Introduction

A little more than a month ago, India celebrated her 70^th Independence Day. Whenever we talk of independence of India from British domination, we are reminded of the territorial division of British India into two independent nation states, India and Pakistan. Consequences of partition have been fundamental to the society, economy and polity of the subcontinent, so much so that Ranabir Samaddar has suggested “Partition lives on in post-colonial times to such an extent that we should truly prefer the phrase ‘partitioned times’ to the more common ‘post colonial times.’”[1] The riots that had happened in the subcontinent since 1947, the wars that India and Pakistan had fought and most importantly Kashmir remind us that we all live in the long shadows of partition.

     Nonetheless, in recent years we have witnessed increasingly “apolitical” initiatives to memorialize partition as an event of the past that primarily aim at recording as many eyewitness accounts of 1947 as possible in regions that were directly affected by partition (like West Bengal, Assam, Punjab of Pakistan and India). Such projects, important though for various reasons, iron out the ‘longness’ of partition, as Ravinder Kaur has mentioned in a recent article.[2] Moreover, the tendency is to perceive the interviewees as victims, denying their roles as agents who might have been the perpetrators of violence and most certainly had to negotiate with the governments, family, and locals as refugees or minorities. In the existing academic literature about ordinary peoples’ experiences of partition, the need to perceive the refugees as ‘agents’ was acknowledged quite a few years back. In the recent works on partition, we see more nuances being added as categories like class, region, gender, caste and age are being used to understand the varied experiences of partition. Once we bring in such categories to see how people were negotiating with the government and vice versa, we begin to get glimpses of the complexities of postcolonial governmentality.

     This issue brings together some of the young scholars working on partition now. All of them have primarily focused on the experiences of partition in West Bengal. One article complicates the idea of partition as longue durée, connecting it with the contemporary riots in various parts of India (a much needed addendum to the memorialization initiatives that we have just mentioned). Instead of treating refugees as a homogeneous mass of people, some of the articles in this issue point towards the varied experiences of ‘colony refugees’ and ‘camp refugees’ and relevance of caste and gender in studying partition. Partition studies in West Bengal have largely focused on the issues of rehabilitation, not giving enough importance to the conditions of the Muslims, the violence they faced after 1947, communal riots and their exodus. By describing the riots of 1950 in Howrah (West Bengal), one article reminds us of these little-discussed areas of partition studies.

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[1] Ranabir Samaddar, ‘The Last Hurrah that Continues’ in Deschaumes and Ivekovic (Eds), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition, New Delhi, 2003, 21-35, 21.

[2] http://thewire.in/59146/how-not-to-remember-partition/ accessed on September 7, 2016.

The articles in this issue are as follow (click on the links below):

My Stray Thoughts on 1947

Settling the Bazaar : The Colony Market and the Refugees

The Fort of Freedom : A Study of 'Refugeehood' through the formation of 'Azadgarh Colony'

Outside the Pail : Refugees beyond Camp or Colony in Post-Partition Calcutta

A Critical Analysis of the Category of the 'Refugee - Woman' in post- Partition Studies

The Other Side of Partition Migration and Rehabilitation : Minority Displacement and Dispossession in Bengal

The Fort of Freedom: A study of ‘Refugeehood’ through the formation of ‘Azadgarh Colony’

Sucharita Sengupta

(Sucharita is a researcher at Calcutta Research Group. She is working with Paula Banerjee on refugee politics in West Bengal as a part of CRG-RLS project on Popular Movements in West Bengal and Bihar. This article is a part of this research. Sucharita can be reached at sucharitaseng@gmail.com)

  In this essay I reflect upon the history charted by persons who were turned into ‘refugees’ or Bastuhara (the homeless) overnight after the independence of India. These colonies were illegal in nature. By not reducing the refugees from East Bengal into victims, this paper will examine the role of refugees in settling themselves in a new society through forming localities of their own by force (Jabardakhal Colony), emerging in the process as an economically productive subject. Azadgarh Colony in this paper is studied closely. It provides a glimpse of the individual negotiations that refugee leaders made in building colonies, their politics in asserting their sphere of influence over a certain area and the political tussle between the left and right wing political parties. We shall rely mostly on the memoir of Indu Baran Ganguly, a firebrand refugee leader who played a decisive role in establishing the Azadgarh Colony. Ganguly was an active member of the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). He left the party in 1942. But he rejoined the party in 1948, the year when he came to Calcutta with his family as a refugee^[1]. The CPI then was trying to build up a strong opposition against the government and the refugee issue provided them with much needed instrument to articulate and mobilize their protests through forming groups and organizations, for instance, the ‘United Central Refugee Council’ in 1950. Ganguly mentions in his memoir that their rebellion against the Congress government in West Bengal embodied a glory that was larger than the pain they bore for the partition. Expressing apprehension on how historians will read partition history and interpret their memories, Ganguly in his memoir states that for him the history of refugee movement in the 50s was not solely of losses. It was instead a history of emancipation and stupendous success of winning over all odds to emerge powerful citizens of a new state.

      Ganguly’s memoir is interesting because it brings out the nuances of clashes among refugees over their political affiliations, the structure of power blocks they formed and using emotions to legitimize forceful occupations of lands. On one hand it reflects negotiations with the locals (in this case Muslims), on the other hand it also tells us about the tensions between neighbouring colonies, different political parties and ideologies. Each colony had an individual committee associated with a political party. For instance, Ganguly mentions that after being part of forming the second squatter colony in Calcutta, the Deshabandhu Nagar Colony in 1949, he was residing in the deserted house of the then prominent Muslim leader and zamindar Ghulam Ali Minar near Tollygaunge in exchange of a rent of Rs.50. The entire neighbourhood belonged to Ghulam Ali and poor Muslims, most of whom shared cordial relations with Ganguly. By this time Ganguly had re joined the CPI and he was being aided by the party to pay the rent. Incidentally CPI was declared illegal in March 1948. The party could not continue to pay the rent for long resulting into a scuffle between Ghulam Ali and Ganguly. Taking advantage of this situation, one group approached him to make false papers to confiscate the entire plot. They tried to evoke anger in him by saying refugees were forced to leave their land in East Bengal for the Muslims and hence ‘snatching’ their land was their right. Ganguly, in his own words, was a man of high morals and could not accept this proposal. It is clear from this narrative that for refugees like him, forming colonies through force in deserted lands was certainly not illegal but making false papers to confiscate the same was. Here Ganguly portrayed his conflict with Ali as an absolutely non-communal one, related solely to the payment of rent. Another day, Santosh Dutta, a fervent supporter of the refugee cause and main architect of the first squatter colony in Calcutta – Bijaygarh- along with Dhirendranath Roy Chaudhury, famously known as Kalabhai came to visit the area Ganguly was residing in. Both were famous freedom fighters and were supporters of the Congress. Apparently, they told Ganguly that they wanted to make the area an extension of the Bijaygarh Colony. On the same evening, he was approached by a rival group of Santosh Dutta, belonging to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), to build an independent colony there, which will have a new committee with Ganguly as the new President. Ganguly apprehended that giving the plot to Bijaygarh Colony would make Santosh Dutta more powerful and resourceful. Hence Ganguly took up the proposal of forming an independent colony and this is how the ‘Azadgarh Colony’ was formed^[2]. These plots of lands were then divided among refugee families on a first come-first served basis in exchange of a rent of Rs. 10. This is the history of the formation of the ‘Azadgarh Colony’^[3]. Members of the Azadgarh colony did not compel the Muslims living in the neighbourhood to evacuate the land but members of Bijaygarh colony, as says Ganguly, attacked them and they were forced to flee the entire area. Later, few residents of the Bijaygarh Colony came and helped Ganguly in building the colony and complained about concentration of power and corruption among few leaders within the colony^[4]. There were repeated clashes between the Azadgarh and Bijaygarh Colonies and Ganguly himself was attacked by some residents of Bijaygarh mainly because he was a communist and since he formed an independent colony there instead of giving the plot to Bijaygarh^[5].
      Although Bijaygarh Colony is in paper the first squatter colony established by refugees, Ganguly rejects this claim owing to the nature of its establishment. He echoes what Prafulla Chakraborty writes in The Marginal men, about the formation of Bijaygarh Colony. Chakraborty says that the Colony was made possible due to the help it received from the government and that Santosh Dutta had taken verbal permission from both Jawaharlal Nehru and Bidhan Chandra Roy before establishing it with the help of Jadavpur Engineering students and Jadavpur Refugee Association. So it cannot be called a ‘jabardakhal colony’ or illegal squatter of the refugees. It was neither illegal nor legal as the tacit support of both Nehru and Roy cannot be denied in establishing Bijaygarh, writes Chakraborty[6]. Uditi Sen writes “the dispute over Bijaygarh’s status” provides insights on the nature of refugee negotiations. It was the passive mode of protests that distinguished the Bijaygarh Colony from the rest. Santosh Dutta was very close to the Bengal Congress and also to a section of the elite Calcutta Society. The fact that Ganguly talked of a ‘secret pact’ between Santosh Dutta and Bidhan Chandra Roy reflected their differences in political outlooks and modes of protests. While colonies like Azadgarh adopted radical modes of protest, Bijaygarh refrained from violent opposition due to its allegiance to the congress and hence the clash between Indu Baran Ganguly, as mentioned in his memoir with leaders of the Bijaygarh Colony was only inevitable[7].

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[1] Indu Baran Ganguly, Colonysmriti : Udbastu Colony Pratisthar Gorar Kotha (1948-1954), Kolkata, 1997, pp. 4, 42-43.

[2] Ibid, pp 54-56.

[3] Joya Chatterji, “ ‘Dispersal’ and the Failure of Rehabilitation: Refugee Camp-Dwellers and Squatters in West Bengal”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No.5, 2007, pp.995-1032, p.996.

[4] Ganguly, Colonismriti, p.57.

[5] Ibid, p.112.

[6] Prafulla Chakraborty, Prantik Manab: Pashimbange Udbastu Jiboner Kotha (Bengali translation of his Marginal Men), Kolkata, 2013, p.39.

[7]Uditi Sen, ‘Building Bijaygarh: A Microhistory of Refugee Squatting in Calcutta’, in Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (ed.) Calcutta :The Stormy Decades, New Delhi, 2015, 416-418, pp.410, 411.

The Other Side of Partition Migration and Rehabilitation: Minority Displacement and Dispossession in Bengal

Subhasri Ghosh

(Subhasri teaches history at Asutosh College, Kolkata, and can be reached at subhasrighosh@yahoo.co.in )

        In the annals of 1947 Partition historiography, communal riots occupy a pivotal position. On the Bengal side, the corpus of works essentially focuses on how the mayhem triggered by the 1946 Great Calcutta Killing spurred a whole train of communal frenzy in eastern India, prior to independence and the “riots, which preceded partition gradually petered out after the Proclamation of Independence.”[1] Post-independence, the Barisal riots of February 1950 occupy a pre-eminent position in Partition literature, being the catalyst of the largest mass migration in a single month in the eastern sector. Deviating from this high politics of communal violence, but nonetheless pregnant with far-reaching consequences, this paper attempts to explore a somewhat ‘sporadic localised’ riot in Howrah in March 1950. While the Barisal riots of those days grabbed the headlines, the riot nearer home failed to garner much attention.

Trouble broke out in the third week of March in 1950. The jute belt along the bank of the river Hooghly was the worst affected. The then Additional District Magistrate of Howrah, Asok Mitra recounts, that on 24 March a few Muslims were killed. Situation worsened to reach its peak on 25-26 March when around 16 Muslims were killed, following which military was summoned to control the situation on 28 March. Between the evening of 27 March and the early mornings of 30 March, from the lanes and by-lanes of Ghusuri locality of the town, the mutilated bodies of around 60 Muslims were recovered by the district administration. Situation calmed down from 30 March with no further report of casualties.[2]

This ‘localised’ riot was pregnant with consequences of great depth. The riot, carried out with the covert support of the government was meant to act as a pressure tactic to force the Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Khan to come down to Delhi for peace talks. Moved by the plight of the Muslims at Howrah, Liaquat Khan declared on 29 March that he would reach Delhi on 2 April for peace talks. The very day rioting stopped. Asok Mitra laments, “…it is a tragedy that in order to bring Liaquat Khan to Delhi, it was necessary to instigate riot in Howrah.”[3] The Commission of Enquiry formed to enquire into the 1950 riots, headed by Ms Mridula Sarabhai very eloquently, in the context of the Howrah riots, pointed out, “Personal experience of the Howrah episode confirmed my doubt…the flaring up in the industrial areas was a planned affair abetted by the local authorities. Those who were behind it appeared to be confident of support from the higher quarters. This was substantiated by the Government’s action in not taking steps against those…the manner in which the officers behaved left no doubt that they were involved in it.”[4]

Also, the larger issue at stake was the rehabilitation of the burgeoning stream of Hindu migrants from across the border.[5] The ulterior motive of the government was to rehabilitate the Hindu migrants, by evicting the Muslims and instilling fear psychosis so as to prevent their return for good. As Sarabhai notes, “On the eve of the Inter-Dominion talks…the policy of the Government seemed to have changed overnight…everywhere the District Officers were busy provoking the Muslims…to migrate to Pakistan.”[6]Ironically, while the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was crying hoarse in the Parliament on the persecution of the minorities in East Bengal, in West Bengal, too, the minorities suffered from insecurity as is evident from these incidents. Not only Howrah, but minorities in Hooghly, Nadia, too suffered the same fate in active connivance of the administration. The then Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner, Government of West Bengal, Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay opines in the context of Nadia, “If the refugees had not occupied these abandoned plots and houses, I shudder to think how the Government would have shouldered the burden of accommodating thousands of refugees in the relief camps.”[7] Thus Hindu rehabilitation at times became co-terminous with minority persecution, eviction and displacement and the minorities became pawns in the political power play.

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[1] Prafulla K. Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal,”  Kalyani , 1999, p. 6.

[2]Asok Mitra, Tin Kuri Dash, Vol. III, Kolkata, 1997.

[3] ibid, p. 122.

[4] West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), “Statement of Smt Mridula Sarabhai”, No File No., 1950.

[5] Between 13 February 1950 and 23 July 1950, an estimated 15,51,820 Hindu  migrants poured into West Bengal.

[6] “Statement of Smt Mridula Sarabhai”

[7] Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu, Calcutta, 1970, p. 73.

Children in Prisons

Sucharita Sengupta

Sucharita Sengupta works at MCRG. Her current research focuses on Rohingyas. She can be reached at sucharita@mcrg.ac.in.

A report of UNHCR talks about the kind of neglect rendered to refugee children or children who are forcibly displaced and are in need of asylum. Compelled to leave their homeland, these children are more than often subjected to violence, abuse, sexual exploitation and worst, trafficking[1]. In the present time when Europe is witnessing its worst phase of massive migration of people since the world war two, again the vulnerability of children in particular, struck the whole world when the image of 3 year old Aylan Kurdi, a drowned Syrian toddler’s body was found ashore in Turkey. Aylan’s brother Galib also died on the same boat while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos[2]. In Asia, the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 had witnessed such massive migration of people which continued through the decades of 50s and 60s and saw a sharp rise post 1971, with the creation of Bangladesh. This piece is written on the basis of my field work in various correctional homes in West Bengal between October-December 2014 and talks about children, particularly young girls, who are either compelled to leave Bangladesh or are illegally trafficked to West Bengal, India, through the porous borders in promise of job or marriage or a better life.

There are two dimensions of problems that are faced by these children. The first is the problem of illegal trafficking. The second is when they just accompany their parents, completely unaware of the consequences and find themselves either behind bars for illegal immigration or in brothels. According to a report[3], girls from Bangladesh are largely trafficked for sex work and most of them are aged below 18. For instance, Champa hailing from Faridpur, Bangladeah, was sold to a brothel in Orissa by traffickers when she was just a child of 12. Since then she has lived in India. Now she is eighteen and while returning to her home in Bangladesh, she was caught by the police and taken to jail custody under the passport act for using a fake passport. I met Champa in the Alipore Correctional Home for Women. The most popular trafficking route employed by traffickers is Dhaka-Mumbai-Karachi-Dubai. Way back in 2004, the report says, around 200-400 women and children were trafficked to India each month totaling to approximate 10,000-15,000 annually. This number has increased to an alarming figure now. Securitization of the border through passport and visa was introduced in 1949 and 1952 respectively. The more the eastern part of the border has been securitized, the more it has given rise to incidents of violence and illegality like smuggling and trafficking of women and children across the border.