpathy , they cashed in on human

misery to amass huge fortune. To them the refugees were not human beings but

the golden egg-lay ing hen to be killed at the end of the day out of greed for more

profit. As per the author’s portray al, to such people, every thing came with a

price tag. Even human misery . But alas! The price was too low to demand any

attention. With land prices sky rocketing to an abnormal high in the post-

Partition y ears, since liv ing space was the main crunch (land worth Rs 50 per

acre were being sold for Rs.500/- per acre), these hawk-ey ed land-hungry

gluttons without a hint of regret, without a tinge of remorse, under the cover of

darkness, razed down the makeshift tenements of the refugees—perhaps the only

roof over their head—for selling the empty plots at exorbitant prices.

Manoj Basu’s Setubandha (The Bridge) deals with the behavior of the host

community towards the refugees. As per his portray al, the ordinary people in

West Bengal were quite unaware of the problems of Partition and that of the

people who were uprooted from their homes. They remained engrossed with the

nitty -gritty of their own lives. Some like the local y ouths remained absorbed in

their frivolous life-sty le whiling away precious time in meaningless talks,

standing in queues for cinema tickets, eve-teasing, in other words not caring a

bit for the world around them. The bridge between the east and the west thus

remained elusive.

32

Shirshendu Mukhopadhy ay 's Madhab O Taar Pariparshik (Madhab and His

Surroundings, 1987 ) too portray s this indifferent attitude. Arriv ing penniless on

this side with his good-for-nothing father and epileptic aunt, the y oung refugee

boy Madhab, who had come to ask for some help, was driven out from the local

landlord's house because of his refugee identity . Leave aside the residents—even

the servants of the house had the audacity to call him an outcaste; not fit to cross

the threshold of the house and v iolate its sanctity . The courty ard, where Madhab

had stepped in, was thoroughly washed after his departure, since he had

desecrated the place through his presence, and it needed to be purified.

33

In fact government attempt at rehabilitating the refugees often faltered at the

altar of local hostility . Under the work-site camp scheme, low land reclamation

projects in Sonarpur-Arpanch and Bagjola in Twenty Four Parganas were

undertaken, with the help of the refugees themselves who put in back-breaking

toil in the hope of a patch of land.4 Nearly 20,000 acres were reclaimed in the

Sonarpur-Arpanch scheme and 10,000 acres under the Bagjola scheme

(Bandy opadhy ay , H., 197 0, 243). However in both instances, they were not

destined to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

34

In case of the Sonarpur-Arpanch scheme nearly forty -eight camp families

each, were allotted six acres of land (“Rajarhat Thana Elakai Janata, Udbastu

ebong Police-r Madhhy e Khanday udhha”, 1). But the local landless peasants

could not reconcile to the fact that these ‘outsiders’ would be allotted land in

their home turf, while they would be left in the lurch. Thus trouble ensued and

the ‘outsiders’ were summarily ev icted from their possessions. The refugees,

therefore, were once again back to square one. Government responsibility ended

once the refugees had been ‘rehabilitated’ on paper, with the allocation of land

while in reality , rehabilitation still eluded them.

35

The story of the Bagjola scheme is a photo copy of the Sonarpur-Arpanch

scheme. Nearly 1500 families were made to toil, under the aegis of the

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The refugee psyche

Ev ery night before going off to sleep, I strike out the date in the calendarand count the day s when I will start off for home. One of my classmatesonce sarcastically asked me—'why do y ou alway s run off to the v illageduring the holiday s? What attracts y ou to the v illage life? What is there– except mosquitoes, malaria, jungles, nothing but a monotonous life?'How can I make them understand the charms of a v illage life? How can I

reclamation process and it was hoped that 38,000 acres of new land would be

available at the disposal of the government (WBLA, 1954, 342). But local

hostility prevented the successful completion of the project. About 1200 acres

of land was reclaimed for rehabilitation purpose (Ibid). Even title deeds or

arpanpatras were presented to nearly 100 families each of whom were given six

bighas (“Rajarhat Thana Elakai Janata, Udbastu ebong Police-r Madhhy e

Khanday udhha”, 1).5 But strong objections by the locals shattered their long-

cherished dream of settling down. The locals went to the extent of filing a

petition in the High Court, which issued a decree in their favor. The government

was left with no other option but to abandon the project.

The picture that emerges from the foregoing paragraphs is one of ungenerous

reception accorded to the refugees. To many , the painful decision of separation

from their ancestral home to some extent may have been erased by the belief of

finding a safe sanctuary in West Bengal, far from the persecution of the Muslims,

from the tension of liv ing in perpetual fear, “when a tap on the door could mean

death or for women, rape” (Guhathakurta, 1999). But unfortunately such hopes

were belied.

37

If we veer to the other end of the spectrum, to the self-representation of the

refugees we find a mirror-image of the representation of the locals. Though for

some, migration was a matter of conscious choice like those in the government

serv ice who were given an option by the government to take equivalent work on

the other side,6 for most, the decision to migrate was taken at the behest of

Muslim ire. Like one erstwhile resident of Barisal whose family had to take the

painful decision when the local Muslims set fire to their hay stack—a signal that

this is just the beginning and that the worst was y et to come, or a leading lawy er

of Barisal, who along with his family left their homeland for good, in the clothes

they were wearing, because he heard one afternoon that his arrest was imminent

due to his association with the local Hindu Mahasabha (Report on Deposition).7

38

Arriv ing on this side of the border, whether penniless or with moveable

resources, the general reaction of the migrants at the initial stage was one of

shock and disbelief—they could hardly come to terms with the fact that they

could be cut adrift from their natal setup, that their desh (homeland) has become

bidesh (foreign land). East Bengalis alway s had ‘earned’ the distinction of being

home-birds. Even during the pre-Partition day s, when they had the freedom to

shuttle to and fro, they could never adjust to the rubric of urban liv ing. It is the

v ision of an otherwise insignificant tiny hamlet with a small rivulet flowing by ,

the sound of the blowing of conch-shells in the evening, the lilting tunes of the

agomoni song, the endless v ista of golden harvests, that sustained the East

Bengalis amidst the humdrums and the drudgeries of city life. A ty pical

recollection (Basu, 13-14):

39





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make them understand the joy , the pleasure that one can deriv e byplunging into the waters of the Ichhamati, by inhaling the scent of 'siuli'during the festiv e season in autumn? How can I make those, who hav enot seen our v illage resplendent with the first ray of the sun,understand what is there in my v illage? The moment I step onto thebanks and touch the ground, my whole body starts shiv ering withexcitement. At least, I will be able to spend a few day s in peace andtranquillity away from the mechanical city life.

When temporary separation evoked such strong feeling, it is

understandable that many would be in denial that the snapping of

ties would be permanent. Snehalata Biswas of Tangramari v illage in

undiv ided Nadia took several y ears to understand that they would

never return. In her words, “My husband assured me that we would

return after sometime. I therefore buried all the utensils in our

courty ard. But we never went back” (S. Bandy opadhy ay , 1994, 65).

40

Benumbed with grief, the metropolis of Calcutta and its

surroundings seemed to them a hostile city whose heart had turned

to stone. The migrants, craved for sy mpathy —warm and full

blooded—from their fellow brethren which they felt were sorely

lacking. The sentiment finds echo in the narration of one erstwhile

resident of Chittagong. To put it in her words, “We felt like aquatic

weeds floating from one place to another. People here were

obliv ious of our hardships, our sufferings and consequently devoid

of any fellow feelings, love and compassion” (Interv iew 2000).

Ashim Ranjan Guha of Barisal believed that such indifference

stemmed from the local's fear that the more energetic Bangals

would leave them far behind in every sphere of life and make life

difficult for their coming generations. At that point the refugees, he

felt, were perceived more as competitors than fellow brethren

desperately in need of their healing touch (Interv iew 2000). The

locals, as Prafulla Chakrabarti (himself a refugee) points out in his

seminal work on government perception and refugee rehabilitation,

thus chose to ensconce themselves in a shell of cultural

'superiority '. This exclusiveness was the defense mechanism of the

traditional West Bengali society against the inroads of the

“uninhibited children of the Padma” (Chakrabarti, 1999, 406).

41

The migrants accused the locals of failing to understand the

refugee mind, ‘a tormented psy che’, which needed attention and

care. A child is attached to his mother through the umbilical chord,

which prov ides all the necessary nourishment. But even after the

umbilical chord is severed the sense of belonging of closeness, of

warmth, of exuberance never dies. So it is but natural that the

forbidden shores of the Padma would exercise a ‘cruel’ charm upon

them (perhaps they still do). As Edward Said has pointed out, “once

y ou leave y our home, wherever y ou end up, y ou simply cannot

take up life and become just another citizen of the new place” (Said,

1996, 61-62). For that y ou need time. How can y ou forget y our own

mother and overnight start calling somebody else as y our mother?

Thus it is but natural that the people from East Bengal would carry

“their ‘homes’ on their back.” (Roy , 2000, 182).

42

East Bengal, to them, was “not merely a phy sical structure or a43

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Being a sharanarthi’ (one seeking ‘sharan’ or refuge), Ispend my day s in one corner of the city . When I firstarriv ed in Calcutta, the great city turned its face awayfrom me and tried to push me away from its angina(precincts). My wants are limited to a few barenecessities… All I crav e for is a roof abov e my head and adecent liv elihood that would allow me to liv e like a humanbeing and not as a parasite…. But the cruel city hasrejected me time and again.… Lost amidst the teemingmillions of the great city nobody spares a minute for me toinquire – ‘Yes dear, how are y ou? After all, I am not anativ e of Calcutta, I am a sharanarthi, an udbastu(refugee).Pleasure, security , peace, lov e and affection hav e also leftthe land with us. On all four sides exist the filthy pictureof mean intrigues.Only a true human being (perhaps taking a dig at thepeople of West Bengal) can appreciate the miseries of anudbastu (refugee).Leav ing my prosperous v illage homeland, I now spend mynights on pav ements of Calcutta in abject pov ertyroaming from door to door with my infant son begging forfood.There is hardly a soul in independent India whosy mpathise with us – the v ictims of political power game.

geographical location but alway s an emotional space…”

(Rubenstein, 2001, 1). That, “… homeland is the landscape…of

historical memory that offers tangible images of rootedness…”

(Waetjen, 1999, 654) is best portray ed in the writings of the

refugees themselves, as in Chhere Asha Gram (The Abandoned

Village)—a collection of nostalgic writings of the inhabitants of the

different v illages of East Bengal, overnight whose status in the ey es

of their Muslims co-habitants changed from friends to foes of the

country of their birth. It was perhaps a cathartic attempt by the

marginal men to find solace in their sufferings by giv ing an outlet to

their pent-up feelings and emotions as also “creating a positive

emotional response in the city ” (D. Chakarabarty , 1998, 134). The

particular words that echo through all the writings are abohelito

(ignored), and abanchhito (unwanted). Not that these words appear

specifically in print in all the essay s, but when one goes through

these, the feeling of isolation, of alienation can be easily detected.

A refugee from the Sabhar area of Dacca district compared

himself to a fallen star. Another unfortunate soul from Dhamrai

lamented that by a strange twist of fate the Bangals—the

connoisseurs of good food—who took great pleasure in throwing

lav ish feasts, were themselves knocking from door to door with

their begging bowls to gather two square meals a day .

44

A few selected lines from their writings will offer a better insight

(Basu, 69-7 3, my translation):

45

They spent a lot of time regretting what they had

lost, envy ing those around them “who had alway s

been at home near their loved ones, liv ing in the place

where they were born and grew up without even

46

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having to experience not only the loss of what was

once theirs but above all the torturing memory of life

to which they cannot return” (Said, 1996, 62). They

remained prisoners of the memories of their homeland

—the Padma, Meghna and Arialkha, the beauty of

nature, the relaxed v illage life, the atmosphere of

peace, tranquility and camaraderie, i.e., an idy llic life

torn to pieces by the tornado called Partition.

Perhaps, it is this life that the migrants sought to

recreate once they moved across the border. In this

context one is reminded of Satish Ghosh—the

protagonist in Shirshendu Mukhopadhy ay ’s novel Jaal

(The Web, 1985)—who tried to replicate the ambience

of his desher bari (v illage home) within the three and a

half bighas of land that he could manage to buy in the

outskirts of Calcutta. Surrounded by mango, jackfruit

and betel nut trees, Satish Ghosh sought, through his

dedication and through his hard work, to transplant

the environment of a small v illage home, tucked away

in one corner of the Dacca district.

47

It was perhaps the squatters, who by far had the

bitterest experience in terms of mixing and mingling,

since they came in direct conflict with the local

people. Squatters are those migrants, who dissatisfied

at the government’s piecemeal efforts at rehabilitation

decided to take initiatives at self-rehabilitation, which

included forcible seizure of lands for settlements. Thus

originated the squatters’ colonies, which were

basically unplanned colonies whereby the refugees

infringed upon and occupied the marshy and fallow

lands in the outskirts of Calcutta. The majority of these

cropped up between the end of 1949 and the first half

of 1950. The foundation of the squatters’ colonies

resulted in a severe law and order problem as it

signaled the beginning of a prolonged struggle between

the two communities—one who never paid the cost of

crossing and the other for whom the cost was perhaps

too heavy . In their urgent need to have a roof, above

their head, the squatters forcibly seized lands at dead

of night. Indiv idual plots were marked off and shacks

erected. The landlords, absentee in most cases, hired

local goons to ev ict them.

48

One can take the example of the Azadgarh colony ,

located in the Jadavpur area of south Calcutta as a

case-study . Indubaran Ganguly , one of the founding

fathers of the colony pens a day to day account of its

inception in his memoir – Colony Smriti (Ganguly ,

Memories of Colony -Life, 1997 ).

49

A very interesting feature of the Azadgarh Colony is

that instead of selecting the dead of night, it was in

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broad day light—around nine or ten a.m. that the

div ision of plots began. The day : 17 January 1950.

Only those East Bengali refugees, who possessed no

land any where in West Bengal, were eligible for a plot

in the colony , for which they had to pay Rs. ten. The

size of a holding was roughly around three cottahs.8 By

afternoon, div ision was complete and many of the plot

holders started construction work.

The original owner of the plots Debiprasad

Chattopadhy ay did not sit quiet as his land was being

illegally encroached upon. He arrived at the site with

two armed body guards in tow at about four a.m. on 25

January and started his demolition drive in ward no.

three of the colony . But in face of stubborn resistance

from the colony dwellers, he had to beat a hasty

retreat.

51

The colony people, too, v iewed the locals with

suspicion. B.S. Guha’s study , carried out on behalf of

the Department of Anthropology , Government of

India in the Azadgarh colony , shows that in their time

of distress these unfortunate souls hardly received any

sy mpathy from the local people. The survey reveals,

that 30.8% of the males of the Azadgarh colony were

tensional, i.e. showed an unfavorable attitude towards

the locals while in case of the females the number was

nearly double, the percentage being 60.4 (B.S. Guha,

1954, 83). Among the females, 7 2% of the higher

castes were hostile to the locals (B.S. Guha, 1954, 83).

Responses of the women reveal that the attitude

towards local people had a gender dimension. The

manners and behaviors of the local people towards

women were highly provocative, as it seemed from

their responses. This genderization of attitude may be

due to the fact that women, who usually stay at home

and carry on the day to day chores, came in contact

with the non-refugee neighbors to a greater extent

than their male counterparts who ventured out of the

colony for employ ment.

52

Another survey by Dipankar Sinha conducted

amongst the refugees of the Samargarh Colony and

Batwara Biddhasta Upanibesh—both squatters’

colonies on the southern fringes of Calcutta—shows

that the residents of these two settlements were

treated as ‘outsiders par excellence’ by the non-

refugee neighbors of their respective localities, the

relation being ‘less that cordial’ and bereft of any

explicit manifestation of ‘sy mpathy wave’ (Sinha,

2000, pp. 142-161).

53

Gargi Chakravartty , growing up in the area adjacent

to the colony in the early 1950s, recalls that

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irrespective of whether a migrant after 1947 or liv ing

for two generations in Calcutta, East Bengalis all and

sundry were denounced as ‘refugees’ where the

alphabet ‘g’ was deliberately pronounced as ‘z’, in

mockery of the East Bengali dialect (Interv iew 2000).

Nripendranath Achary a of Bapujinagar colony in

Jadavpur in south Calcutta, recalls that even after

government recognition of their colony , the neighbors

prohibited the use of the nearby pond – the lone

source of water (Ganashakti, 2000).

Manas Roy , in his autobiographical article, where he

narrates his experience of growing up in Netaji Nagar—

a squatter’s colony in south Calcutta—rightly sums up

that just as Calcutta decontextualized them, they also

decontextualized Calcutta (Roy , 2000, 162-199). As

he points out, “Harmony , haphazardness, curves,

bends, the dialects, the proverbs, stories of our roots:

all this gave the place its nativ ity a structure of feeling

—and we were serenely mirthfully cocooned in it”

(Roy , 2000, 182). Through memory they sought to

preserve their distinctiveness, their identity , their

“place in the world, from a Calcutta eternally

trespassing, eternally kept in abey ance” (Roy , 2000,

182).

55

But, at one level Calcutta exercised its charm on

them also: “perhaps a bit of desire for them as well”

(Ibid). They thus led a dual existence where one part

of their being y earned to be a part of the present social

fabric while the other part put a check on that desire

by constantly engulfing them in the nostalgia of their

bhitamati (home and hearth). Manas Roy exemplifies

this through the portray al of Naru’s father, who goes

to work in the city —“Calcutta to him must have been

like a magic lantern show from which he returned to

the magic of his restored bhita in the evening,

seemingly unscathed” (Roy , 2000, 183). Two

conflicting desires—to adapt to the new environment

and at the same time retain the memory of the

prev ious life as sacrosanct—characterized the duality

of the situation. Caught in the web of this inner

struggle, the colony -people remained ensconced

within themselves.

56

Thus, at one level, the perceptions of the refugees

and the migrants converge. The locals treated the

refugees as outsiders, who themselves looked towards

the other side of the river as their home. The two

groups remained more or less cocooned in their own

worlds—each was unwilling to make concessions for

the other and when their paths crossed on occasions,

showdown, verbal and at times phy sical, was

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“My home on the otherside”

inev itable.

Assimilation and integration at this stage thus

proved elusive. Assimilation is a complex

phenomenon with several ramifications: social,

economic, psy chological. These are intertwined at one

level, as one leads to the other, but this should not be

taken as a general rule, as at another level, they retain

their distinction. The migrants, struggling to find a

foothold in their new set-up, found it well-nigh

impossible to treat West Bengal as their home due to

the step-motherly treatment meted out to them both

by the locals as has been delineated in the foregoing

paragraphs as also by the government. Joy a Chatterji

shows how the politicians in power preferred to turn a

blind ey e to the escalating crisis. While the West

Bengal premier looked at the refugees from ‘the prism

of politics’ and considered them as ‘canon fodders’

planted by the opposition to topple his ministry , the

Indian Prime Minister refused to acknowledge the

grav ity of the situation in East Bengal which forced

people to flee their homes in hordes. A realistic

appraisal of the situation being absent, no concrete

rehabilitation policy could take-off during the phase

under study . That the stress was mainly on ad hoc

assistance, rather than rehabilitation, is ev ident from

the following table:

58

Year Relief (inRs.)

Rehabilitation (inRs.)

1947-48

4,08,929 Nil

1948-49

1,94,19,452 11,12,453

1949-50

1,61,87,750 31,13,535

Total 3,60,16,131 42,25,988

Source: Government of West Bengal, Five Y ears of

Independence, August 1947-August 1952, Calcutta,

1953.

59

While in Punjab government efforts at rehabilitation

being swift and prompt, West Bengal languished from

neglect. Given the governments’ dithering on the

crisis, a feeling of being betray ed and cheated by the

government and the people alike was rife among the

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Case-Study I (Interv iew 2000):I hail from Parashkathi v illage in Barisaldistrict. As a gov ernment serv ant, Iexercised my option to obtain a posting onthis side. But ev en after fifty -four y ears, Ifeel ‘bastuhara’ (homeless). My house here isnothing more than a shelter of brick andcement. Our home in Parashkathi wassurrounded by gardens and orchards on allfour sides, a pond full of fish, hugecourty ard. Home, to me, cannot be short ofany thing than this. Compared to what Ihav e lost, I hav e gained nothing. Ev entoday , I long to go back and settle down inParashkathi. Case-Study II(Interv iew 2000): My home town was located on the banks ofthe Padma in Faridpur. I came ov er in 1 952.I consider my self bastuhara because I stillcannot reconcile to the fact that myhomeland has become a foreign country byv irtue of one line drawn on the map. Myey es moisten when I think that I will nev eragain walk along the banks of the Padma,will nev er hav e the opportunity to plungeinto its waters. When I came ov er I expecteda similar ambience here, but unfortunatelyinstead of the Padma, I discov ered a concretejungle. My loss is irreparable. With the lossof my motherland, I hav e lost a part of myown self forev er. I do not crav e to return toBangladesh, but still I long to catch up withmy old friends and ruminate about thosegolden y ears.

refugees.

Down the y ears has the scenario changed in terms of

lessening of the pain of separation? If one zooms into

present times, can one detect any difference in the

refugee psy che? Has the first generation migrants been

able to come to terms with their ‘loss’ and move on?

Do they still y earn for their lost homeland? Is still East

Bengal their home? I present here first-person

narratives of two refugee gentlemen.

61

They live and relive this loss day after

day . For them the pain and the scar are

perhaps as raw as it was in 1947 . Their

mental make-up has not allowed their

psy chological assimilation—materially

they might be well-off compared to many

others who had come to this side. But

their material stability has not helped in

easing the trauma of the loss. In case of

the Punjabi migrants, though memories

still hark back to the pre-Partition day s,

the pining and the near-obsession for a

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lost homeland has somewhat watered

down. Dr. Harcharan Singh, while

speaking of his erstwhile home and the

emotions and memories attached to it,

categorically states, “If today someone

offers me all the property left behind in

Pakistan, I still would not go back…

whatever has happened has become the

past” (Talbot, 2006, 100). But the

majority of the East Bengalis are still

hopelessly trapped in the cage of

nostalgia.

Arthur G. Nikelly sees nostalgia as a

function of abrupt changes in the social

structure (June 1994, 182-199). In case

of the migrant Hindus, structural changes

in the family sy stem—the basic unit of the

social structure—compounded the

trauma of forced migration and

compelled them to ruminate those happy

day s of liv ing amidst kith and kin under

one roof. As I have pointed out earlier,

people of the East had for long made

Calcutta their temporary home. Hence

many migrant families were blessed with

contact on this side—albeit a remote one.

Those who were lucky enough to take

advantages of such connections usually

sent their adolescent girls and children to

the other side. The menfolk and

representatives of the older generation

clung, hoping against hope that things

will revert to normal, that the good old

day s will be back again and that they will

be able to die in peace in their own bhita

(ancestral home). Like Anima Dhar, who

along with her y ounger brother came

over to Calcutta and found shelter in their

uncle’s house. Her mother stay ed back

along with other relatives in Chittagong.

It was only in 1986 that her mother

finally came over to settle down on this

side.

63

Together with such partial migration,

death and government screening

contributed no less to the dislocation of

family structure during this abnormal

and calamitous situation.9 The upshot

was an ‘immediate familiar

disorganization’ in the aftermath of the

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Partition day s (Pakrasi, 197 1, 66). The

sy stem of extended or joint family —the

bedrock of the East Bengali Hindu family

structure—was the most significant

casualty . On the basis of a study carried

out by the Indian Statistical Institute in

1948 among 16,156 refugee families, it

can be shown that wherever in the East

Bengal areas of undiv ided Bengal on the

eve of Partition, joint family structure

with or without complex elements

constituted nearly 53% of the then

existing family set-up, the refugees

migrating from East Bengal showed such

an extended family structure with or

without complex constituents in only

45.6% cases (Pakrasi, 1965, 15). That the

displaced persons suffered unavoidable

disintegration in their joint families due

to their dislocations from regular

residence in East Bengal is further

attested by the rise in the percentage of

elementary or simple families: 30.03% to

34.36% (Pakrasi, 1965, 15). Huddled in

dingy shanties or in government relief

camps and subsisting on paltry

government doles, it was, for all practical

purposes, becoming increasingly

impossible for the emaciated Hindu

patriarch to keep his extended family of

kith and kin under one roof. Under the

pressure of circumstances, the plinth of

the joint-family sy stem was badly shaken,

forcing its erstwhile members to hark

back to those day s, when families could

boast of entire localities being populated

with relatives and acquaintances.

Partition tearing asunder the root of

the age-old practiced norm of the family

sy stem in East Bengal, it has been argued,

freed many middle-class East Bengali

women from the shackles of patriarchal

bondage and opened the doors of

opportunity . Over 18,200 women

applicants were registered in the

Government-managed Employ ment

Serv ice Organisation in Calcutta in 1948

(“Serious Unemploy ment in India”, 7

February 1949, 1). Women successfully

made foray s into the male bastion. To

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quote Jasodhara Bagchi, “Calcutta was no

longer a city of male elites in which

women also ran (43).” She sees from 1947

an unprecedented acceleration of the

earlier trends and attempts at women's

emancipation.

But such emancipation had its flip side

also. Karuna Chanana opines that the

ideological framework which emphasizes

v irginity , parda, early marriage and

dowry , son-preference, etc. and tended

to keep women within the home did not

undergo much change even when they

went out apparently encouraged by the

families. The traditional ‘feminine role

model’ of a daughter, wife and mother

persisted. Education, she feels, was

v iewed as an investment for future utility ,

not to develop their self worth or for

independent training as to break out of

the patriarchal mould. So long

accustomed to being at the receiv ing end,

a working woman was still rooted to the

same status. ‘Emancipation’ did not

change her fate; her destiny . She still

acted as a shock-absorber, sheltering and

protecting her family against all odds.

66

The transformation from home to the

workplace in fact heightened the

exploitation. She was doubly exploited:

in the home as well as in the workplace (in

case of the latter exploitation often

amounted to sexual harassment,

although may be in an indirect manner).

Most of these women, married or

unmarried, sacrificed their own pleasures

for the sake of their families, often going

without food to feed the hungry mouths

at home and spending all their earnings to

buy happiness for their families. Hence

for such working women, East Bengal

sy mbolized the ‘ideal life’, where

confinement within the four walls,

performing the matronly duties was

equated with happiness. The blurring of

the private sphere and the public sphere,

in the post-partition day s, for most of

these women did not allow any breathing

space, in fact constricted their space by

overburdening them with responsibilities

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both at the home and at the workplace.

Hena Chaudhuri, who worked for the

Relief and Rehabilitation (RR)

Department, Government of West Bengal,

emphatically points out: “I am still

steeped in the nostalgia of my

motherland.” Whereas back in East

Bengal, her life revolved around play ing

in the open fields, going to school and

study , life took a u-turn after Partition

when the family was ripped apart, with

her mother stay ing back at the v illage and

her father and siblings migrating to West

Bengal. From then onwards, she led a

peripatetic existence, moving from one

refugee camp to another, then from one

relatives’ house to another, leading a

hand-to-mouth existence. Financial

constraints, not known to the family back

in East Bengal, now glared at them.

Although she found a job in the RR

Department, which eventually helped her

to balance the family boat, she could not

get over the trauma of severance form

her natal set-up. When the interv iew was

taken, fifty -one y ears have elapsed after

her migration, but the desire to go back

has not waned a bit. Images of v illage life

still haunt her, make her heart heavy , and

urge her to seek refuge in the lap of her

‘motherland’: East Bengal.

68

One retired first-generation migrant

gentleman, who worked in the topmost

tier of a multinational company in

Calcutta, once confided that although he

has traveled extensively around the

world, he has never v isited Bangladesh,

since he could not bear to v isit his

‘motherland’ with a passport and a v isa

(Interv iew 1993).

69

East Bengal still pulls a chord in their

hearts and has not allowed them to

accept reality . They live with these sepia-

tinted images, have added to these and

conjure up the concept of ‘ideal life’

amidst the sy lvan surroundings, which

may sometimes be imaginary , “…the

place of origin remains stagnant in the

memory of the migrant…” (D’Costa, no

date, 5). Psy chological assimilation still

70

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Conclusion

eludes these first generation migrants and

perhaps will continue to do so. Their

present socio-economic status may not

alway s be that ‘turbulent and chaotic’

which David Lowenthal identifies as one

of the principal reasons for nostalgic

y earning, they cannot treat themselves to

be a part of Calcutta, a part of its society :

“someone who never felt at home, and

was alway s at odds with the environment,

inconsolable about the past, bitter about

the present and the future” (Said, 1996,

47 ).

Time and again, what came out of these

interv iews was that these middle-class

East Bengalis could boast of an identity

back home. They were well-settled in

their jobs, had moveable and immovable

assets, well-respected and revered in

their localities. Nearly 80% of higher

offices in East Bengal were held by Hindus

(S. Guha, no date, 30). Nearly 80%

national wealth of East Bengal belonged

to non-Muslim minorities (S. Guha 30).

Majority of buildings and properties in

each town of East Bengal, in some cases

more than 85% of the town holdings were

owned by the Hindus (S. Guha, no date,

30). All noteworthy industrial concerns

of East Bengal, namely nine cotton mills,

two glassworks, four match factories and

one cement manufacturing work, were

organized, financed and controlled by

non-Muslims. Four important banks,

which greatly influenced economic life of

East Bengal as a whole, were established

and controlled by the Hindus (S. Guha, no

date, 31). Partition initiated the process

of robbing them of this pre-eminence

back in East Bengal. It created an

environment where Hindu businessmen

suddenly found his field limited, the

educated classes found employ ment

becoming almost impossible, the

landholders found themselves being

gradually ‘relieved’ of their burdens by a

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heavily biased and one-sided legal

process and parents with marriageable

sons and daughters found it increasingly

difficult to arrange marriages. Their

identity was at stake and hence they

decided to cross over. The migrants

hoped that they would be able to carve a

niche for themselves in their new set-up,

but unfortunately , they were relegated to

nameless, faceless entities. Anima Dhar’s

ey es, even fifty y ears after migration (she

migrated in 1958) moisten at the mention

of Madarsa v illage of Chittagong. Hailing

from a family of doctors, this housewife,

laments that if they could have stay ed

back, by this time they would have been

able to form an identity of their own: a

respectable identity . Although she does

not crave to go back, ‘home’ and

‘motherland’ to her means Madarsa

v illage and East Bengal, present

Bangladesh. The search for identity still

opens the flood-gates of emotion and

memories.

If we percolate down to the second

generation of migrants, do we find an

echo of the same sentiment? Interv iews

reveal such nostalgic pining for a lost

homeland, such emotional attachment, to

a large extent being sublimated and

diluted. To Archana Bhattachary a, born

and brought up in Netaji Nagar Colony ,

East Bengal identity holds no special

significance. She considers West Bengal—

her birthplace—her home. At an age,

when children listen to fairy tales, she

heard stories of a lost land, destroy ed by

the ogre called ‘Partition’. But even then,

she feels no special bonding with East

Bengal. This feeling is more or less

articulated by the representatives of this

age-group. Although some like Shanta

Chaudhuri would like to v isit Barisal—the

district from which her paternal family

hails—the desire stems more from

curiosity to see the land of which she has

heard so much rather than ‘coming back

home’. The y ounger generation no longer

speaks the dialect, nor are sticklers of

East Bengali customs and traditions. They

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clearly feel rooted to Calcutta. Their

social setting, transformed into, what

Olwig calls ‘cultural sites’. While for the

first generation, landed property , rivers,

joint-family sy stem represented the

cultural sites, for the second generation

the cultural site has shifted to the country

of immigration. Dipankar Sinha’s survey ,

too, shows that by the turn of the

millennium, the phenomenon of

insider/outsider to a large extent has

watered down. There has been

considerable ‘mainstreaming’ of the

colony population and major festivals

like the Durga Puja are celebrated with

verve and v igor by both the

communities.

For the first-generation migrants

marry ing their children outside the

community was a strict no-no. Marry ing

a Ghati was a taboo. As a result, most of

the second-generation migrants were

married into East Bengali families.

However, they themselves do not harbor

any such strict notion. As Shanta

Chaudhuri of Bijoy garh Colony stresses,

“I cannot think of East Bengal the sole

criterion for fix ing a match for my

children.”

73

The locals of this generation, too,

hardly bothers as to who hails from which

side. The edges of differences have

somewhat become blunt with the passage

of time, though one elderly Ghati resident

still feels that the topography of Calcutta

changed for the worse after the coming of

the Bangals. But for the y ounger lot, who

were not witnesses to these changes, the

general perception is articulated by the

sentence, “Who bothers about such

triv ial issues (i.e. Bangal-Ghati

distinction)?” It is true that post-Partition

second and third generation men and

women are aware of their identities as

Bangal or Ghati, but that hardly holds any

significance in their day -to-day lives, nor

are they keen to uphold the

characteristics and peculiarities

associated with these identities.

74

Together with its residents, the city ,75

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too, had lost its prev ious characteristics.

Colonial Calcutta, the city of parvenu

wealth and easy liv ing, the city of white

town and native town, of genteel prose

and ly rical poetry , of colonial civ il

serv ices and nationalist revolutionaries

was finally lowered down to rest in peace

with Independence and Partition. Instead

of the white town and the native town,

Calcutta came to be polarized along the

Bangal-Ghati line: North Calcutta the hub

of the Ghatis, South Calcutta the citadel of

the Bangals. Although migration from

across the border lessened down after the

early 1950s, Calcutta remained a primate

city so far as migration was concerned,

attracting like magnet people from the

rural areas as also from neighboring

states. Bursting at the seams, planned

intervention on part of the

administrators changed the contours of

the city . With the boundary of the city

being increasingly pushed further to

accommodate the suburban areas into

the mainstream, modern communication

sy stem, housing for all, Calcutta has risen

from a phoenix from the ashes, to emerge

as a modern metropolitan city . No area

remained the exclusive domain of any

one ethnic population. The squatters’

colonies lost their characteristics—

unplanned, dingy , semi-permanent

structures as houses, serpentine lanes,

filth and squalor spilling out. After the

recognition of the colonies by the

government, funds were allocated for

their upgradation and fifty y ears down

the line, most of the colonies remain so in

name only , with planned metalled roads,

permanent houses of brick and mortar,

modern sewerage and drainage sy stem.

Colony -culture, i. e, the insular nature of

the colonies where time stood still, is lost

for all practical purposes, preserved and

locked up only in the memories of the

fast-disappearing aged residents, whose

failing v isions still have that faraway look

when one mentions East Bengal.

Calcutta has thus emerged as a huge

melting pot, a bursting urban

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Bibliography

conglomerate nestling people from

different regions, religions where there is

constant interaction between various

languages, cultures and customs.

However, till the last of the first

generation Ghatis and Bangals perish in

the burning ghats, Bangal and Ghati

identities will continue to be an intrinsic

part of Bengali society , albeit not in an

overt manner.

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Notes

1 I am grateful to the anony mous rev iewers of the journal, Dr Indiv ar Kamtekar ofJawaharlal Nehru Univ ersity and Professor Subhoranjan Dasgupta of the Institute ofDev elopment Studies Kolkata for their comments and suggestions. ProfessorDasgupta’s insight into emotional attachment in the sphere of human relationshipshelped me to a great extent in analy zing the same in the context of homeland. Theinterv iews cited here, were taken as part of the project “The Trauma and theTriumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India”, carried under the aegis of theInstitute of Dev elopment Studies Kolkata and coordinated by Professor JasodharaBagchi and Professor Subhoranjan Dasgupta. The second generation interv iews hav ebeen taken by Ms Suranjana Gangopadhy ay who v ery kindly allowed the use of theseinterv iews conducted by her for her own research purposes.

2 Bangals are so dull that ev en elementary things are bey ond their grasp.

3 Just as a washerman can easily identify a pauper by a look at his clothes, agoldsmith knows who is a Bangal among hundreds of his customers, since it is v eryeasy to hoodwink a Bangal.

4 Refugees who came after July 1 952 and were admitted to gov ernment-run reliefcamps, with the exception of the Permanent Liabilities, were not entitled to anygratuitous relief. It was stipulated that the able-bodied men, among them, whileawaiting rehabilitation, would be occupied in useful work like the clearing of junglesand water-hy acinth, repairing roads, dev eloping rehabilitation sites. A new ty pe ofcamp was added to the existing lexicon – work-site camps. There were two ty pes ofwork-site camps. One ty pe of work-site camps are those where reclamation of oncewater-logged areas were done and where the refugees would settle once these weredrained. The other ty pes were for those who still had not found any kind of land inWest Bengal. They were engaged in projects of the Central and the West BengalGov ernment. In both ty pes of camps, adult males and females within certain agelimits worked and their dependents and the rest of the family got subsidy . Theirav erage earning was Rs.1 -6.

5 One acre is equiv alent to three bighas.

6 Saibal Kumar Gupta, ICS, posted as the District and Session Judge in Chittagong(East Bengal) decided in fav or of West Bengal. Somnath Chakrabarty , posted as a sub-judge in Midnapore (West Bengal) chose to shift to East Bengal.

7 Asoka Gupta Archiv es, File No.3 , Report on Deposition before the Commissioner ofEnquiry .

8 One cottah is equiv alent to 7 20 square feet.

9 ‘Screening’ refers to the procedure by which the refugees, on arriv al at the border,were questioned on behalf of the gov ernment and on satisfactorily establishing theirclaim of fresh arriv al, were issued interception slips to qualify themselv es as ‘bona fiderefugees’. To those dependent entirely on the gov ernment for food and shelter, aspecial ty pe of interception slip was issued which entitled them to admission in camps.They were then asked to report to the nearest reception centers, where they werefurther checked and mov ed to the nearest av ailable transit camp. Here they wereagain questioned, classified according to their profession or occupation, and giv encards and sent to the Relief Camps, Permanent Liability camps or Colony Camps.Many migrants could not bear the strain and pain of migration as a result of whichsuccumbed to diseases.

References

Inkatha’s Politics of Ethnicity ”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22:4 (1 999), pp. 653-7 8.English

West Bengal Legislative Assembly Debates, 1 7 February 1 948, (Calcutta: Gov ernmentof West Bengal, 1 949)

http://cm.revues.org/1490#bodyftn1









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Electronic reference

Subhasri Ghosh, « Representation of forced migrants: a case study of the east bengalimigrants to West Bengal », Conserveries mémorielles [Online], #13 | 2013, Online since10 March 2013, Connection on 16 March 2013. URL : http://cm.revues.org/1490

Author

Subhasri Ghosha reçu un doctorat en histoire moderne de l’Université Jawaharlal Nehru, à New Delhi. Sathèse s’intitule « The Impact of Immigration on West Bengal 1947-1971 ». Elle a présentédes communications sur la question des migrations forcées dans divers colloquesnationaux et internationaux. Sa publication la plus récente est un chapitre intitulé « TheRefugee and the Government : A Saga of Self-Rehabilitation in West Bengal ». Dans DanielColeman, Erin Goheen Glanville, Wafaa Hasan et Agnes Kramer-Hamstrat, dir. CounteringDisplacements: The Creativity and Resilience of Indigenous and Refugee-ed Peoples(University of Alberta Press, Alberta, 2012).

Subhasri Ghosh received her Phd in Modern History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, NewDelhi. The topic of her dissertation is “The Impact of Immigration on West Bengal 1947-1971.” She has presented papers on the issue of forced migration in various national andinternational conferences. Her latest publication is the chapter titled, “The Refugee and theGovernment: A Saga of Self-Rehabilitation in West Bengal” in Daniel Coleman, ErinGoheen Glanville, Wafaa Hasan & Agnes Kramer-Hamstra ed. Countering Displacements:The Creativity and Resilience of Indigenous and Refugee-ed Peoples (University of AlbertaPress, Alberta, 2012).

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