The Agony, Penury and Politics of Bengal’s Refugees

Because the nation waves flags and celebrates the seventy fifth anniversary of India’s independence, it’s also time to take inventory. What did India’s founders and residents dream of, how has India fared, what have been our challenges and successes?

The Wire’s reporters and contributors deliver tales of the interval, of the traumas but in addition the hopes of Indians, as seen in private accounts, in tradition, within the economic system and within the sciences. How did the fashionable state of India come about, what does the flag signify? How did literature and cinema deal with the trauma of Partition?

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On December 20, 1949, a workforce of East Pakistan police went to a village in Khulna district to arrest a neighborhood communist chief concerned with the Tebhaga motion. Not managing to search out him there, they ransacked homes within the village and mistreated ladies villagers.

The enraged villagers retaliated by attacking them and inflicting the dying of a constable. In line with report revealed in The Statesman and later authenticated by historian Sekhar Mukhopadhyay, the villagers have been largely from the ‘decrease’ caste and Dalit communities.

The subsequent day, a big police contingent and members of the paramilitary auxiliary power, Ansar Bahini, arrived and surrounded that particular Khulna village and different adjoining villages. After a number of days, an excellent variety of villagers – with no different probability of survival – have been in a position to flee the world and crossed over to West Bengal, in India.

Across the identical time, the same incident passed off in a village in Rangpur of the Rajshahi district of East Pakistan, the place police went to nab one other communist chief of the Tebhaga motion. Failing to arrest him, they assaulted some tribal residents there. Their retaliation brought about the dying of 5 policemen on the spot. Fearing retribution, an excellent variety of villagers – tribals and others – fled and crossed over to West Bengal.

These two incidents, and others, led to the primary main communal riots which engulfed either side of Bengal in January 1950. Communal violence broke out in Calcutta, Murshidabad and several other different districts within the Indian a part of Bengal, and in a while in varied components of East Pakistan, together with Dacca.

The Union residence minister Sardar Patel needed to rush to Calcutta and keep there for 3 days to supervise the executive steps to douse the hearth. The Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave a prolonged speech within the parliament. In it have been detailed accounts of how and why the riots began in either side of Bengal and what the federal government proposed to do about it, copies of The Statesman of January, 1950, notice.

Ultimately, the key fear for the state authorities of West Bengal and Union authorities grew to be the primary large wave of refugee inflow into India from East Pakistan after the Partition of Bengal in 1947.

Within the final week of January, 1950, a Hindu household of Mymensingh district in East Pakistan determined to depart their ancestral residence by evening and began to make the journey westward to India. They reached Sealdah station in Calcutta)after going by means of a harrowing journey. Their practice was attacked by marauders who looted and killed various passengers on board. The police and Ansars subjected them to humiliating searches and extracted no matter little money and gold was discovered of their possession.

One of many survivors of that journey, who doesn’t need to be recognized, nonetheless recounts these days with vivid description. In line with him, their district had been comparatively peaceable and no main riots passed off at the moment. However native individuals began upsetting them and steadily, the Hindu households began leaving the village one after the other. The final straw was a bloodbath that passed off in a practice on the Bhairab bridge, 5 miles from the person’s ancestral residence. In contrast to 1000’s of others, the household had footprint in Calcutta a lot earlier than the Partition passed off, and have been in a position to settle in a three-room flat within the Park Circus space. No fewer than 20 members lived within the flat.

This was not a luxurious accessible for almost all of refugees.

In line with the Census of 1951, of the overall refugee inhabitants of two,099,000 in West Bengal, 433,000 went to Calcutta and 527,000 to the 24 Parganas, the district adjoining to Calcutta. Older generations of refugees from East Pakistan nonetheless recount the expertise of seeing 1000’s of individuals squatting in Sealdah station, with nowhere to go. The extra enterprising amongst them began searching for locations the place they might rebuild their life from scratch. A variety of vacant plots of land and farm homes on the outskirts of Calcutta and in neighbouring districts have been forcibly occupied by them and become refugee colonies.

The primary enumeration of the refugee colonies in 1952 led to an inventory of 149 squatters’ colonies within the Calcutta company space (Guide of Refugee Reduction and Rehabilitation, Quantity 1, Kolkata, West Bengal Publication, 2000). The checklist would develop when an increasing number of such colonies would spring up in different districts bordering East Pakistan.

How many individuals migrated to West Bengal from East Pakistan previous to 1971?

The estimates differ from 5.8 million to 4.1 million. Famous historian Joya Chatterji suspects the quantity could possibly be extra. Opposite to the official stand, the refugees weren’t confined to areas adjoining to Calcutta and neighbouring districts alone. The poorest settled closest to the East Pakistan border.

Taking figures from the 2001 Census, reviews have been revealed (as an example, on Occasions of India of Might 29, 2001) of the upper development fee of inhabitants in districts bordering Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan). The primary main refugee transit house was established in Ranaghat Cooper’s Camp in Nadia district in March, 1950. At the moment, greater than a lakh refugees have been despatched there by the federal government.

Even now, for many individuals residing in these refugee camps the one supply of earnings is a Rs 400 month-to-month dole given out by the federal government, Achintyarup Ray writes in a report titled ‘Midnight’s Forgotten Kids’ on Occasions of India, April 10, 2010.

The federal government’s response to the Partition victims in Bengal was singularly completely different from their response to Punjab’s refugees. The Partition brought about a large and bloody inhabitants change in Punjab at one go. Thus, the federal government had been in a position to resettle various refugees in Punjab on the land and properties of these Muslims who had gone over to West Pakistan. Additionally, a number of rehabilitation schemes have been provided to them to begin a brand new life.

In Bengal, the refugees got here in waves brought on by communal riots in 1950, 1964 and so forth, and trickled in steadily all through the post-1947 interval. The 1950 riots additionally compelled a bit of Muslims to depart West Bengal and go for East Pakistan. Their deserted properties have been occupied largely by refugees.

In line with Uditi Sen, through the tenure of the short-lived state authorities shaped after Independence, below Dr. P.C. Ghosh, the administration allowed the deserted airstrips and barracks of World Battle II to be occupied by refugees for constructing their colonies.

I had event to go to one such place close to Kanchrapara in Nadia district the place a few of my shut kin took shelter in an deserted navy barrack. The place was stuffed with deserted navy hutments. Every household was allotted a small portion (8×10 ft) and a veranda of a lot smaller measurement. My kin – two adults and 9 kids – needed to make do with that house. Like many different households residing there, they have been from center and higher class landed gentry class in East Pakistan, and weren’t in a position to earn a livelihood by becoming a member of the toiling plenty. They have been fully depending on the little rice and wheat that got to them once in a while below the gratuitous reduction (GR) and take a look at reduction (TR) schemes by the federal government. Because the rations have been insufficient to feed your entire household, the mother and father normally went hungry. Largely owing to malnutrition, the male head of the household acquired tuberculosis, and died after a while.

The preliminary inflow and squatters forcibly occupying vacant land and properties created a regulation and order drawback.

The federal government’s first response was to enact a brand new regulation to get better these properties from the squatters and return them to the landlords. However the squatters’ colonies joined palms, shaped a united resistance and compelled the federal government to backtrack on their transfer.

The then chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy tried his finest to attract the eye of the Union authorities to the rising financial and social disaster within the state. Writing to Prime Minister Nehru, he pressured the necessity for a right away answer of the rising refugee disaster. The explanations for his considerations weren’t solely administrative, however political too. As an administrator, he was involved about rising rigidity between landlords and squatters and felt it was severely hurting social stability. On the political aspect, he was involved that refugees have been concentrated in sure areas. The concern that in the event that they have been disenchanted with the Congress authorities they might pose severe electoral threats was not misplaced on him.

He had cause for fear.

The refugees had anticipated the Congress would assist them rebuild their lives in Bengal. Perceiving reluctance of the federal government, they felt betrayed and steadily, their rising bitterness developed right into a severe disenchantment with the Congress authorities. The opposition consisted of two forces. On the one hand there was the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) based and led by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. The communist events have been on the opposite.

That the refugees have been steadily aligning themselves with the opposition turned evident in 1952 within the first state meeting election in unbiased India, when Congress, regardless of their wonderful previous of main the liberty motion, gained solely 150 seats of the overall 236 they’d contested. Their share of vote was a mere 39%. Although Communist Celebration of India and BJS contested round 86 seats every, CPI gained 28 and BJS, 9. One other Hindu proper occasion, Hindu Mahasabha, acquired 4. The minor Left events fared poorly.

Realising that the state with its excessive inhabitants density and paucity of land wouldn’t be capable of accommodate your entire refugee inhabitants, chief minister Roy began searching for house in different states. Regardless of the final reluctance of the refugees, a bit of them agreed to resettle outdoors Bengal. Thus, the Dandakaranya challenge got here into being, taking forest land and arid land in contiguous areas of Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

Underneath the direct supervision of the Union authorities, an excellent variety of refugees have been resettled there. Related initiative resulted in sending one other batch of refugees to the Andaman Islands. The households of t least two of my distant kin have been resettled in Dandakaranya and Andaman.

A few of these settlers survived and thru strenuous efforts managed to eliminate the ‘refugee’ label. However the basic feeling amongst them was considered one of having been betrayed. This anger got here to the floor first within the Communist Celebration-led ‘tram fare motion’ of the early Nineteen Fifties after which through the meals motion of the Sixties.

A couple of years later, when the Naxalbari insurrection broke out below the management of a breakaway group of the Communist Celebration, the youth in these refugee colonies in and round Calcutta, 24 Parganas, Nadia and Hooghly districts took lively half in it simply to present vent to their anger. A lot of them died or have been jailed. Although resettled in distant locations far-off from Bengal’s soil, many refugees yearned for a ‘residence coming’ to Bengal.

Their efforts resulted within the infamous ‘Marichjhanpi’ incident of 1979, leaving a everlasting scar on the Left’s rule in Bengal.

It should be famous that refugees grieved for a misplaced world that they have been compelled to depart and for that, with efficient stoking by Hindu proper politics, they largely blamed Muslims. Regardless of a robust presence of leftists amongst them, massive sections of refugees carried an anti-Muslim sentiment – gifting a strong vote financial institution to the Bharatiya Janata Celebration within the refugee pockets of the bordering districts of West Bengal.

To say that within the preliminary post-Partition years, refugees or compelled migrants needed to face loads of difficulties in each financial and social fronts can be an understatement. Typically, authentic residents of West Bengal have been hostile on the prospect of dropping land and property to unauthorised occupiers.

With abject poverty got here social ostracisation. Consequently, comparatively well-off refugees – even those that left camps – have been compelled to type and stay in designated locales.

A number of refugees may emerge from penury and climbed up the financial ladder within the days to return.

With the liberation motion in East Pakistan that gave beginning to Bangladesh in 1971, the East Bengal Soccer Membership’s victory within the native league for six consecutive years from 1970 to 1975 and the Rajiv Gandhi authorities regularising various ‘unauthorised’ colonies within the Nineteen Eighties led to some extent of restoration of status.

But, the wound stays within the collective reminiscence and lives of those that have been left behind.

Rajat Roy is Assistant Professor, Division of Political Science, Presidency College, Kolkata.