Reconstructing the Bengal Partition

Reconstructing the Bengal Partition PDF Author: Jayanti Basu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788190676090
Category : Bengal (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A psychological study of the Bengal Partition, a traumatic time that continues to resonate. Why has it been so hard for Bengal to recover from this catastrophe, shared with the people of Punjab, who faced much more brutal and horrendous violence over a short period? Was it due to very different historical circumstances? The refugees were targets of soft violence, an extreme form of mental assault that chilled them with fear till they fled. They could not tell whether old friends had become new foes. Were they imagining this or perhaps it was a true reading of the situation? Departures were spread over many years, preventing a sharper break with the past, prolonging their confusion over identity, the grief of being uprooted, of feeling unwelcome in the truncated state of West Bengal. The author interviews a number of respondents who were young children or adolescents from the bhadralok, the educated section of society, to gauge their understanding of Partition and how it affects their lives. She uses the insights of psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology. Alan Roland, the distinguished psychoanalyst, talks of how the depth of these interviews and Basus psychological understanding of each person give a new understanding of memory and the reconstruction of Partition in peoples mind.

Reconstructing the Bengal Partition

Reconstructing the Bengal Partition PDF Author: Jayanti Basu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788190676090
Category : Bengal (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
A psychological study of the Bengal Partition, a traumatic time that continues to resonate. Why has it been so hard for Bengal to recover from this catastrophe, shared with the people of Punjab, who faced much more brutal and horrendous violence over a short period? Was it due to very different historical circumstances? The refugees were targets of soft violence, an extreme form of mental assault that chilled them with fear till they fled. They could not tell whether old friends had become new foes. Were they imagining this or perhaps it was a true reading of the situation? Departures were spread over many years, preventing a sharper break with the past, prolonging their confusion over identity, the grief of being uprooted, of feeling unwelcome in the truncated state of West Bengal. The author interviews a number of respondents who were young children or adolescents from the bhadralok, the educated section of society, to gauge their understanding of Partition and how it affects their lives. She uses the insights of psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology. Alan Roland, the distinguished psychoanalyst, talks of how the depth of these interviews and Basus psychological understanding of each person give a new understanding of memory and the reconstruction of Partition in peoples mind.

Caste and Partition in Bengal

Caste and Partition in Bengal PDF Author: Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192859722
Category : Bengal (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The book seeks to situate caste as a discursive category in the discussion of Partition in Bengal. In conventional narratives of Partition, the role of the Dalit or the Scheduled Castes is either completely ignored or mentioned in passing. The authors addresse this discursive absence and argues that in Bengal the Dalits were neither passive onlookers nor accidental victims of Partition politics and violence, which ruptured their unity and weakened their political autonomy. They were the worst victims of Partition. When the Dalit peasants of Eastern Bengal began to migrate to India after 1950, they were seen as the 'burden' of a frail economy of West Bengal, and the Indian state did not provide them with a proper rehabilitation package. They were first segregated in fenced refugee camps where life was unbearable, and then dispersed to other parts of India - first to the Andaman Islands and the neighbouring states, and then to the inhospitable terrains of Dandakaranya, where they could be used as cheap labour for various development projects. This book looks critically at their participation in Partition politics, the reasons for their migration three years after Partition, their insufferable life and struggles in the refugee camps, their negotiations with caste and gender identities in these new environments, their organized protests against camp maladministration, and finally their satyagraha campaigns against the Indian state's refugee dispersal policy. This book looks at how refugee politics impacted Dalit identity and protest movements in post-Partition West Bengal.

The Long History of Partition in Bengal

The Long History of Partition in Bengal PDF Author: Rituparna Roy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003851894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book focuses on the aftermath of the 1947 Partition of India. It considers the long aftermath and afterlives of Partition afresh, from a wide and inclusive range of perspectives and studies the specificities of the history of violence and migration and their memories in the Bengal region. The chapters in the volume range from the administrative consequences of partition to public policies on refugee settlement, life stories of refugees in camps and colonies, and literary and celluloid representations of Partition. It also probes questions of memory, identity, and the memorialization of events. Eclectic in its theoretical orientation and methodology, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of partition history, colonialism, refugee studies, Indian history, South Asian history, migration studies, and modern history in general.

The Partition of Bengal

The Partition of Bengal PDF Author: Debjani Sengupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316673871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This study looks at the rich literature that has been spawned through the historical imagination of Bengali-speaking writers in West Bengal and Bangladesh through issues of homelessness, migration and exile to see how the Partition of Bengal in 1947 has thrown a long shadow over memories and cultural practices. Through a rich trove of literary and other materials, the book lays bare how the Partition has been remembered or how it has been forgotten. For the first time, hitherto untranslated archival materials and texts in Bangla have been put together to assess the impact of 1947 on the cultural memory of Bangla-speaking peoples and communities. This study contends that there is not one but many smaller partitions that women and men suffered, each with its own textures of pain, guilt and affirmation.

Partition as Border-Making

Partition as Border-Making PDF Author: Sayeed Ferdous
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000458954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book critically analyzes the Partition experiences from East Bengal in 1947 and its prolonged aftermath leading to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. It looks at how newly emerged borderlands at the time of Partition affected lives and triggered prolonged consequences for the people living in East Bengal/Bangladesh. The author brings to the fore unheard voices and unexplored narratives, especially those relating the experience of different groups of Muslims in the midst of the falling apart of the unified Muslim identity. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research and archival resources, the volume analyzes various themes such as partition literature, local narratives of border-making, smuggling, border violence, refugees, identity conflicts, border crossing, and experiences of the Bihari Muslims and the Hindus of East Pakistan, among others. A unique study in border-making, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of history, South Asian history, Partition studies, oral history, anthropology, political history, refugee studies, minority studies, political science, and borderland studies.

Migration, Memories, and the "Unfinished" Partition

Migration, Memories, and the Author: Amit Ranjan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003850065
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This book looks at migration through the lens of the Partition of India in 1947. The Partition uprooted millions of people from their homelands. This volume examines the initial difficulties faced by the refugees in settling down in their adopted land. It analyses the state’s efforts in facilitating the movement of refugees, the processes it initiated to resettle them after Partition, and the extent to which it was successful. This book also investigates the links between socio-political developments in contemporary India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as a result of the Partition. Drawing on archival sources, oral histories and literary representations, the contributing authors discuss and analyse the experiences of the migrated population. Part of the Migrations in South Asia series, this book will be an important read for scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, Partition studies, Indian history, Indian politics, and South Asian studies.

A Reading of Violence in Partition Stories from Bengal

A Reading of Violence in Partition Stories from Bengal PDF Author: Suranjana Choudhury
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527557103
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book engages with diverse modes of representations of Partition violence and its consequences in a selection of Partition narratives from Bengal. Violence constitutes one of the most obvious images of this traumatic period in Indian history. Its dynamics of representation—the nature of violence, its impact on society and the individual, the forms of its socio cultural and political implanting—invariably highlight the aesthetic sensibility of its writers. The book questions if it is possible to qualify violence with all its complexities, and examines how these narratives offer a critique of historical and political engagements with violence. The experiences of suffering, pain, trauma, affliction, torture, fear and betrayal are also constituted within the structural analysis of violence.

Citizen Refugee

Citizen Refugee PDF Author: Uditi Sen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Explores how refugees were used as agents of nation-building in India, leading to gendered and caste-ridden policies of rehabilitation.

The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947

The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 PDF Author: Bidyut Chakrabarty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134332742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The fragmentation of Bengal and Assam in 1947 was a crucial moment in India's socio-political history as a nation state. Both the British Indian provinces were divided as much through the actions of the Muslim League as by those of Congress and the British colonial power. Attributing partition largely to Hindu communalists is, therefore, historically inaccurate and factually misleading. The Partition of Bengal and Assam provides a review of constitutional and party politics as well as of popular attitudes and perceptions. The primary aim of this book is to unravel the intricate socio-economic and political processes that led up to partition, as Hindus and Muslims competed ferociously for the new power and privileges to be conferred on them with independence. As shown in the book, well before they divorced at a political level, Hindus and Muslims had been cleaved apart by their socio-economic differences. Partition was probably inevitable.

South Asia

South Asia PDF Author: Dhananjay Tripathi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000485501
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Post-colonial and post-partition South Asia, one of the fastest-growing and yet one of the least integrated regions of the world, is marked by both optimism and pessimism. This intriguing dichotomy of strength and weakness, security and insecurity, hope and fear, connections and disconnects underpins South Asia’s regionalism conundrum and gives birth to borders and boundaries – both material and mental – with a complex territoriality. The Janus-faced nature of South Asian borderlands – the inward nationalizing impulses entangled with the outward regional frontier-orientations – is a stark reminder that history of mobility in this eco-geographical region is much older than the history of territoriality and colonial cartography and ethnography. This collection of meticulously researched, theoretically informed, case studies from South Asia provides useful insights into bordering, ordering and othering narratives as practices and performances that are intricately entangled with identity politics and security discourses. It shows how a sharper focus on subterranean subregionalism(s), border communities, popular geopolitics of enmity, and transborder challenges to sustainability, could open up spaces for new multiple (re)imaginings of borders at diverse scales and sights including sub-urban neighbourhoods, school textbooks/cinema and trans-border conservation initiatives. The chapters in this edited volume have been contributed by both renowned as well as young emerging scholars, looking into the borders and boundaries in South Asia. Each chapter offers new perspectives and insights into themes like trans-Himalayan borderlands, India-Pakistan physical and mental borders, Afghanistan-Pakistan border and numerous social boundaries that we see in everyday South Asia. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.