Communal Riots In Bangladesh West Bengal

In examining the major riots in Bengal between 1905 and 1947 the author has addressed the following issues: how an increased conjunction of elite and popular communalism created the necessary background for the riots; why the riots lost their initial class basis and became overtly communal; how a crowd-leadership dichotomy often asserted their 'autonomy'; and finally, how the riots promoted communal consciousness at various levels of society and polity which provided an important backdrop to the partition of the province in 1947. Against the background of the larger political dilemmas confronting India in the pre-partition period, this work has analysed the developing relationships between elite and popular participation in violence, and between the religious and secular features of their mobilization.

Looks at the decade of 1940s in Bengal and provides a complete understanding of the pre-partition years.

In January 2011, Felani Khatun was shot dead while attempting to cross the border from India to Bangladesh. Her body remained hung on the fence as a warning to those who illegally crossed an international border. Migration to India from the current geographical and political entity called Bangladesh is more than a century old and had begun long before the nation states were created in South Asia. Often termed as ‘foreigners’ and ‘infiltrators’, Bangladeshi migrants such as Felani find their way into India for the promise of a better future. Post 1971, there has been a steady movement of people from Bangladesh into India, both as refugees and for economic need, making this migration a complex area of inquiry. This book focuses on the contemporary issue of undocumented Bangladeshi migration to the three Indian states of Assam, West Bengal, and Delhi, and how the migrants are perceived in light of the ongoing discourses on the various nationalisms in India. Each state has a unique history and has taken different measures to respond to Bangladeshi migrants present in the state. Based on extensive fieldwork and insightful interviews with influential members from key political parties, civil society organizations, and Hindu and ethnic nationalist bodies in these states, the book explores the place and role of Bangladeshi migrants in relation to the inherent tension of Indian nationalism.

A revised and updated edition of Willem van Schendel's state-of-the-art history, revealing the vibrant and colourful past of Bangladesh.

'When the house of history is on fire, journalists are often the first-responders, pulling victims away from the flames. Deep Halder is one of them.' - Amitava KumarIn 1978, around 1.5 lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, settled in Marichjhapi an island in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. By May 1979, the island was cleared of all refugees by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. Most of the refugees were sent back to the central India camps they came from, but there were many deaths: of diseases, malnutrition resulting from an economic blockade, as well as from violence unleashed by the police on the orders of the government. Some of the refugees who survived Marichjhapi say the number of those who lost their lives could be as high as 10,000, while the-then government officials maintain that there were less than ten victims.How does an entire island population disappear? How does one unearth the truth and the details of one of the worst atrocities of post-Independent India? Journalist Deep Halder reconstructs the buried history of the 1979 massacres through his interviews with survivors, erstwhile reporters, government officials and activists with a rare combination of courage, conscientiousness and empathy.

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.