The Identity Crisis of Bengali Dalit Refugees in Manoranjan Byapari’s Autobiography Interrogating My Chandal Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110427
Author(s):  
Tarik Anowar

Manoranjan Byapari is a famous Bengali Dalit writer whose family migrated from East Pakistan and took shelter in a refugee camp in West Bengal. In his autobiography Interrogating My Chandal Life, Byapari has given an account of Bengali Dalits’ victimization on the basis of caste in the pre-Partition Bengal and post-Partition West Bengal. In colonial Bengal, Dalits were known as Chandal or Untouchables. In 1911, their identity was recognized as Namashudras. After migrating to West Bengal, they were identified as Bangal and Dalit refugee. West Bengal and central governments did not warmly welcome the Namashudra refugees. They were sent to refugee camps which were crowded, unhygienic and did not provide adequate dole. Later they were sent to Andaman, Dandakaranya and other parts of India for their rehabilitation. In this dire situation, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) appeared as the Messiah to the Dalits and protested against the rehabilitation policy of the ruling government. The fake sympathy of the communist party had been revealed when they came in power in 1977 in West Bengal. Most of the communist leaders were upper-caste Hindus. In 1979, communist government secretly massacred the Namashudra refugees who were settled on the Marichjhapi Island. The state sponsored murder of Dalits remained undiscovered for many years. This study will examine the impacts of the Partition of Bengal on Dalits. It will further address how the state government provided different treatment to the Namashudra refugees for their lower caste identity.

Focaal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (54) ◽  
pp. 89-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Projit Bihari Mukharji

The reflections in this article were instigated by the repeated and brutal clashes since 2007 between peasants and the state government’s militias—both official and unofficial—over the issue of industrialization. A communist government engaging peasants violently in order to acquire and transfer their lands to big business houses to set up capitalist enterprises seemed dramatically ironic. De- spite the presence of many immediate causes for the conflict, subtle long-term change to the nature of communist politics in the state was also responsible for the present situation. This article identifies two trends that, though significant, are by themselves not enough to explain what is happening in West Bengal today. First, the growth of a culture of governance where the Communist Party actively seeks to manage rather than politicize social conflicts; second, the recasting of radical political subjectivity as a matter of identity rather than an instigation for critical self-reflection and self-transformation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Szanto

AbstractAccording to Giorgio Agamben, a “state of exception” is established by the sovereign's decision to suspend the law, and the archetypical state of exception is the Nazi concentration camp. At the same time, Agamben notes that boundaries have become blurred since then, such that even spaces like refugee camps can be thought of as states of exception because they are both inside and outside the law. This article draws on the notion of the state of exception in order to examine the Syrian refugee campcumshrine town of Sayyida Zaynab as well as to analyze questions of religious authority, ritual practice, and pious devotion to Sayyida Zaynab. Though Sayyida Zaynab and many of her Twelver Shiʿi devotees resemble Agamben's figure ofhomo sacer, who marked the origin of the state of exception, they also defy Agamben's theory that humans necessarily become animal-like, leading nothing more than “bare lives” (orzoē) in states of exception.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Nilanjan Ray ◽  
Dillip Kumar Das

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industry in World in general and India in particular. This present study tried to focuses on how the quality of life of people will improve through tourism development in Kamarpukur, West Bengal. Tourism has always acts as a catalyst to develop local economy, improve socio-cultural changes and life style of the people residing in and around different tourist locations. This current study also focuses on how empowerment of women as well as quality of life can be changed through rural tourism development in Kamarpukur in particular and West Bengal in general. The main purpose of this study is to find out different purposes of visit to this destination and to explore the reasons for which tourism development in Kamarpukur has created tremendous impact on local economy, life style and socio-cultural changes among the rural people. This paper mainly emphasized on tourism and its impact on role of women in promoting rural economy in the state of West Bengal with special emphasis on Pallimangal of Kamarpukur. There is always a wide scope for the women empowerment through tourism development in West Bengal. However, the state government including private agencies, NGOs, Self-Help Groups, should come forward to encourage and facilitate women in tourism related activities who are considered to be the backbone for improving the West Bengal economy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-280
Author(s):  
Sanjal Shastri

Using communal violence data between 2006 and 2017, this study challenges the idea that communal violence is primarily an issue in the Hindi Heartland. The data demonstrates how Karnataka and West Bengal are also witnessing rising levels of communal violence. The study goes on to take a closer look at the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka and West Bengal. It demonstrates how a combination of factors ranging from localized narratives of Hindu nationalism, caste coalitions, alliances with regional parties and the decline of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]) in West Bengal and the Janata Party (JP)/Dal in Karnataka have been crucial factors for BJP’s rise in these two states.


Author(s):  
Philip Altbach ◽  
Eldho Mathews

The system of higher education in the state of Kerala, on India's southwest coast, has developed under unique social and political circumstances. Kerala is by most educationally measures the most advanced state in India. Its current government is a coalition dominated by the Marxist Communist Party of India. The state's higher education future is complex but practical. Careful attention needs to be given to the organization of the higher education system.


Author(s):  
Rizwana Shamshad

According to the Census of India in 2001, the majority of the Bangladeshi migrants in India reside in West Bengal. So far there has been no anti-Bangladeshi movement like in Assam or state government initiated deportation measures like in Delhi or in West Bengal. This chapter investigates why this is the case, and it explores the factors that did not encourage the people, and the state government of West Bengal, to make Bangladeshi migration an issue. The chapter contributes to the concept ‘Bengaliness’, which is shared by the Bengalis of West Bengal and Bangladesh. What comes out clearly from the West Bengal discourse on Bangladeshi migrants is the ethno-linguistic and historical affinity of Bengalis in general with the Bangladeshis. The chapter also brings out the subtle but powerful cultural marker of Ghoti–Bangal difference that exists between the Bengalis of East and West Bengali origin.


2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-301
Author(s):  
Himanshu Roy

Salwa Judum was a unique tribal-peasant movement that arose against the specific agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) 1 (henceforth Maoists) in its full intensity in 2005 in the sub-region of Bastar ( baanstari, a Halbi word meaning the bed of or the land of bamboos) in Chhattisgarh. The movement began since January across different villages of non-Abujh Maad (the unknown hills of Madia/Koya tribes) sub-region that initially galvanised approximately 20,000 tribals. It was spontaneous and non-political (Prasad, 2012, p. 329). It was unique as the movement was against a ‘revolutionary’ group of Maoists and not against the state or against the zamindari system as most peasant movements in rural India were in the past. Its build-up was the culmination of suppressed anger of the tribals that had developed over decades against the Maoists also called ‘Naxalites’. It was a new and different phenomenon.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Rakesh Ankit

This article presents four episodes from the political period 1969 to 1976 in India, focusing on the views and actions of P. N. Haksar, Principal Secretary and Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967–1973). Unlike the ‘national/international politics’ hitherto under focus from then, that is, the Congress split (1969), birth of Bangladesh (1971) and the JP Movement/Emergency (1974–1975), the aspects under consideration in this article are of subterranean existence. First of these aspects is the provincial reverberations of the Congress split, the case considered here being that of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee. Second is the attitude of the Congress Party towards left opposition, the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI [M]) in West Bengal, as revealed through the anxieties of Governor Shanti Dhavan. The third aspect under consideration is a glimpse of centre–states relations, as shown through New Delhi’s interactions with the EMS Namboodiripad-led and CPI (M)-dominated United Front Government of Kerala. Finally, the article looks at Haksar’s attempts at planning and development for the state of Bihar. Each of these four themes was among the ‘wider range of functions’ that Mrs Gandhi wished to be performed by her Secretariat and to allow us to test how successful each of it was. Each of these provides a context for contemporary issues.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2020) (2) ◽  
pp. 359-394
Author(s):  
Jurij Perovšek

For Slovenes in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes the year 1919 represented the final step to a new political beginning. With the end of the united all-Slovene liberal party organisation and the formation of separate liberal parties, the political party life faced a new era. Similar development was showing also in the Marxist camp. The Catholic camp was united. For the first time, Slovenes from all political camps took part in the state government politics and parliament work. They faced the diminishing of the independence, which was gained in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and the mutual fight for its preservation or abolition. This was the beginning of national-political separations in the later Yugoslav state. The year 1919 was characterized also by the establishment of the Slovene university and early occurrences of social discontent. A declaration about the new historical phenomenon – Bolshevism, had to be made. While the region of Prekmurje was integrated to the new state, the questions of the Western border and the situation with Carinthia were not resolved. For the Slovene history, the year 1919 presents a multi-transitional year.


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