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The Myths Refugees Live By: Memory and
history in the making of Bengali refugee identity
UDITI SEN
Modern Asian Studies / Volume 48 / Issue 01 / January 2014, pp 37 - 76
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X12000613, Published online: 09 May 2013
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X12000613
How to cite this article:
UDITI SEN (2014). The Myths Refugees Live By: Memory and history in the
making of Bengali refugee identity . Modern Asian Studies, 48, pp 37-76
doi:10.1017/S0026749X12000613
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Modern Asian Studies 48,1(2014) pp. 37–76.c
Cambridge University Press 2013
doi:10.1017/S0026749X12000613 First published online 9May 2013
The Myths Refugees Live By: Memory
and history in the making of Bengali
refugee identity
UDITI SEN
South Asian Studies, Hampshire College, USA
Email: usen@hampshire.edu
Abstract
Within the popular memory of the partition of India, the division of Bengal
continues to evoke themes of political rupture, social tragedy, and nostalgia.
The refugees or, more broadly speaking, Hindu migrants from East Bengal,
are often the central agents of such narratives. This paper explores how the
scholarship on East Bengali refugees portrays them either as hapless and passive
victims of the regime of rehabilitation, which was designed to integrate refugees
into the socio-economic fabric of India, or eulogizes them as heroic protagonists
who successfully battled overwhelming adversity to wrest resettlement from a
reluctant state. This split image of the Bengali refugee as both victim and
victor obscures the complex nature of refugee agency. Through a case-study
of the foundation and development of Bijoygarh colony, an illegal settlement of
refugee-squatters on the outskirts of Calcutta, this paper will argue that refugee
agency in post-partition West Bengal was inevitably moulded by social status
and cultural capital. However, the collective memory of the establishment of
squatters’ colonies systematically ignores the role of caste and class affiliations
in fracturing the refugee experience. Instead, it retells the refugees’ quest for
rehabilitation along the mythic trope of heroic and masculine struggle. This paper
interrogates refugee reminiscences to illuminate their erasures and silences,
delineating the mythic structure common to both popular and academic refugee
histories and exploring its significance in constructing a specific cultural identity
for Bengali refugees.
Introduction
The helpless people of East Pakistan who arrived destitute in West Bengal
in 1948–49, the pitiable and vulnerable condition of the shelterless refugees
who regularly overran Ranaghat, Bongaon, Sealdah—as a young student
witnessing this massive waste of human resource, I had felt an unbearable
37
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38 UDITI SEN
and unexpressed pain. I was assailed by many questions, but none could
provide me with satisfactory answers.1
Kaliprasad Mukhopadhyay introduces his history of East Bengali
refugees, Shikorer sandhane (Quest for roots), with this expression of
empathy. As an amateur historian, Mukhopadhyay’s relationship to his
subject matter extends far beyond that of a sympathetic investigator
or eyewitness. His book is not simply an attempt to locate the Bengali
refugee’s quest for roots in history, it is a personal search for closure,
for answers to questions that plagued him, not only because of
what he witnessed, but because he was also a migrant from East
Bengal. His family had relocated to western Bengal seven years before
partition, but, according to the author, could not ‘escape its curse’.
Loss of ancestral property in Dhaka forced the family into acute and
prolonged economic hardship. Mukhopadhyay dedicates his book to
the memory of his parents, whose early death he attributes to the
trauma of partition.2In its eclectic mixture of memory, hearsay,
anecdotes, and historical records, Mukhopadhyay’s book is far from
unique. It is typical of an entire genre of popular history of East
Bengali refugees, written in Bengali, which has proliferated since the
fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence in 1997. These texts are
frequently autobiographical, written largely by migrants who were
actively involved in the unfolding crisis of rehabilitation.3Besides
autobiographies, numerous local and community histories have been
written by second-generation migrants, which rely heavily on refugee
reminiscences.4Scholars of cultural history have contributed relatively
1From the Author’s introduction, Kaliprasad Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane
(Quest for roots), Calcutta, Bhasha O Sahitya, 2002.
2Dedication, Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane.
3Indubaran Ganguly, Colonysmriti: Udbastu colony pratishthar gorar katha, 1948–
1954 (Memories of colonies: An account of the early period of the establishment of refugee
colonies), Calcutta, Published by the author, 1997; and Tushar Sinha, Maranjayee
sangrame bastuhar a (Refugees in a death-defying battle), Calcutta, United Central Refugee
Council, 1999, are examples of such autobiographical narratives that marked
the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence. However, several autobiographies
and biographical accounts of individuals who contributed to refugee rehabilitation
were also published in an earlier period. For example, see Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay,
Udbastu (Refugee), Calcutta, Sahitya Sansad, 1970; and Kanailal Datta, Madhyamgram-
Navabarakpure Punarbasan O Haripada Biswas (Rehabilitation in Madhyamgram-Navabarakpur
and Haripada Biswas), Nababarakpur, Haripada Biswas Baktrita Trust, 1984.
4For example, see Debabrata Datta, Bijaygarh: Ekti udbastu upanibesh (A refugee colony),
Calcutta, Progressive Publishers, 2001. For an excellent self-reflective and analytical
account of life in a refugee colony by a second-generation refugee, see Manas Ray,
‘Growing up refugee’, History Workshop Journal,53,2002, pp. 149–179.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 39
late to this growing corpus of popular history, largely through
recording and publishing refugee reminiscences.5
This paper explores how the history of the foundation and growth of
Bijoygarh colony is represented in a range of such popular narratives,
which span autobiographies, amateur histories, and refugee voices
‘recovered’ by amateurs as well as by academics. Through this
case-study, it attempts to understand how a dominant narrative
regarding the foundation of squatters’ colonies in Calcutta emerges
through an interaction between memory and history. This paper thus
approaches memory and history as distinct—albeit related—means
of representing the past. The exact nature of this distinction is an
unresolved debate within history and philosophy6and this paper does
not attempt to explore it further. For the purposes of analysis, the
primacy of emotive resonance, the possibility of non-narrative forms,
and the absence of institutional validation, which often imparts an
authoritative voice to history, are seen as the primary features that
distinguish memory from history. The main concern of this paper is to
explore the interrelationship between refugee memory and history,
to explore how some memories feed into history while others are
forgotten, and also to illustrate how the very act of remembering
can be permeated by existing historical knowledge.
Popular memory regarding the genesis of Bijoygarh colony, as
reflected in numerous memoirs, reminiscences, and popular histories,
corresponds quite closely to a standardized historical narrative of how
5For example, see the translated interviews published in Jasodhara Bagchi and
Subhoranjan Dasgupta (eds), The trauma and the triumph: Gender and partition in eastern
India, Calcutta, Stree, 2003; and Tridib Chakrabarti, Nirupama Ray Mandal and
Paulami Ghoshal (comps and eds) Dhangsa-o-nirman: Bangiya udbastu samajer svakathita
bibaran (Destruction and creation: Self-descriptive accounts of Bengali refugee society), Calcutta,
Seriban, 2007.
6Within the scholarship on partition and its refugees, different scholars have
conceptualized the distinction and the interaction between memory and history in
different ways. For Dipesh Chakrabarty, the narrative structure of memory, especially
the memory of trauma, emphasizes the inexplicability of events or experiences. This
is diametrically opposite to a goal of history that seeks to explain events. See Dipesh
Chakrabarty, ‘Memories of displacement: The poetry and prejudice of dwelling’
in Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of modernity: Essays in the wake of subaltern studies,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 115–37. Ranabir Samaddar, ‘The
historiographical operation: Memory and history’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3
June 2006, pp. 2236–40, draws upon Paul Ricoeur’s landmark work to argue for
a relationship of complementarity between memory and history. He argues that,
far from being structurally incompatible, memory is a constitutive element of the
historiographical operation. See Paul Ricoeur, Memory, history, forgetting, Chicago and
London, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
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40 UDITI SEN
refugees from East Bengal, which constituted the eastern wing of
Pakistan, rebuilt their lives in Calcutta. The common core of both is
to be found in the celebration of the agency of ‘self-settled’ refugees,
who built fully fledged refugee settlements out of overnight squats.
This similarity is the result of a pattern of interaction between
refugee memory and history, both popular and academic. In post-
partition West Bengal, each has reinforced and permeated the other to
produce a shared perception or ‘dominant memory’ of rehabilitation.7
Individual reminiscences, unlike the more homogenized dominant
memory, are often contradictory and retain more clearly the marks of
the omissions and erasures crucial to the production of any shared past.
The numerous accounts regarding the genesis of Bijoygarh provide
many such points of rupture, where personal reminiscences destabilize
dominant histories. Critically analysing these narratives, this paper
not only provides a rich micro-history of a prominent refugee colony
of Calcutta, but also illustrates how celebratory narratives regarding
the establishment of squatters’ colonies more often than not obscure
the nature of refugee agency.
Locating Bijoygarh: the significance of squatting
in post-partition West Bengal
Bijoygarh colony, one of the earliest refugee squatter colonies of West
Bengal, today sprawls between two of the busiest roads in south
Calcutta, namely Raja Subodh Mullik and Netaji Subhas Chandra
Bose roads. However, in 1948, when the colony was established,
it was one of the many refugee settlements that mushroomed on
the outskirts of a much smaller city.8Initially called the Jadavpur
7Dominant memory, following the Popular Memory Group’s analysis of the
relationship between history and popular memory, can be understood as a social
group’s shared perception of its past which gains dominance through public rituals
such as commemoration, institutional backing (such as ‘official’ histories promoted
by the state) and last, but not least, the utility of the dominant representation of
the past in fostering formal political alliances. See Popular Memory Group, ‘Popular
memory: theory, politics, method’ in Richard Johnson, Gregor Mclennan, Bill Schwarz
and David Sutton (eds), Making histories: Studies in history-writing and politics,London,
Hutchinson in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1982,
pp. 205–52.
8The city of Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001) is defined as the urban areas
governed by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. However, throughout history, urban
life has spilled out of the official boundaries of the city into neighbouring suburban and
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 41
refugee camp, Bijoygarh started with the unauthorized occupation of a
wireless centre and barracks built for Allied soldiers during the Second
World War in the Jadavpur region of 24 Parganas. The families who
moved into the abandoned military huts organized themselves into the
Jadavpur Refugee Camp Association. Such unauthorized occupation of
abandoned houses, military structures, warehouses or closed factories
was standard practice among displaced people in the large cities of
India and Pakistan in the aftermath of partition. However, in this era
of forced occupation and illegal squatting, the pattern that evolved in
Calcutta was somewhat distinct.
The independent government of India adopted a policy of resettling
Hindu refugees from Pakistan in the lands and houses of Muslim
‘evacuees’.9However, this policy was not implemented in the eastern
states of India, namely Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal, which hosted
refugees from eastern Pakistan. This was largely because there was
no state-sponsored exchange of population in the divided province
of Bengal. Unable to solve the refugee ‘problem’ by resettling them
on evacuee land, the government of West Bengal complained bitterly
about the burden of providing for the steadily increasing numbers
who sought refuge in the already overpopulated state.10 Calcutta,
the capital city as well as the commercial hub of West Bengal,
rural areas in the district of 24 Parganas. This has resulted in repeated redefinitions
of the limits of the city and constant incorporation of additional areas into the remit
of the Calcutta (now Kolkata) Municipal Corporation. The post-partition influx of
refugees into Calcutta was a driving force for the rapid urbanization of surrounding
areas. In 1984, this led to the second official extension of the boundaries of the city to
include the municipalities of South Suburban, Garden Reach, and Jadavpur. See:
<https://www.kmcgov.in/KMCPortal/jsp/KMCAboutKolkataHome.jsp>, [Accessed
21 November 2012].
9In theory, ‘evacuee property’ was the property left behind by Muslims who fled
India and Hindus who fled Pakistan. In practice, minority communities were treated
as ‘intending evacuees’ and were forced out by a conjunction of refugee belligerence
and state complicity. The ‘evacuee property’ they left behind enabled the new states
to house their refugees. For a detailed study of state complicity in the displacement
of Muslim and Hindu minorities in India and Pakistan respectively, see Vazira Fazila-
Yacoobali Zamindar, The long partition and the making of modern South Asia: Refugees,
boundaries, histories, New York and Chichester, Columbia University Press, 2007;and
Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya (eds), The aftermath of partition in South Asia,
London and New York, Routledge, 2000, pp. 163–203.
10 Estimates of East Bengali refugees who entered West Bengal between 1947 and
1971 vary widely, from between 5.8million (see Pran Nath Luthra, Rehabilitation, New
Delhi, Publications Divisions, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government
of India, 1972)and4.1million (Committee for Review of Rehabilitation Work in West
Bengal, Report of the working group on the residual problem of rehabilitation in West Bengal,
Calcutta, Ministry of Supply and Rehabilitation, Government of India, 1976).
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42 UDITI SEN
which rapidly gained the dubious distinction of receiving the largest
number of partition refugees, had no clear plan for rehabilitation.11
This combination of circumstances led to a veritable movement of
unauthorized occupation not only of abandoned buildings, but also of
all available fallow land in and around Calcutta. Groups of refugees got
together to form dals or associations based on familial ties, connections
from a past life in East Bengal or political contacts. Once a suitable
patch of land was identified, its occupation followed a standard pattern.
The land was measured, divided into plots, and parcelled out among
refugee families. The occupiers of each plot had to erect a thatched
shelter overnight and move into it. By the time the landlords or
the authorities arrived on the scene, they had to contend with a
fully fledged illegal settlement. More often than not these overnight
occupations managed to survive as refugee colonies. This particular
form of illegal land-grabbing came to be known as jabardakhal. Literally
meaning ‘acquisition by force’, it mirrored the current terminology
for government requisition of properties: hukumdakhal. These refugee
settlements were eventually categorized as squatters’ colonies by the
authorities for administrative purposes.
This history of squatting was first narrated by Prafulla
Chakrabarti as an organized jabardakhal (forced acquisition) move-
ment in his seminal work on the policies and politics of refugee
rehabilitation in West Bengal.12 Bijoygarh, though enumerated as a
squatters’ colony in government records, is dismissed by Chakrabarti
for not being true to type.13 Numerous autobiographical accounts
regarding refugee rehabilitation, such as Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay’s
Udbastu (Refugee) and Indubaran Ganguly’s Colonysmriti (Memories of
colonies), concur with Chakrabarti’s assessment. In their remini-
scences, the residents of Bijoygarh have contested this, indicating that
to them identification as a jabardakhal or squatters’ colony was a matter
of considerable importance. This dispute over the status of Bijoygarh
11 According to the census of 1951,433,000 of West Bengal’s total refugee
population of 2,099,000 went to Calcutta alone. Another 527,000 settled in 24
Parganas, the district bordering Calcutta. See Republic of India, Census of 1951,
Vol. VI, part III, Calcutta City, Delhi, Office of the Registrar General, p. 305.
12 Prafulla Kumar Chakrabarti, The marginal men: The refugees and the left political
syndrome in West Bengal, Calcutta, Lumiere Books, 1990, pp. 33–66.
13 The first enumeration of squatters’ colonies in 1952 led to the list of 149
Group of Squatters’ Colonies, Calcutta Corporation Area. This can be found in
various government publications on rehabilitation, including Manual of refugee relief
and rehabilitation, Vol. I, Kolkata, Government of West Bengal, 2000,p.63. Bijoygarh
is the fifteenth colony in this list.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 43
colony is indicative of the complex interaction between history and
memory in the creation of refugee identity. Within the socio-cultural
milieu of post-partition West Bengal, descriptive categories born of
administrative needs (such as the division of refugee colonies into
squatters’, privately owned, and government-sponsored camps) took
on specific cultural meanings. By self-identifying as squatters, the
residents of Bijoygarh were in effect refashioning their history so as
to aid in the creation and perpetuation of a carefully constructed
refugee identity. In order to fully grasp what self-identification as a
squatter could mean for the residents of Bijoygarh, it is essential to
explore the cultural meanings that accumulated around the figure of
the Bengali refugee, and the spatial construct of the refugee colony in
post-partition West Bengal.
Unlike Punjab, where various factors, including the sheer scale of
the refugee crisis, led the state to approach the issue of relief and
rehabilitation on an emergency footing, in Bengal, the government’s
response was characterized by acute reluctance.14 Paltry relief and
an initial refusal to provide rehabilitation eventually gave way to
grossly inadequate and wrong-headed rehabilitation policies.15 The
government’s insistence on resettling Bengali refugees in marginal,
remote, and often barren lands ensured the spectacular failure of most
state-led schemes of rehabilitation.16 Predictably, the responsibility
for these failures was shifted to the Bengali refugees and their
supposedly flawed characters.17 In government reports, surveys, and
14 For a study of the governmentality of refugee rehabilitation in post-partition
India, see Uditi Sen, ‘Refugees and the politics of nation building in India’, 1947–71,
PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009.
15 Numerous studies have criticized the dismal failure of the government of West
Bengal to deal with the refugee crisis. For example, see Chakrabarti, The marginal
men; and Joya Chatterji, The spoils of partition: Bengal and India, 1947–67, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 105–58.
16 This failure is well documented in official publications as well as later scholarship.
See, for example, B.S. Guha, Memoir No. 1,1954, Studies in social tensions among the
refugees from Eastern Pakistan, Calcutta, Manager of Publications, 1959; S.L. De and A.K.
Bhattacharje, The refugee settlement in the Sunderbans, West Bengal: A socio-economic study,
Calcutta, Indian Statistical Institute, 1972; Alok Kumar Ghosh, ‘Bengali refugees
at Dandakaranya: A tragedy of rehabilitation’ in Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.), Refugees
in West Bengal: Institutional practices and contested identities, Calcutta, Calcutta Research
Group, 2000, pp. 106–29; and ‘“Dispersal” and the failure of rehabilitation: Refugee
camp-dwellers and squatters in West Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, 41,5, September
2007, pp. 995–1032.
17 Joya Chatterji has illustrated how imported European attitudes, which demeaned
the recipients of charity, were amalgamated with more recent colonial caricatures of
the effeminate and weak Bengali male to produce these potent stereotypes. She argues
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44 UDITI SEN
correspondence, a negative stereotype of the Bengali refugee took
hold. B.S. Guha’s comparative study of ‘social tensions’ among two
different refugee populations—the self-settled colony of Azadgarh
and the government-sponsored settlement of Jirat18—is a typical
example of this blame-game. The inevitable failure of the refugees
at Jirat to produce adequate crops from patently unsuitable land and
to obtain employment in a hostile social environment was explained
away, in pseudo-scientific language, as the ‘regression’ of the refugees
into ‘a lower level of simplification’.19 According to this study, the
refugees became ‘childishly dependant on the Government support’.20
U. Bhaskar Rao’s official account of rehabilitation, published in 1967,
reinforces the stereotype of the Bengali refugee as a ‘creature apart’.21
A collection of unflattering attributes of the ‘typical’ Bengali refugee—
‘an object of derision and contempt’, ‘a bundle of apathy’, ‘rebellious’
and ‘obstructive’—is tempered only by an appeal to readers to consider
the peculiar circumstances that might have produced such traits.
Historians of Bengal’s partition have long been alive to the bias
against Bengali refugees in official records. However, few have paid
close attention to the parallel creation of an opposite stereotype
of the Bengali refugee in popular discourse. Pro-refugee political
propaganda and sympathetic press coverage in post-partition West
Bengal frequently celebrated some refugees from East Bengal for
proudly refusing government handouts and becoming authors of
their own rehabilitation. The ‘self-settled’ refugee was in every
respect opposite to the much-maligned figure of the Bengali refugee
that pervaded contemporary administrative discourse—assertive,
resourceful, fiercely independent, and too proud to be subjected to
the demeaning and dehumanizing conditions of government camps.
It became a key element of the self-perception of Bengali refugees in
that in government discourse on rehabilitation, Bengali refugees were by definition
victims and recipients of charity. See Joya Chatterji, ‘Right or charity? The debate
over relief and rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947–1950’ in Suvir Kaul (ed.), Partitions
of memory: The afterlife of the division of India, Delhi, Permanent Black, 2001, pp. 74 –110.
18 Rehabilitation at Jirat consisted of relocating largely literate camp-dwellers
unaccustomed to hard labour to a malarial village in an area disconnected from urban
settlements where agricultural labour was already plentiful. See Guha, Studies in social
tensions, also cited in Chatterji, ‘“Dispersal’”.
19 Guha, Studies in social tensions,p.32.
20 Guha, Studies in social tensions,p.32.
21 U. Bhaskar Rao, The story of rehabilitation, New Delhi, Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting Publications Division, 1967,p.141.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 45
West Bengal and eventually, through their memories, found its way
into the histories of rehabilitation.
One of the earliest examples of this positive stereotype of
the self-settled Bengali refugee can be found in Udbastu, the
autobiographical account of Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay’s experiences
as the commissioner of rehabilitation and secretary of relief for West
Bengal between 1949 and 1955. Bandyopadhyay outlines a threefold
categorization of displaced persons, based on the reserves of money
and willpower they could command. He describes those who did
not look to government aid and succeeded in resettling themselves
as ‘relatively well off and energetic’.22 A second psychological type
consisted of those who were not as well off, but did not lack initiative.
These were the refugees who refused to go to government camps and
instead occupied abandoned houses and built temporary shelters on
fallow land. They, according to Bandyopadhyay, took responsibility for
their own upkeep. The third category of refugees consisted of those
who were poor, but—more significantly— ‘lacked the will to stand on
their own two feet’23 and who took shelter in government camps. In
this curious psychological-economic taxonomy of refugees, those living
in camps were depicted as the rump of the refugee population and as
dependent creatures who lacked initiative. Though Bandyopadhyay
was complimentary about the self-sufficiency of those who did not
enter government camps, his classification was primarily designed to
limit the government’s responsibility to the third ‘type’ of refugees.
This worked in favour of those refugees who blatantly broke
the law to squat on fallow land: the positive image of a ‘self-
settled’ refugee was a vital weapon in their battle to carve out a
social space and respectability in a socio-political climate largely
hostile to the refugee ‘influx’. In the memoirs, autobiographies, and
reminiscences of refugees, squatting became synonymous with self-
reliance. Thus, a clear act of breaking the law was reframed as
a marker of self-reliance, which enabled the refugees in squatters’
colonies to distinguish themselves as people who had too much self-
respect to enter government camps. In Chakrabarti’s The marginal men,
Bandyopadhyay’s threefold categorization is radically transformed
into an uncritical celebration of the achievement of the second ‘type’
of refugees—the founders of the jabardakhal or squatters’ colonies.
Eulogizing his refugee heroes as partitioned Bengal’s ‘deux ex machina’,
22 Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.31.
23 Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.31.
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46 UDITI SEN
Chakrabarti heaps praise on them for being ‘determined to carve out
their own place in West Bengal and earn their own livelihood’. 24
Thus, in Bengal’s partition literature, camps and colonies have
become representative of two pre-existing types of refugees, instead
of different locales of rehabilitation. Within this narrative, those
refugees who entered government camps and relied on the state
for rehabilitation are portrayed as inherently dependent types. While
among contemporaries, the stereotype of the passive victim was born
largely of the tendency to blame the refugees for the failure of
rehabilitation, historians have reinforced it by reading the hardship
weathered by refugees in camps as evidence of victimhood.25 It
follows that only those refugees who rejected government munificence
could claim self-sufficiency and independent agency. Thus, being
the resident of a jabardakhal or squatters’ colony eventually became
synonymous among the refugees in West Bengal with being
considered self-settled and resourceful. It is perhaps because of
this radical reconfiguration of meanings that being recognized as a
squatters’ colony assumed considerable importance for the residents
of Bijoygarh.
Whether included in the category of squatters’ colony or not,
Bijoygarh was undoubtedly one of the earliest attempts by refugees
to build a fully fledged urban settlement in Calcutta. As a result,
the colony features prominently in several histories of rehabilitation.
However, the scope of these accounts—and the location of Bijoygarh
colony within them—vary widely. In Bandyopadhyay’s Udbastu and
Chakrabarti’s The marginal men, Bijoygarh is mentioned as one of
many refugee colonies. Though an important detail, it is not central
to the narrative. In contrast, Mukhopadhyay’s Shikorer sandhane (Quest
for roots)26 and an edited volume entitled Dhangsa-o-nirman (Destruction
and creation)27 devote large sections to interviews with refugees
who built the Bijoygarh colony. Like Mukhopadhyay, the editors
and interviewers of Dhangsa-o-nirman have strong empathy for their
respondents, but are not themselves refugees. The volume aspires
to narrate the history of Bengali refugees in ‘their own voices’,
unmediated by analysis. This is an impossible ambition as oral history
24 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 33.
25 For example, Chakrabarti describes camp refugees as ‘a shapeless mass of
humans huddled together like beasts with all the sap squeezed out of their battered
frames’: Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 14.
26 Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane.
27 Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 47
interviews, by their very nature, are co-authored by the interviewer and
the interviewee. Nevertheless, when subjected to reflective analysis,
this collection of interviews provides valuable insight into the early
history of Bijoygarh. In contrast, Bijoygarh: ekti udbastu upanibesh (A
refugee colony)28 deals exclusively with Bijoygarh’s history and is written
by the son of Santosh Dutta, the veteran freedom fighter who at times
is described as Bijoygarh’s founder. Indubaran Ganguly’s eyewitness
account of the proliferation of colonies in the area surrounding
Bijoygarh between 1948 and 1954 offers an onlooker’s perspective on
the influence of Bijoygarh on the neighbourhood.29 This multiplicity
of accounts and the diversity in authorial intentions and contexts
of production facilitates the attempt to recover, from largely oral
and inevitably subjective accounts, a coherent—albeit incomplete—
narrative of the genesis of Bijoygarh. Through comparisons and cross-
referencing, it is possible to arrive at the bare bones of a historical
narrative that is common to these diverse texts. This synthesis
provides the necessary background for analysing the diverse patterns
of remembering Bijoygarh.
History, memory, and foundation myth: the victorious
squatters of Bijoygarh
Bijoygarh colony began as a squat of 12 refugee families in an
abandoned military camp at Jadavpur. In November 1947, they
travelled without tickets from Sealdah to Jadavpur station under the
leadership of a group of local residents who hailed from East Bengal
but had either migrated earlier or had managed to find jobs and
housing in Calcutta after partition. Shombhu Guha Thakurta, Kalu
Sen, Ashish Debray, and Shantiranjan Sen were a close-knit group
of young East Bengali men who decided to help their less fortunate
brethren stranded on railway platforms. The refugees transported
their meagre belongings, such as utensils and sleeping mats, by
hand-drawn cart from the railway station to the abandoned huts.
As news of the squat spread through word-of-mouth among the
thousands of displaced families pouring into Calcutta, a steady stream
of refugees started to arrive in the military camp. The founders and
residents formed the Jadavpur Bastuhara Samiti or Jadavpur Refugee
28 Datta, Bijoygarh.
29 Ganguly, Colonysmriti.
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48 UDITI SEN
Camp Association to promote cooperation among the refugees
and to work towards providing basic amenities. As the military
barracks filled to capacity, latecomers started building thatched
shelters on neighbouring fallow land. There seems to have been little
organization or coordination behind this first phase of squatting.
Shantiranjan Sen, the general secretary of the refugee association,
stressed its spontaneous nature: ‘At that time, none heeded the other.
People squatted wherever they could.’30 Nevertheless, the Association
attempted to preserve a modicum of order, demarcating household
plots that measured up to a maximum of 4kottahs31 for each family
and registering them in lieu of a contribution of two rupees.
The squatters were acutely aware of the vulnerability of their
position and resorted to various strategies to gain legitimacy and
government aid. A common practice was to invite leading scions
of Calcutta society, especially those who enjoyed close ties with
the Congress in West Bengal, to be the president of their refugee
association. Thus, Basanti Debi, the widow of the veteran Congress
leader Chittaranjan Das, was president of the Jadavpur Refugee Camp
Association for a few months.32 Following this pattern, leadership
passed to freedom-fighter Santosh Datta in 1948. The residents of the
growing refugee settlement hoped to gain the favour of the Congress
government of Dr B.C. Roy through Datta’s political connections.
There is little doubt that this change in leadership was the driving
force behind the transformation of a sprawling refugee squat into a
planned settlement. The period from late 1948 to late 1949 marked
a crucial period in the history of Bijoygarh. In the middle of 1949,
the landlord, Layalka, hired thugs to evict the refugees. This erupted
into a pitched battle, which the refugees won. To commemorate this
victory, the residents renamed their refugee camp ‘Bijoygarh colony’.
The transformation from camp to colony indicated the refugees’
determination to build a permanent settlement in the area, while
the name—meaning ‘fort of victory’—evoked a militant spirit as the
driving force behind the establishment of the colony.
The subsequent history of the colony is an impressive litany of the
rapid proliferation of institutions. By 1952, Bijoygarh boasted four
30 Interview with Shantiranjan Sen in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.48.
31 Kottah is a popular unit of measuring land in Bengal. One kottah equals roughly
720 square feet.
32 Despite retiring from active politics after the death of C.R. Das, Basanti Devi
continued to be associated with Gandhian social reconstruction in East Bengal. She
commanded great respect among politicians and social workers in Calcutta.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 49
schools, one college, a market, a post office, a temple, and even a
hospital. Certain philanthropists, residents or groups of residents are
credited with the foundation of specific institutions. For example,
Nalini Mohan Dasgupta is credited with establishing the first school
in the colony, the Jadavpur Bastuhara Bidyapith (Jadavpur Refugee
School), while Dr Aparnacharan Dutta is remembered as being the
driving force behind the establishment of Prasuti Sadan, a maternity
hospital.33 Though the vicissitudes of memory, coupled with the
different political affiliations of respondents and authors, often lead to
contradictory accounts, this rudimentary outline of Bijoygarh’s genesis
holds water across party lines and perspectives. The consensus breaks
down over the nature of the colony, with popular myths, perceptions,
and perspectives beginning to inform its inclusion within or exclusion
from the category of jabardakhal colony.
Bandyopadhyay first mentions Bijoygarh when he refers to the
tendency among refugees to occupy abandoned Allied military
barracks in the southern suburbs of Calcutta. Initially, the squat
at Jadavpur camp was one of many contemporary refugee squats
on abandoned military facilities in and around Calcutta. However,
the sheer scale of the occupation and the fact that a permanent
refugee settlement emerged from it set Bijoygarh colony apart.34
Bandyopadhyay credits the residents of Bijoygarh with a high degree of
organization and foresight. Planned initiatives, such as reserving open
areas for parks and playgrounds, won his respect, despite their patent
illegality. He nevertheless insisted that Bijoygarh was far from an
ordinary jabardakhal colony because ‘evidence can be found suggesting
that they received some indications of consent from the authorities’.35
Chakrabarti seconds this characterization of Bijoygarh as being in a
class by itself. He too speaks of ‘evidence’ of verbal consent being given
by the government.36 Neither Bandyopadhyay nor Chakrabarti pro-
vide any details about the nature or content of this evidence.
Chakrabarti nevertheless points to the crucial role played by Bijoygarh
in the jabardakhal movement. According to him, since only a select
few were privy to Santosh Datta’s success in obtaining government
approval, contemporaries saw the emergence of Bijoygarh as a success
33 Datta, Bijoygarh,2001,p.28. Also see the interviews with Shantiranjan Sen and
Gouranga De Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane, pp. 46–66;andthe
interview with Manindra Pal in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman, pp. 123–24.
34 Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.23
35 Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.35.
36 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 36.
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50 UDITI SEN
story that could be replicated. ‘When the colony which apparently
sprang out of unauthorized occupation of land was allowed to exist,
there were many among the refugees who believed that if only they
could take an organized plunge, they could easily get away with the
land.’37 In other words, the real significance of Bijoygarh colony lay in
the inspiration it provided to other refugees. The refusal to describe
Bijoygarh as a true jabardakhal colony is taken one step further by
Ganguly. He claims that far from being a squatters’ colony, Bijoygarh
actually approximated a government-sponsored one. He claimed that
Bijoygarh enjoyed covert official support, with Santosh Datta providing
the vital link between the residents of Bijoygarh and the chief minister
of West Bengal, Dr B.C. Roy.38
Ganguly’s explanation of the reasons that compelled Dr Roy to keep
his support secret are worth quoting at some length as they provide
an insight into the contemporary world of rumours and hearsay which
coloured the actions of refugees:
Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy had started trying to change official policy towards
the East Bengali refugees. The land on which the Jadavpur military camp
stood belonged to the Government of India. So, until and unless the central
government changed its policy towards refugees, it was not possible for the
state government to openly support an initiative of building a refugee colony
on this land. Yet, he was unshaken in his belief that he would eventually be
able to change the Nehru administration’s policy towards refugees. That’s
why he remained in the background and provided patronage to Santoshbabu
in his initiative to establish Bijoygarh. It’s a matter of note that Santoshbabu
too was careful to keep this matter of patronage from Dr Roy a secret.39
It is unlikely that Ganguly, a dissident member of the Communist
Party of India and the founder of Azadgarh colony,actually enjoyed
the confidence of the chief minister of West Bengal. A careful reading
of his account betrays his claim as little more than imaginative
speculation. In an account based entirely on personal memory, while
speaking about Bijoygarh’s origins, he falls back on quoting texts.40
He had clearly not witnessed the establishment of Bijoygarh and
was not acquainted with its leaders, whose intentions he expounded
on with such confidence. Nevertheless, his speculation on Santosh
Datta’s secret pact with Dr Roy is significant in that it reflects the
37 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 37.
38 Ganguly, Colonysmriti,p.28.
39 Ganguly, Colonysmriti,p.28.
40 Indubaran Ganguly quotes entire sections of Bandyopadhyay’s Udbastu and
summarizes Chakrabarti’s The marginal men verbatim.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 51
general belief among the residents of neighbouring refugee colonies in
Bijoygarh’s special status. This belief was born of the respect Santosh
Datta commanded within the Bengal Congress in particular and in
the political circles of West Bengal in general. He was famous for
his exploits as the second-in-command of Faridpur district’s Jugantar
cell, one of colonial Bengal’s most famous revolutionary terrorist
organizations.41 On the one hand, his celebrated status as a national
hero gave him access to the contemporary luminaries of West Bengal;
on the other, he was a refugee and a squatter. This no doubt enabled
him to champion Bijoygarh’s cause among bureaucrats and politicians.
However, his methods were not those of open confrontation or political
agitation against the government, but of negotiation and judicious
exploitation of influence. It seems that these differences in method as
well as in political allegiance, under the leadership of Santosh Datta,
lay at the core of Bijoygarh falling short of being a ‘true’ squatters’
colony.
The need for associative politics was urgently felt by the refugees
in squatters’ colonies. The early leaders were largely supporters of
the Congress or of the various socialist parties, such as Revolutionary
Socialist Party and the Praja Socialist Party. However, the obduracy of
the authorities in upholding public order and property ownership in
the face of an unprecedented crisis forced the squatters’ to take up a
more radical, anti-establishment stand. This radicalization of refugee
organizations was coupled by a shift in leadership to the communists
and other left parties. As a result, particular attributes were associated
with a typical squatters’ colony in Calcutta. They were seen as a hotbed
of anti-establishment agitation and a fertile recruiting ground for
the Communist Party. In this respect, Bijoygarh colony was indeed
an exception. In the 1950s, when increasing militancy among the
residents of squatters’ colonies led to the emergence of ‘refugee
power’ as a new player in the complex political milieu of post-partition
West Bengal, Bijoygarh, under Santosh Datta’s guidance, held back
from overt opposition to the Congress. Indubaran Ganguly has vividly
described this rift in Colonysmriti.
41 A scattered group of revolutionary terrorists who joined the Indo-German
conspiracy came to be known as the Jugantar group. For a history of Jugantar, see
Arun Chandra Guha, Aurobindo and Jugantar, Calcutta, Sahitya Sansad, n.d. Also see
David M. Laushley, Bengal terrorism and the Marxist Left: Aspects of regional nationalism in
India, 1905–42,Calcutta,K.L.Mukhopadhyay,1975.
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52 UDITI SEN
In April 1950, a conference of refugee leaders from all the squatters’
colonies in the southern suburbs of Calcutta was organized with the
express purpose of launching a new umbrella organization, the Dakshin
Kalikata Sahartali Bastuhara Samhati (the South Suburban Calcutta
Refugee Association).42 Though the representatives of Bijoygarh
colony attended the conference, they refused to be a part of the
organization. Santosh Datta supported the cause of formalizing
the squatters’ colonies, but voiced his inability to participate in
the methods of agitation that were likely to be adopted by the
Association.43 Bijoygarh colony thus occupied a contradictory position
within the history of the jabardakhal movement. On the one hand,
by virtue of being the first colony born of illegal squatting, it
provided a model for refugee colonies subsequently set up in the area.
These colonies not only looked to Bijoygarh for inspiration, but also
benefited from the institutional amenities developed by its residents,
such as schools and markets. Nevertheless, Bijoygarh’s leaders
held themselves aloof from contemporary refugee organizations and
refused to participate in the growing movement to formalize squatters’
colonies. This soured its relations with other squatters’ colonies and
fed rumours of a ‘secret pact’.44
The relevance of Bijoygarh’s contradictory position can only be
understood in the context of contemporary refugee politics. The ill-
devised ‘Eviction of Persons in Unauthorised Occupation of Land Bill’,
drafted by the government of West Bengal in 1951 to ‘reconcile the
42 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 66; and Ganguly, Colonysmriti, pp. 28–29.
43 Ganguly, Colonysmriti, pp. 28–29.
44 In the absence of any documentary evidence, it is impossible to conclusively
prove or disprove this theory of a ‘secret pact’. Besides rumours and speculation,
later accounts faithfully reproduce Bandyopadhyay’s unsubstantiated reference to
evidence of government consent. See Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.23. However, taking
into account all the available interviews with Bijoygarh residents, it is clear that
Dr B.C. Roy was far from pleased with the actions of the Bijoygarh refugees. The
unofficial support might have come from lower down, that is, from the rehabilitation
commissioner and secretary of rehabilitation in Dr Roy’s government, Hiranmoy
Bandyopadhyay himself. In their interviews, Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury (alias
Kalabhai), and Shantiranjan Sen repeatedly allude to the sympathetic response
of Bandyopadhyay. See Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman and Mukhopadhyay,
Shikorer sandhane. Kalabhai claims that Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, in response to a
memorandum submitted by the refugees, promised to legally acquire the colony’s
lands if he ever became the rehabilitation commissioner. He apparently kept his
word, though—given the proliferation of colonies by 1950—Bijoygarh’s claim for
special consideration had become impossible to implement. See Mukhopadhyay,
Shikorer sandhane,p.90. If this is true, then it could also explain Bandyopadhyay’s
uncharacteristically vague allusion to ‘evidence’.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 53
demands of the law with the needs of the refugees’,45 was viewed
by the refugees as an elaborate scheme to demolish the squatters’
colonies. It provided the catalyst for the heyday of belligerent refugee
politics under the leadership of the United Central Refugee Council.
As meetings, processions, and often-violent demonstrations drove
protesting refugees into a collision course with the authorities, the
government of West Bengal increasingly saw the refugees as a
political ‘problem’. The typical squatters’ colony in Congress-ruled
West Bengal was reconfigured as a settlement of militant underdogs.
There is little doubt that the inhabitants of squatters’ colonies led
a severely marginalized life. Besides having no access to the basic
amenities of urban life, such as water and electricity, the squatters also
had to combat repeated police raids and the private eviction operations
of landlords using hired muscle. The target of these operations would
often be the shanties built by the refugees rather than the refugees
themselves. Nevertheless, these clashes occasionally took the form
of pitched battles and, at times, refugees died defending their new
homes.46 However, far more significant than the actual details of these
clashes was its representation in the public sphere of refugee politics.
As local leaders, inspired by the revolutionary ideology of the left,
sought to organize the refugees and champion their cause, police
brutality towards refugees became part of the standard rhetoric of
anti-establishment speeches. Every single clash between the refugees
and the police was portrayed as an organized campaign. In fiery
speeches, pro-refugee editorials, pamphlets, and public meetings,
repeated evocations of the unity and militancy of the refugees
gradually produced a standardized mythic narrative of a battle
between the refugees and the establishment. For example, at mass
public meetings organized by the United Central Refugee Council,
local refugee leaders such as Madhu Bannerji of Jadavpur colony urged
refugees to establish armies of volunteers in all colonies and convert
them into ‘impregnable fortresses’.47 Editorials in the Swadhinata48
45 Amrita Bazar Patrika,21 March 1951.
46 For details, see Chakrabarti, The marginal men, pp. 80–81.
47 Extract of the report by the commissioner of police, Calcutta, for the week
ending 7April 1951, File no: 321/22 (KW), Sl No: 46/1922, Government of Bengal,
Intelligence Bureau, henceforth GB IB.
48 The Bengali daily, Swadhinata (Independence), was first published in 1946 as the
mouthpiece of the Bengal Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of India. It
fell victim to the severe factional fights within the Communist Party during the early
1960s and had ceased publication by 1965.
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54 UDITI SEN
catalogued these battles and the price paid by refugees in terms of loss
of shelter, injuries, imprisonment, and death.49 In the public theatre
of refugee politics, those who fell to police bullets were remembered as
martyrs and heroes of the refugee movement. For example, Binapani
Mitra, a pregnant woman killed by the police in their attempt to clear
Jadabgarh squatters’ colony, was mentioned repeatedly at the public
meetings of refugees. Her death became a symbol of the suffering and
fortitude of the refugee squatters. The Sanjukta Bastuhara Sammelan
(Joint Meeting of Refugees) of Hooghly district, organized by the
Communist Party of India and the Forward Block on 28 January 1951,
even named one of the main gates for the open-air event, Binapani
toran (gate).50 As a result, chronicles of anti-establishment politics and
direct clashes with the police were privileged over all other aspects of
the lived experience of refugees. While remembering their pasts, the
residents of the squatters’ colonies frequently fall back upon the tropes
of struggle, martyrdom, and sacrifice. In history and memory, this
standardized narrative plays the role of a foundation myth, which both
explains and legitimizes the origin of squatters’ colonies. Bijoygarh
colony was dismissed from the ranks of squatters’ colonies on account
of its leaders’ closeness to the Congress government and their refusal
to engage in stereotypically militant struggle. Yet, the residents of
Bijoygarh rely on a similar myth of origin to lay claim to the radical
identity of self-settled refugees.
The standard model of refugee resistance, which coalesced out of the
multiple representations of refugees as militant underdogs, envisions
the entire refugee colony as a mobilized machine of war against the
establishment. In uncertain times, all residents of the colony had a
responsibility to keep watch. At any sign of the police or suspicious
outsiders, the women raised an alarm by blowing on conch shells
and by beating steel utensils together. This was the signal for every
able-bodied man present to rush out to battle, armed, literally, with
sticks and stones. Children also played a vital role in this idealized
armed community. ‘There was an informal information network at
place which signalled their arrival (mostly done by young boys). Men
resisted as women blew conch.’51 Thus, within moments, a settlement
49 For example, see Swadhinata,22 February 1951.
50 Report on the proceedings of the Hooghly District Sanjukta Bastuhara Sammelan
(Joint Meeting of Refugees) held at Masirbari Maidan, Mahesh, P.S. Serampur on 28
January 1951, File no: 321/22 (KW), Sl No: 46/1922, GB IB.
51 Manas Ray, ‘Growing up refugee: On memory and locality’ in Bose (ed.), Refugees
in West Bengal,p.166.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 55
of respectable refugees would be transformed into a militant army
of resistance. At times, these accounts would be embellished with
tales of the bravery of refugee women, who fought at the vanguard,52
or the strategic use of women and children as shields against the
police.53 These battles, more often than not, ended in victory for the
refugees, though the invaders did manage to destroy a few shanties
before they left. With exemplary fortitude, the refugees rebuilt their
shelters and continued their struggle for rehabilitation and legitimacy
within the socio-economic and political milieu of West Bengal. The
hold this standardized origin myth of squatters’ colonies had on
popular imagination in West Bengal has moulded not only the way
in which refugees remember and represent their past, but also the
production of refugee histories. Kaliprasad Mukhopadhyay’s Shikorer
sandhane illustrates this starkly when the author asks Shantiranjan
Sen:
So there had not been any clashes over the land? Then why did the people
live in terror? The women were instructed to raise an alarm blowing conch
shells and beating upon tin, etc.—why had these precautionary measures
been taken?54
Having immersed himself in refugee folklore, Mukhopadhyay aggre-
ssively sought confirmation of his preconceived notions from his
respondents when he set out to interview the residents of Bijoygarh.
For Bijoygarh, this standardized folklore was combined with
memories of an actual clash that took place between residents and
hired thugs sent by Layalka, the landlord, to produce the foundation
myth of the colony. However, Manindra Pal,55 Shantiranjan Sen, and
Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury’s56 memories of this clash do not fit
the pattern of the mythology of refugee warfare. The residents of
Bijoygarh colony were largely taken by surprise by truckloads of hired
52 The first attempt at establishing a squatters’ colony under Nikhil Vanga Bastuhara
Karma Parishad (All Bengal Refugee Working Council) leadership in south Calcutta,
though a failure, was made memorable by the dogged fight put up by refugee women
against the police. For details, see Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p.65.
53 The suburban squatters’ colony at Mahesh evolved this strategy under the
leadership of a local student activist. For details, see Chakrabarti, The marginal men,
pp. 81–82.
54 Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.54.
55 For the full text of Manindra Pal’s interviews, see Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer
sandhane, pp. 112–15 and Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman, pp. 117–34.
56 For the full text of Shantiranjan Sen and Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury’s
interviews, see Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane, pp. 46–93.
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56 UDITI SEN
men who strategically chose to attack in the afternoon, hoping that
the men of the colony would be away at work. This strategy paid
off, as initially the refugees were heavily outnumbered and several
sustained heavy injuries. According to Manindra Pal, a resident named
Badal had been given the responsibility of keeping watch, with a bugle
for raising the alarm.57 Of the crowd that assembled in response,
only a fraction actually offered resistance. The students of Jadavpur
Engineering College, who shared close ties with the founding members
of Bijoygarh due to their common socialist affiliations, came to the
rescue of the colony.
However, by 1950, when the residents renamed Jadavpur refugee
camp ‘Bijoygarh’ (victory-fort) to commemorate this victory, few chose
to acknowledge the role played by ‘outsiders’. By suggesting the
new name, Shombhu Guha, who was a member of the Congress
Socialist Party and played an active role in various constructive
ventures within the colony, claimed this victory for all the residents
of the colony, portraying them as victorious underdogs.58 It fed into
the squatters’ self-image of proud and independent East Bengalis,
who relied on a combination of wit and physical valour to wrest
rehabilitation from an unsympathetic state. With the proliferation
of popular and autobiographical accounts in Bengali from the mid–
1990s, these themes of physical courage, militant organization, and
struggle against the establishment have found their way into refugee
histories.
The stereotype of the militant refugee obscures more than it
reveals of the micro-history of the squatters’ colonies. As mentioned
earlier, the community leaders of Bijoygarh colony had close
ties to the Congress Party. Their reminiscences are littered with
references to numerous incidents of non-confrontational interaction
with the authorities, such as memorandums, deputations, appeals, and
unofficial conversations which led to equally unofficial understandings
being reached with members of the police and the bureaucracy. Such
negotiations were by no means unique to Bijoygarh. In other words,
confrontation—especially violent confrontation with the authorities—
was just one of the many ways in which the refugees dealt with the
state. The significance of the mythic battle waged by refugees lay in its
ability to produce a homogenized refugee identity in opposition to the
external ‘other’—that is, the state and the host society, as embodied
57 Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.114.
58 Interview with Manindra Pal in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,p.123.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 57
in ruthless landlords. It papered over differences in caste, class, and
cultural capital, which divided the refugees from East Bengal and
moulded the kind of rehabilitation to which particular refugee families
had access.
Deciphering ‘refugee power’: the micro-history of rehabilitation
Large numbers of refugees took to political agitation in their quest for
rehabilitation, signalling their presence and predicament with slogans
of ‘Amra kara?Bastuhara!’ (‘Who are we? Refugees!’).59 Numerous
scholars have seen their processions and slogans as a signal of the
arrival of a new ‘power in the land’, which derived political clout
from ‘their number, their completely expropriated condition and
rootlessness, their poverty and hunger’.60 There is little doubt that the
radicalization of refugees irretrievably altered the political balance
in West Bengal.61 However, the brute force and determination of
desperate men, which is the most common understanding of ‘refugee
power’, is a poor explanation for the resilience of the refugees.
Through an examination of the micro-history of Bijoygarh colony it
is possible to develop a more nuanced explanation for the refugees’
ability to challenge government policies. Scattered throughout the
reminiscences of the squatters are anecdotes of everyday resistance,
negotiation, and accommodation, which together provide a far richer
and more complex understanding of refugee power.
Constant attempts by the refugees to obtain government aid or
legal recognition characterized the foundation of Jadavpur refugee
camp and its eventual transformation into Bijoygarh colony. The
residents’ reminiscences suggest that far from being marginal to
the political and bureaucratic order of West Bengal, it was their
familiarity with the ‘system’ that enabled Bijoygarh’s founders to
59 See Nilanjana Chatterjee, ‘Interrogating victimhood: East Bengali refugee
narratives of communal violence’, Department of Anthropology, University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, n.d; <http://www.swadhinata.org.uk/document/
chatterjeeEastBengal%20Refugee.pdf>, [Accessed 17 March 2013].
60 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 48. He calls the first refugee rally in Calcutta,
organized on 14 January 1949, the city’s ‘first taste of a new power in the land’
(p. 53).
61 For a detailed analysis of the political fallouts of partition and the role played
by refugees in changing political calculations in West Bengal, see Chatterji, Spoils of
partition, pp. 209–309.
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58 UDITI SEN
transform an illegal settlement into a permanent one. Old ties of
caste, class, and locality often aided the quest for new roots in an
alien milieu. The affinity borne of a shared past, of living in the
same district in East Bengal, of belonging to particular educational
institutions, political parties or cultural movements, provided not
only the building blocks of new communities but also markers for
identifying potential sympathisers within the government and the
bureaucracy. Though illegal, the initial occupation of the Jadavpur
military camp met with little opposition from the government.
According to Indubaran Ganguly, Kamalkrishna Ray, who was West
Bengal’s relief minister during Dr P.C. Ghosh’s brief tenure as chief
minister, opened all the abandoned military camps and barracks in
and around Calcutta to the refugees. Ganguly suggests that since
Kamalkrishna Ray came from Myemensingh in East Bengal, his
actions were the result of his empathy for fellow East Bengalis.62
While it is not possible to verify Ganguly’s claim, it would be a mistake
to underestimate the role played by East Bengali solidarity, born of
the recent, shared displacement wrought by partition, in moulding the
course of rehabilitation in West Bengal.
Some of the earliest migrants from East Bengal—and the only ones
encouraged, even welcomed, by the Indian state—were the ‘optees’.
These were government employees, including the educated middle-
class Hindus who had staffed the vast majority of posts at various
levels of administration in East Bengal. With partition, they availed
themselves of special provisions made for government servants and
‘opted’ for India. Though assured a future income, most were forced
to abandon their ancestral homes and property in East Bengal. Most
optees had to negotiate a sharp drop in their living standards, though
few claimed refugee status. In the years after partition, the East
Bengali optees maintained a conscious social distance from the squalor
and desperation of the refugee colonies and camps.63 Nevertheless, the
reminiscences of refugees suggest that post-partition West Bengal also
saw the affirmation—perhaps even the creation—of bonds of empathy
between optees and those refugees who hailed from roughly the
62 Ganguly, Colonysmriti,1997, pp. 25–26.
63 For a literary representation of this social distance, see Amitav Ghosh, The
shadow lines, Delhi, Bloomsbury, 1988. Also see M.D. Mahbubar Rahman and Willem
van Schendel, ‘“I am not a refugee”: Rethinking partition migration’, Modern Asian
Studies,37,3,2003, pp. 551–84. It is only of late that the popularization of the heroic
trope of the self-settled Bengali refugee has made refugee identity a mantle worth
wearing among the ‘bhadraloks’ of Calcutta.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 59
same socio-cultural milieu and often from the same district or town.
The bureaucrats and officials who served the cause of rehabilitation
beyond the call of duty were often from East Bengal. Hiranmoy
Bandyopadhyay and Jashoda Kanta Ray64 were two such individuals,
and feature prominently in refugee narratives, though no special credit
is reserved for them in the state’s archives. The more enterprising
among the refugees specifically appealed for help from bureaucrats,
administrators, and lawyers from East Bengal, hoping to exploit these
affective ties. The middle-class refugees in the squatters’ colonies
viewed optees within the administration of West Bengal as possible
allies in their quest for rehabilitation. It is possible that for the elite
among the optees, who were also dealing with loss and dislocation,
providing patronage to destitute East Bengalis offered a means of
rebuilding social status and influence in West Bengal.
Several references to such interactions with authorities and appeals
to individual bureaucrats or government officials can be found in
the reminiscences of Bijoygarh’s leaders. One such incident, which
illustrates the role played by personal and social ties in Bijoygarh’s
struggle to gain recognition, was the ‘battle’ with Layalka’s hired
thugs. Though the residents of Bijoygarh came out on top in the
skirmish, it was, in fact, only the beginning of their troubles. The police
swiftly issued arrest warrants for all the refugees involved in the fight
as well as all the committee members. Moreover, Layalka, unwilling to
give up his land, took the Jadavpur Refugee Camp Association to court.
Desperate to avoid imprisonment and conviction for activities that
were patently illegal, Santosh Datta and his cohort, Dhirendranath
Ray Chowdhury (alias Kalabhai) sought a meeting with Hiranmoy
Bandyopadhyay who was then the district magistrate of 24 Parganas,
but had been a khashmahal officer in Barisal district of East Bengal
before partition. As a result, he was not a complete stranger to
Kalabhai, who had been a local celebrity of sorts in Barisal because of
his participation in revolutionary terrorism and his role as editor of a
literary journal called Sarathi.65 Kalabhai had met Bandyopadhyay at
a cultural function organized by the Brahmo Samaj in Barisal, where
he had been extremely impressed by the latter’s lecture on Vedic
64 Jashoda Kanta Ray was the deputy commissioner of relief and rehabilitation with
the government of West Bengal.
65 Sarathi means ‘the charioteer’, but in this context clearly evokes the role played
by Krishna in the epic battle of Mahabharata when he guided the mythical Pandava
brothers to victory as the charioteer of Arjun.
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60 UDITI SEN
philosophy. Subsequently, he had invited Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay
to be the chief priest at a cultural festival, Kalidas Janmajayanti66 at
Barisal’s town hall. Kalabhai did not hesitate to remind the district
magistrate of their previous acquaintance, no doubt hoping to elicit
sympathy for the squatters.67
Bandyopadhyay directed the refugees to seek the help of yet
another optee: the officer-in-chief of Tollygunj police station, Amulya
Bannerjee, who had been a police officer at Keraniganj police
station of Dhaka district before partition.68 The vast majority of
the squatters’ colonies of south Calcutta, including Bijoygarh, came
under his jurisdiction. Refugee reminiscences from Bijoygarh suggest
that Amulya Bannerjee secretly helped them to exploit every possible
loophole of the criminal procedure code, while publicly continuing to
carry out his duty to evict illegal squatters.69 If Kalabhai’s account
is to be believed, Amulya Bannerjee came to a mutually beneficial
compromise with the refugees. He agreed to allow the named refugees
to surrender at a predetermined spot and to immediately grant them
bail. Thus, the refugee leaders were spared the ignominy of being
locked up. In return for his cooperation, Bannerjee was promised a
plot or two of the illegally occupied land.70
Though the threat of harassment from the police had been averted,
the case still had to be fought in court. As the hearing dragged on,
the refugees again turned to their more accomplished East Bengali
brethren for support. Girin Ray Chowdhury, the lawyer representing
the refugees, was from Faridpur district.71 However, defeat and
conviction seemed imminent until the refugees persuaded Chinta
Haran Ray, a famous criminal lawyer from Subidda in Dhaka, to argue
on their behalf. The colony-dwellers could not afford the services of
such a renowned lawyer, so it seems that ties to a lost homeland,
coupled with a sense of obligation arising from a personal relationship
66 This translates as the birth anniversary of the Sanskrit composer Kalidasa; it
is, in fact, more likely to have been the opening ceremony of a literary and cultural
festival.
67 Interview with Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer
sandhane,p.77.
68 Interview with Manindra Pal in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.113.
69 Himanghsu Majumdar, a member of the central committee of Bijoygarh colony
and a resident since December 1947, makes special mention of his aid. For details,
see the interview with Himangshu Majumdar in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,
p. 103.
70 Interview with Kalabhai in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane, pp. 79–80.
71 Interview with Manindra Pal in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.115.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 61
with one of the refugees, prompted Ray to take up their case free
of charge. ‘He knew me,’ explained Manindra Pal, one of the many
leaders of the colony. ‘I used to be his brother’s classmate at Jagannath
Hall in Dhaka.’72 Chinta Haran Ray’s legal intervention finally forced
Layalka to drop charges.73 Thus, the battle with Layalka, which has
been mythologized as a militant conflict won by the sheer muscle and
grit of desperate refugees, was actually won in court.
This was followed by another coup based on East Bengali solidarity
and orchestrated by the colony committee. According to Kalabhai,
the military camp at Jadavpur was the property of the army and in
1950, plans were afoot to auction it off. This precipitated a meeting
between Bijoygarh’s leaders and General Officer Commanding
Eastern Command Satya Brata Sinha (or S.B.S.) Roy.74 Debabrata
Datta provides a slightly different context for the meeting. According
to him, the colony committee wanted to use the last extant military
barracks, still controlled by the army, to establish a college. They
requested Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay’s help in the matter, who
directed them to meet S.B.S. Roy.75 However, both accounts place
equal emphasis on the general’s East Bengali origins. Kalabhai issued
him with an invitation to visit the colony in order to understand the
motivation of the refugees. ‘You are after all from East Bengal,’
he implored, once more hoping to exploit the sentiments of East
Bengali sub-nationalism.76 Datta’s narrative underlines this factor.
‘He too was from East Bengal. Therefore, realizing the difficulty of the
refugees, he did not hold back in expressing a spirit of co-operation.’77
The commander-in-chief visited Bijoygarh on 21 August 1950 and
officially handed over the military barracks of Bijoygarh to the colony
committee, to be used for ‘educational purposes’.78
The refugees’ success in negotiating the bureaucratic and legal maze
of partitioned Bengal cannot be attributed solely to successful appeals
72 Interview with Manindra Pal in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,p.120–21.
Also see interview with Manindra Pal in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.115.
73 Since the records of criminal cases that do not reach the higher courts are
routinely destroyed every ten years, the records of this case have not survived.
74 Interview with Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer
sandhane,p.81.
75 Datta, Bijoygarh, p. 59.
76 Interview with Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer
sandhane,p.81.
77 Datta, Bijoygarh, p. 59.
78 The details of this visit are roughly the same in Datta, Bijoygarh, and are also
found in Kalabhai’s interview in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane, pp. 80–82.
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62 UDITI SEN
to well-placed East Bengalis. Many refugees brought a measure of
familiarity with associative politics to the colonies they inhabited. The
founders of the Jadavpur refugee camp, Shombhu Guha Thakurta,
Sushil Sengupta, and Ashish Debray, besides being East Bengalis
and residents of the small residential complex around Jadavpur
University, had in common their membership of the Jayprakash
faction of the Congress Socialist Party.79 The refugees who took
the lead in establishing squatters’ colonies usually proceeded only
after forming an association or a committee.80 These committees and
associations were formed spontaneously through mutual consent
and were invariably registered with the Registrar of Firms, Societies
and Non-trading Corporations of West Bengal under the Society Act
of 1886. They conformed to the institutional structure required of
registered societies, framing a constitution and electing or nominating
an executive committee consisting of a president, treasurer, and
secretary. This indicated not only a high degree of literacy, but also of
the organizational skills typically found in a bourgeois public sphere.
This know-how provides a far more convincing explanation for the
ability of a certain section of the refugees to resist official policies of
eviction and dispersal than that of mere willpower or enterprise.
A significant number of the squatters had worked as clerks or lower
level officials in the various departments of the government of West
Bengal.81 This made the colony committees privy to an ‘insider’s’
knowledge of bureaucracy. Often, this knowledge enabled them to
succeed in obtaining government aid for a particular venture. A
number of Bijoygarh’s constructive initiatives derived support and
stability from such links. Shantiranjan Sen worked at the Writers’
Building, possibly as one of the many clerks employed at the seat
of government in West Bengal. He saw himself as a facilitator of
79 Interview with Dr Subratesh Ghosh in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,
pp. 97–98.
80 Here, Bijoygarh was the exception rather than the rule, as a committee to
regulate the day-to-day life of the Jadavpur refugee camp took shape only after the
abandoned military barracks had been occupied.
81 The East Bengali migrants’ ability to secure white-collar jobs has been
highlighted by Chatterji, Spoils of partition, pp. 141–50. Also see Nirmal Kumar
Bose, Calcutta: 1964, A social survey, Bombay, Lalvani Publishing House, 1968,p.34.
According to Bose, refugees from East Bengal tended to avoid manual labour and
most found jobs as clerks. A statistical survey of refugees in West Bengal conducted
in 1955 noted—with alarm—their high rates of employment in government and
other services. For details, see State Statistical Bureau, Government of West Bengal,
Rehabilitation of refugees—A statistical survey, 1955, Alipore, 1956, pp. 5–9.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 63
the first meeting between the refugees of the Jadavpur camp and
the authorities at the Writers’ Building. ‘I had gone with them [the
refugee leaders] since they had never seen Writers’ Building before.
I guided them and we met the Relief Minister.’82 Familiar with the
idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, Shantiranjan came up with an ingenious
plan to exploit the loopholes in administrative procedure in order to
derive some official recognition for Bijoygarh.
There were several government employees among the refugees at
Jadavpur camp who had ‘opted’ for government service in West Bengal.
Shantiranjan instructed these men to address an official letter to their
respective departments, asking for some land for resettlement. The
letters further requested that if the authorities could not provide land,
they forward the application for a plot of land for the applicant to the
Jadavpur Refugee Camp Association. The point of the exercise was
not to actually obtain land, but to trick the respective government
departments into indirectly endorsing an illegal seizure of land.
This strategy of ours paid off. Every department approached in this manner
forwarded the applications to our association. They did not know what value
these had.... Later on, we could tell the government that they could not deem
us to be trespassers, since their administrative departments had forwarded
applications to the secretary of our association. This was a great safeguard
for us in legal terms. Ten or twelve such applications were forwarded to us.83
At other times, Bijoygarh colony enjoyed more direct benefits from
having government employees among its residents. All respondents
acknowledged Nalini Mohan Dasgupta as the driving force behind
the establishment of the first secondary school for the children
of Jadavpur camp. Local refugee leaders founded a school named
Jadavpur Bastuhara Banipeeth on 6January 1949. It was later
renamed Jadavpur Bastuhara Vidyapeeth and, with the rechristening
of the camp as Bijoygarh colony, came to be known as Bijoygarh
Vidyapeeth. At this stage, a permanent committee took over the
administration of the boys’ section of the school and Nalini Mohan
Dasgupta became the secretary of this committee.84 Dasgupta earned
his living as an employee of the Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation
Department of West Bengal and was therefore uniquely placed to
obtain government recognition for the school, as well as the full
82 Interview with Shantiranjan Senin in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,
pp. 46–47.
83 Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.52.
84 Datta, Bijoygarh,p.28.
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64 UDITI SEN
package of benefits to which refugee students were entitled.85 While
writing the history of Bijoygarh, Debabrata Dutta made a direct
connection between education and influence:
Through untiring efforts of Nalini Mohan Dasgupta and Santosh Dutta’s
influence in circles of governance it was possible to obtain government aid
for every single refugee student. This is what enabled the refugee children of
this area to continue their education.86
Despite high aspirations, most refugees in squatter’s colonies did
not have the means to educate their children. Education and therefore
social mobility among refugees depended upon the ability to obtain
concessions from the government.
The importance of education in the social geography of the
squatters’ colonies cannot be overstated.87 Almost every colony
boasted at least one secondary school and several primary schools.
These schools were not only vital to refugees’ desire for economic
rehabilitation through training the next generation for employment,
they also embodied the educated and cultured bhadralok identity
the middle-class squatters clung to.88 According to Manas Ray, the
refugees believed that shiksha (education) would enable them to
gain recognition as bhadraloks from Calcutta society, ‘something we
thought we rightfully deserved, but were deprived of’.89 These schools
also bound the refugee community together at a more practical
level. Almost all the teachers at the schools were drawn from
local refugees. Manas Ray, in his autobiographical account, noted
large number of schoolteachers among the early migrants to West
85 According to Gouranga De Chowdhury, he was employed as the office
superintendent in the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation. See interview with
Gouranga De Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane,p.61.
86 Datta, Bijoygarh,p.29.
87 For an analysis of the significance of education in the mindset of the residents of
refugee colonies, see Dipankar Sinha, ‘Adjustment and transition in a Bengali refugee
settlement: 1950–1999’ in Bose (ed.), Refugees in West Bengal, pp. 147–51.
88 Literally meaning ‘decent people’, the term was originally used to describe
the landed and educated Hindu middle class of Bengal. However, with the radical
decline of the bhadralok in the first half of the twentieth century, the term increasingly
came to represent a claim to social respectability, bolstered by superior educational
qualifications, lineage, and cultural pursuits, which may or may not have been reflected
in economic status. For an exploratory survey of the decline of the Bengali bhadralok
and their attempts to stem the rot, see Joya Chatterji, ‘The decline, revival and fall of
bhadralok influence in the 1940s: A historiographic review’ in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
(ed.), Bengal: Rethinking history: essays in historiography, New Delhi, Manohar, 2001, pp.
297–315.
89 Ray, ‘Growing up refugee’,p.173.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 65
Bengal.90 Schools were popular as they provided local employment.
Most schools were started by pooling together meagre funds. The
teachers depended upon chanda, or donations, for their salaries,
which were paid irregularly, if at all.91 Yet, given the high levels of
unemployment in contemporary Calcutta, the colony’s schools seldom
suffered from a dearth of teachers. Moreover, compared to formalizing
land ownership, which still awaits many refugees, it was comparatively
easy to obtain government recognition for the schools. Once a school
was registered, which the refugees were quick to organize through
their network of connections, it provided regular government jobs to
a significant number of refugees. It also became the first step towards
gaining legitimacy from the authorities and recognition from the host
society of Calcutta.
Not all the residents of the squatters’ colonies were middle
class or educated. However, the self-image of the squatters was,
without exception, that of the educated bhadralok. Their leaders,
irrespective of political affiliations, represented the colonies as
bhadralok communities, repeatedly stressing education and pursuit of
bourgeois culture as the markers that set them apart from the urban
poor of Calcutta. Kalabhai’s attempt to elicit support for formalizing
Bijoygarh colony from the district magistrate of 24 Parganas, discussed
above, provides a relevant example.92 In this meeting, he described
the squatters of Bijoygarh as ‘members of that (East Bengali) erudite
society’.93 Sailen Chowdhury’s play on the cultured identity of the
squatters was far more spectacular. Once the chairman of Sherpur
Municipality of Mymensingh in East Bengal, he had joined the ranks
of squatters in West Bengal and had helped to found Deshbandhu
colony.94 He succeeded in eliciting an impromptu meeting with the
governor of West Bengal, Dr Katju, through a calculated display of
cultural affinity. Young refugee girls dressed in saris, blowing conch
shells, and scattering flowers upon the governor’s car as he travelled
along the main road bordering the colony proved to be far more
effective than a roadblock. The governor was ushered into a squatter’s
90 Manas Ray, ‘Kata deshe ghorer khonj’ (‘The quest for home in a divide land’) in
Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,p.254.
91 For a descriptive account of the foundation of numerous schools in Bijoygarh,
see Datta, Bijoygarh, pp. 27–31.
92 See Datta, Bijoygarh,p24.
93 Interview with Dhirendranath Ray Chowdhury in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer
sandhane,p.78.
94 Ganguly, Colonysmriti, pp. 36–39.
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66 UDITI SEN
shack and draped with garlands, accompanied by songs and recitations
by refugee children. Sailen Chowdhury wrapped up the session with an
appeal for help.95 This display had the desired effect upon Dr Katju.
According to Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, who was his companion on
this tour, the governor was extremely impressed by the refugees’
commitment towards preserving their cultural heritage, despite their
poverty. He showed his appreciation by arranging for the resettlement
of Deshbandhu colony on legally requisitioned land nearby. Naktala
No. 1colony, an island of legal settlement within the expanding mosaic
of squatters’ colonies in south Calcutta, emerged as a result of Dr
Katju’s determination to rescue these cultured families from a life of
illegality.96
Much of the enterprise and initiative shown by the squatters
in rehabilitating themselves derived from their social and cultural
antecedents. The refugees who built the squatters’ colonies came
from a socio-cultural milieu where education and white-collar jobs
were highly valued. The East Bengali migrants who succeeded in
rebuilding reasonably prosperous lives in West Bengal, either as
well-paid professionals or as officials in the national administration,
remained connected to their poorer ‘country cousins’ through social
ties born of common schools, colleges, socio-cultural forums or through
familial ties perpetuated by marriage. What the squatters around
Calcutta lacked in economic means and urban sophistication, they
sought to make up for through judicious exploitation of social networks
and familial ties.
However, cultural capital alone was not sufficient to see the refugees
through. They turned to politics to combat the might of the state,
which remained stubborn in its attachment to ‘law and order’ and
reluctant to concede space to the refugees. The ‘infiltration’ of
refugee associations by the Communist Party of India, the relationship
between refugee politics and the electoral success of left-wing parties
in West Bengal, as well as the limits of the Communist Party’s
commitment to the refugee cause has been discussed in vivid detail
by Prafulla Chakrabarti.97 It cannot be denied that communist
support played a crucial role in bolstering the refugees’ demand
for rehabilitation. But an overt emphasis on confrontational politics
95 Ganguly, Colonysmriti, pp. 39–41.
96 Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu,p.39. Also described in Ganguly, Colonysmriti,
pp. 36–39.
97 Chakrabarti, The marginal men.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 67
obscures the diverse strategies employed by refugees in trying to find
a foothold in Calcutta. The vast majority of the refugee families who
unleashed a veritable movement of land-grabbing on Calcutta had
been reduced to bare subsistence levels by circumstances. Desperate
to better their lot, they used every possible means, whether legal or
illegal. At the micro-historical level, political agitation is revealed to
have been the most visible of the many strategies used to wrestle
rehabilitation from a reluctant state, but not the only—or even the
most effective—one.
The bhadralok refugees and paradoxes of refugee identity
The pattern of refugee experiences that comes to light from
the above discussion suffers from a near-exclusive focus on the
squatters’ colonies and their bhadralok residents. The stereotypical
Bengali refugee described in these narratives is both a victim
and a survivor. Despite state apathy and abysmal conditions in
government camps, they emerge triumphant in their quest for
social and economic rehabilitation through the establishment of
the squatters’ colonies. There is no doubt that existing refugee
narratives lament the tragedy of the thousands who perished in the
government camps or were dispersed to marginal lands in Orissa,
Bihar, Dandakaranya, and the Andaman Islands. Yet, this tragedy
only serves to highlight the achievement of self-rehabilitation in
jabardakhal colonies. Commemorative booklets, memoirs, and popular
histories are crowded with the names of leaders and pioneers,
and descriptions of their achievements.98 No such popular accounts
exist of the inmates of government camps. Their voices and
98 Though the majority of the refugee colonies in Jadavpur and Tollygunj regions
have been formalized and integrated into the urban sprawl of greater Calcutta, most
have retained the colony committees and membership of the United Central Refugee
Council. While the latter continues to highlight outstanding issues and grievances of
refugee colonies, most colony committees now concentrate on organising communal
yearly festivals, especially the Durga Puja. Between 1998 and 2000, a number of
colonies, their schools or the local Durga Puja celebrated their fiftieth anniversaries.
Most commemorated the occasion by printing a booklet which included a section on
the foundation and history of the particular colony and its institutions. One such
example is Regent Colony Bastuhara Samiti, Subarna Jayanti Utsab (Regent Colony Refugee
Association, Golden Jubilee Celebrations), 1999–2000,n.p., 2000.
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68 UDITI SEN
lived experiences of rehabilitation are conspicuously absent.99 Two
central assertions structure the reminiscences, amateur histories,
and autobiographies written by squatters. First, the dehumanizing
conditions of government camps, combined with the failure of the
authorities to provide any shelter to the swelling tide of refugees,
provide the moral justification for illegal occupation of land. Second,
is the constant reiteration of the respectable and educated character
of the refugees, despite their illegal activities. A paradoxical feature
of these narratives is that, despite the pervasive horror of a prolonged
stay on railway platforms or in government camps, a lived experience
of either site is completely absent in the reminiscences of squatters.100
Moreover, on closer scrutiny, the respectability of middle-class
refugees can be seen to have had a divisive impact.
All accounts of Bijoygarh’s history mention a handful of refugee
families from Sealdah station as the colony’s earliest residents.
However, none of the respondents selected by three separate oral
history initiatives fits this profile.101 Even the names of these early
settlers elude most respondents. Dr Subratesh Ghosh could barely
recall the name of one such family.102 Bharat Chandra Debnath’s
childhood memory of accompanying Shombu Guha to bring refugees
from the railway station did not extend to actual familiarity with these
families or any concrete memory of them. ‘But I don’t remember
their names,’ he said. ‘They are dead ... There was one who was
a contractor—he lived in number one [ward].’103 While collective
99 A handful of studies that have explored the lived experience of refugees in the
various government camps and colonies reveal a far more complex world of everyday
resistance and negotiations. See Ravinder Kaur, Since 1947: Partition narratives among
Punjabi migrants of Delhi, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007; and Kathinka
Sinha-Kerkhoff, ‘Permanent refugees: Female camp inhabitant in Bihar’ in Philomena
Essed, Georg Frerks and Joke Schrijvers (eds), Refugees and the transformation of societies:
Agency, policies, ethics and politics, New York; Oxford, Berghahn, 2004, pp. 81–93;
and Uditi Sen, ‘Dissident memories: Exploring Bengali refugee narratives in the
Andaman Islands’ in Panikos Panayi and Pippa Virdee (eds), Refugees and the end
of empire: Imperial collapse and forced migration during the twentieth century, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 219–44.
100 None of the 15 interviewees published in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman
confesses to the experience of living in government camps or on railway platforms.
101 These include the 15 interviews published in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-
o-nirman; five respondents in Mukhopadhyay, Shikorer sandhane, and the various
informants consulted by Datta, Bijoygarh.
102 Interview with Dr Subratesh Ghosh in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman, pp.
98–99.
103 Interview with Bharat Chandra Debnath in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,
p. 156.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 69
memory in Bijoygarh has forgotten the first squatters who came
from Sealdah station, the popular histories of other colonies seldom
mention any resident fleeing the squalor of railway platforms. In a
booklet commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Regent colony, the
customary summary of the horrors of the camps and platforms is
followed by an explanation of the crisis of housing faced by displaced
persons who already held jobs in Calcutta, but could not afford homes
for their uprooted families.104 Indubaran Ganguly’s description of
the genesis of Deshbandhu colony openly admits that all the names
included in the list of plot holders were the friends and relatives of the
members of the founding committee.105 This committee consisted of
prominent refugee leaders living in neighbouring jabardakhal colonies
and their confidants, such as the author himself, who at that time lived
in a rented house nearby. Similarly, Manas Ray’s account of the origins
of Netaji Nagar colony identifies teachers and lawyers as members
of the founding committee, and refugees ‘known to the committee
members’ as the eventual residents.106
Thus, the stereotypical refugee, driven to illegally occupy land to
escape the degradation of living on pavements and railway stations,
was historically a marginal figure in the squatters’ colonies. The vast
majority of the squatters either left rented accommodation, or the
temporary shelter of friends and relatives, to lay claim to their own
plot of land in the outskirts of Calcutta. None of the middle-class
refugees, who waxed eloquent on the dehumanizing congestion of
camp life and the ignominy of weeks spent on the platform, had
actually had experience of either. The very real fear of being reduced
to such destitution acted as a powerful motive for jabardakhal among
refugees who had limited means. The actual experience of camps and
platforms was reserved for the poorer refugees who lacked the cultural
capital, education, and bureaucratic know-how that characterized the
colony-dwellers. The inmates of government camps, especially those
who arrived after 1950, tended to belong to the lower castes of
East Bengal, especially the Namasudras. There is evidence to suggest
that the bhadraloks of the colony were not only desperate to avoid
entering government camps, but were also eager to maintain a social
distance from those refugees who did not live up to their standards of
respectability.
104 Regent Colony Bastuhara samiti.
105 Ganguly, Colonysmriti, pp. 36–39.
106 Ray, ‘Growing up refugee’, pp. 149–79.
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70 UDITI SEN
The bhadralok identity of squatters’ colonies was not limited to benign
cultural terms. It was also used to justify replicating social hierarchies
within colonies. Indubaran Ganguly’s account faithfully reproduces
contemporary rumours of social segregation within colonies, such as
the rumour of an ‘exclusive’ enclave of larger plots reserved for the
founders of Gandhi colony. Jadavpur Association107 went one step
further, announcing that only bhadraloks would be allotted plots in
the colony. An ‘action squad’ implemented this diktat by displacing
refugees deemed to be ‘chotolok’ or of low status to make room for
the suitably cultured and substantially better-off bhadraloksofEast
Bengal.108 If there is truth to this allegation, it might explain the
complete disappearance of those families who had been brought over
from the Sealdah platform by Shombhu Guha and his cohorts, not only
from the geography of Bijoygarh colony, but also from its collective
memory. Dr Ghosh struggled to explain the absence of these families,
vaguely alluding to a second displacement: ‘Don’t know if they are still
here, as later they were displaced all over again. Either they sold off
the place, or gave it away—I do not know. Except one or two, all the
families left.’109
Manas Ray’s autobiographical account of growing up in Netaji Nagar
colony speaks at some length of these internal divides, and is worth
quoting at some length:
The vast majority of those who came were middle-class people with
some urban exposure. Those who did not fall in this bracket—fishermen,
carpenters, hut-builders, masons, barbers—tended to concentrate in two
adjacent wards lying at one end of the locality... In retrospect, it seems
amazing how little I knew of that world, how subtle and comprehensive was
the process of normalization of divisions.110
Thus, the refugees in the squatters’ colonies, who have long been
feted as the mainstay of left-wing politics in Calcutta, were—at
best—inclined to favour friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and—at
worst—practised active social segregation in order to maintain social
respectability. Caste was the most visible marker of respect among
the refugees. The refugees marginalized within the social geography
107 The Jadavpur Association mentioned in popular histories is none other than the
Jadavpur Refugee Camp Association, which was instrumental in founding Bijoygarh
colony.
108 Ganguly, Colonysmriti,p.35.
109 Interview with Dr Subratesh Ghosh in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,
p. 99.
110 Ray, ‘Growing up refugee’, pp. 149–79.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 71
of Netaji Nagar, as well as the unfortunate people who stagnated in
camps or were dispersed to distant, inhospitable lands, had one thing
in common—they inevitably belonged to the lower castes of rural East
Bengal. The fishermen, carpenters, hut-builders, masons, and barbers
mentioned by Manas Ray are not merely lists of occupations that
lacked social status, but are also indicative of caste identities.
This caste-based segregation also divided the refugees as they
agitated for rehabilitation in West Bengal. When the United Central
Refugee Council attempted to take up the cause of the camp refugees
who had deserted the Bettiah camp of Bihar, they ran up against the
age-old distrust of upper-caste Hindus among the Namasudras of East
Bengal. Ninety per cent of the deserters were Namasudras and were
responsive only to the leadership of Apurbalal Mazumdar who had
little sway within the various refugee organizations of Calcutta, but
exerted tremendous influence among the Bettiah deserters because
of his Namasudra identity.111 While highlighting the caste-based
affiliations of the camp refugees, Chakrabarti fails to comment upon
the absence of refugees from low-caste backgrounds in the various
democratic refugee organizations that emerged in West Bengal during
the 1950s.112
The movement demanding rehabilitation for Bettiah deserters
failed, despite the support of all the leftist refugee organizations.113
The primary reason for its failure was the lack of active public support.
Tellingly, the people of the squatters’ colonies could not be persuaded
to participate in the movement. This was not for want of trying to
involve them on the part of refugee organizations, which had grown
organically out of these very colonies. This prompted Chakrabarti to
move away from his celebratory narrative of the jabardakhal movement
and speculate that ‘the petty bourgeoisie squatters who had very little
relationship with the lowly Namasudra peasant before migration felt no
real concern for the fate of these agriculturists’.114 In other words, in
111 Chakrabarti, The marginal men, p. 171.
112 Recent research has brought to light a sense of persecution among Namasudra
refugees who clearly believe their low-caste identity to be the basis of their
marginalization. For details, see Annu Jalais, ‘Dwelling on Morichjhanpi: When tigers
become “citizens: and refugees “tigerfood”’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 April
2005, pp. 1757–62. Also see Ross Mallik, ‘Refugee resettlement in forest reserves:
West Bengal policy reversal and the Marichjhapi massacre’, Journal of Asian Studies,
58,1,1999, pp. 104–21.
113 For details of this agitation, see Chakrabarti, The marginal men, pp. 162–207.
114 Chakrabarti, The marginal men,p.178–79.
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72 UDITI SEN
the absence of social and cultural ties, an inclusive refugee identity did
not emerge in West Bengal. Nor did any semblance of solidarity bind
the refugees together. The discourse of respectability running through
the refugee narratives and the emphasis on culture and education
served to naturalize the re-creation of caste and class hierarchies of
rural East Bengal among the displaced Hindu population in West
Bengal.
Refugee narratives about the genesis of squatters’ colonies
emphasise the self-respect of middle-class refugees, which made it
difficult for them to accept ‘charity’ from the government. This,
coupled with a refusal to resign themselves to a life of dependence
on state munificence, is presented as the driving force behind the
East Bengali bhadralok’s planned illegal seizure of land. For Indubaran
Ganguly, living in camps and accepting the ‘so-called government
largesse’ was no different from begging. By explaining the reluctance
of colony-dwellers to accept government ‘doles’ in terms of their
middle-class sensibilities, Ganguly introduces class background as
the main distinguishing feature between camp refugees and colony-
dwellers.
...it hurt the self-respect of many middle class and lower-middle class refugee
families. To make the future of their children so dependent on others also
jarred the sensibility of many guardians. It can be said, that it was the force of
such circumstances that made the desperate refugees take the historic step
towards authoring their own rehabilitation in fallow land. The result was the
jabardakhal colony.115
Similar passages expressing this sentiment can be discerned in every
single refugee narrative that emerged from the squatters’ colonies,
whether textual or oral. The cultural arrogance of a middle-class
identity is clearly discernible in these narratives. Squatters’ colonies
not only provided their residents with shelter, but also enabled middle-
class Bengalis to maintain a clear social distance from the camp
refugees, who were perceived to lack respectability and self-respect.
The self-sufficient refugee who scorned government charity and
rehabilitated himself is a carefully constructed cultural identity. It
draws its strength from the origin myth of the refugee colonies, which
runs through both refugee histories and reminiscences. However, it
does not hold up to closer scrutiny. Reading between the lines of
refugee narratives, it becomes evident that, far from being averse to
115 Ganguly, Colonysmriti,p.25.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 73
government aid, the squatters were adept at obtaining concessions
and exemptions from the authorities. Even as the colony committees
were caught up in a movement against the government to forestall
eviction, there were many residents who benefited from the loans
being distributed by the Ministry of Rehabilitation. Jatindranath Das
of Bijoygarh colony obtained a loan of Rs 8,000 from the government,
which he used to start a business.116 Jiten Datta of Bijoygarh set up
a grocery shop in Bijoygarh’s refugee market with a similar loan.117
Official records suggest that their experience was far from exceptional.
In 1960, Morarji Desai, India’s finance minister, wrote to Renuka
Ray, the erstwhile minister of relief and rehabilitation of West Bengal
(1952–57), citing a comprehensive set of figures, which were designed
to refute her allegation of state apathy towards the non-camp refugees
in West Bengal.118 These figures suggest that, contrary to their
professed identity of ‘self-settled’ refugee, the residents of squatters’
colonies benefited significantly from different kinds of government
aid.
Renuka Ray sought to use her influence as an elected member of
parliament to remedy what were, in her opinion, the ills that plagued
the rehabilitation of Bengali refugees.119 Based on her experience as
the minister of rehabilitation, she criticized the central government’s
policy of prioritizing the resettlement of refugees living in various
government camps over and above the work of formalizing and
developing the squatters’ colonies. Her repeated letters to Morarji
Desai, insisting that the government of India had given little or
nothing to non-camp refugees, were eventually silenced by a detailed
response from the finance minister, marshalling facts and figures to
prove that Ray’s allegations had little basis in fact.120 According to the
minister of finance, by August 1960,21 lakh121 refugees had received a
total sum of Rs 66.5crores122 as rehabilitation assistance. Not only were
116 Interview with Jatindranath Das in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,p.206.
117 Interview with Jiten Datta in Chakrabarti et al., Dhangsa-o-nirman,p.145.
118 Morarji Desai, Finance Minister, Government of India to Renuka Ray, Member
of Parliament, 15 August 1960,Renuka Ray Papers, Subject File No 5,Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library (henceforth NMML).
119 Renuka Ray, My reminiscences: Social development during the Gandhian era and after,
Calcutta, Stree Samya Books, 2005,p.189.
120 Morarji Desai to Renuka Ray, 1960,RenukaRayPapers,NMML.
121 Alakh a unit of enumeration equal to one hundred thousand (100,000)thatis
widely used in official and other contexts in South Asia.
122 Acrore is a unit of enumeration equal to ten million that is widely used in South
Asia.
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74 UDITI SEN
the majority of the recipients—an estimated 15 lakhs—from ‘outside
camps’ but their share of government grants amounted to 48.5crores.
Desai proceeded to break up this total into its constituent types of
rehabilitation benefits, illustrating that in each category, the ‘non-
campers’ received a significantly larger proportion of government aid:
Out of 92,000 displaced families to whom rehabilitation loans
have been advanced, 17,000 are campers and 75,000 non-campers; all the
15,000 families to whom trade loans have been advanced by the Refugee
Businessmen Rehabilitation Board and by the Rehabilitation Finance
Administration are non-campers, out of 36,000 persons who have been given
training under the Technical and Vocational Training Schemes, 3,500 are
campers and 32,500 are non-campers; practically all the displaced persons
employed in the 300 sanctioned schemes of medium, small scale and cottage
industries are non-campers; and almost all the 22,000 displaced families who
have been given house-building loans (including the Contributory scheme)
or accommodated in government built houses in West Bengal are non-
campers.123
These ‘non-campers’ were none other than the ‘self-settled’ refugees
of West Bengal, the vast majority of whom lived in the various
squatters’ colonies. In other words, the avowedly self-sufficient
squatters actually enjoyed the lion’s share of the (admittedly
inadequate) rehabilitation loans and grants in West Bengal.
Though the camp inhabitants and residents of squatters’ or private
colonies comprised two separate categories of refugees in West Bengal,
what distinguished them was not their inherent nature or psychology,
but their disparate socio-economic backgrounds. The pioneers of the
jabardakhal colonies were those who had the requisite skills for such
an enterprise—education, familiarity with the urban geography of
Calcutta, and social and cultural capital. The refugees who lacked
this crucial set of attributes were either physically excluded from
the colonies or, as Manas Ray suggests, segregated within them.
Past inequalities were reproduced within the new milieu. While
aggressively carving out a space for themselves in the society and
politics of West Bengal, the bhadraloks who shunned camps also
monopolized government schemes offering training, employment, and
loans to refugees. The patterns of rehabilitation in West Bengal
recreated and deepened the rift between the educated middle classes
and the low-caste peasants that had historically divided the Hindus of
East Bengal.
123 Morarji Desai to Renuka Ray, 1960,RenukaRayPapers,NMML.
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THE MYTHS REFUGEES LIVE BY 75
Conclusion
The self-settled refugee and his heroic struggle dominate the living
memory of partition’s aftermath in West Bengal. This dominant
memory is born partly of years of leftist political slogans and
propaganda regarding refugee struggles and partly of refugee
reminiscences which seek to fashion a cohesive refugee identity out of
a deeply divided history. The mytho-history West Bengal’s squatters’
colonies has been further reinforced by the recent proliferation
of commemorative texts.124 Since 1997, every enterprising refugee
colony has produced its own booklet on community history,
commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the colony, its school or
the local Durga Puja.125 Through constant reiteration, a selective
representation of refugee pasts—designed to foster political unity
among refugees and to obfuscate the deep inequalities of class, caste,
and cultural capital among East Bengali refugees—has emerged as
the dominant account of refugee rehabilitation in West Bengal. The
focus on refugee movements and political agitation obscures the socio-
economic basis of ‘refugee power’ in post-partition West Bengal. In
the process, it also distorts the nature of refugee agency in Calcutta,
which derived much of its efficacy from cultural capital. The anti-
eviction movement, wrangles over leadership, militant clashes with
the police, eye-witness accounts of bleak destitution at the railway
platforms or pavements, and the emergence of refugee women as
breadwinners are the familiar themes of refugee anecdotes and
reminiscences. The refugees resettled by the government in marginal
lands at Gayeshpur and Habra, the refugee-settlers of the Andaman
Islands or the regimented life in Mana transit camp of Dandakaranya,
are conspicuous by their absence.
A similar bias towards Calcutta-centric histories characterizes
the scholarship on East Bengali refugees. However, unlike popular
histories, the fate of thousands of low-caste refugees who bore the
brunt of government dispersal is not passed over in silence. Instead
124 For a discussion on the mythic structure of oral history interviews, see Jean
Peneff, ‘Myths in life stories’ and Luisa Passerini, ‘Mythbiography in oral history’ in
Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (eds), The myths we live by, London, Routledge,
1990, pp. 36–50.
125 The worship of goddess Durga celebrates her victory over the demon Mahisasura
and has grown in importance over the last two centuries to emerge as the largest and
most important annual festival among Bengali Hindus and a focal point of community
life.
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76 UDITI SEN
the residents of the government camps and rehabilitation sites
are represented as victims of the regime of rehabilitation. These
schemes are described as ‘tragic’ failures, and their ‘beneficiaries’ as a
flattened mass of victimhood. The richness of detail that characterizes
histories of ‘self-settled’ refugees gives way to a nameless and faceless
homogeneity. This distorts the lived experience of camp-dwellers126
and serves to further highlight the achievement of the refugee-
squatters. More importantly, the failure to interrogate the celebratory
narrative of refugee self-help has prevented historians from fully
exploring the divisive impact of caste and class differences among
Bengali refugees. The existing scholarship on the rehabilitation of
Bengali refugees largely replicates the biases inherent in popular
histories and refugee reminiscences. In the process it lends credence
to the dominant memory of rehabilitation in West Bengal, and the
origin myths refugee communities live by.
126 The few studies that have explored the lived experience of refugees in the various
government camps and colonies reveal a complex world of everyday resistance and
negotiations, further highlighting the a-historicity of such representations. See Kaur,
Since 1947, pp. 99–100; Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, ‘Permanent refugees: Female
camp inhabitant in Bihar’ in Essed et al., Refugees and the transformation of societies,
pp. 81–93; and Sen, ‘Dissident memories’.
